5/5 ★ – fleureta's review of Hotline Miami.

do you like hurting other people? who is leaving messages on your answering machine? where are you right now? why are we having this conversation? it doesn’t matter, and if it did, should it? does the utter catharsis of hurting other people mean anything? are you even thinking about who is leaving the messages on your answering machine or where you are ever after killing other people in cold blood? why are we having this conversation? where do you draw the line between slicing someone’s neck and smashing their face in within in a video game while blood splatters everywhere… and doing the same thing in reality, visualizing it, even. what is the orgasmic catharsis of violence in video games? does it matter? brutality wins over morality in the case of the 2012 cult classic, hotline miami. the work of devolver has transcended top down shooter parody-like gore and delved into a cryptic commentary on emotional response and morality. do you like hurting other people? hotline miami is to many, a favorite and to most, a guilty pleasure. though pixels, one can’t help but feel uneasy by one or more aspects of the gratuitous violence of hotline miami and at the end of smashing people’s face in with a baseball bat, disfiguring their guard dogs, slicing their neck and watching them squirm as they bleed out… you run back to your car in a dismal disarray as you are forced to review over the blood you’ve shed. what was once neon noir of miami in the 80s is now you, not the character, but you and the choices you have made- the strategies in which you killed these people… in the moment of gameplay, hotline miami is some of the most fun i have ever had replaying section after section death after death, gunshot after gunshot i kept coming back for more… do i like hurting other people? in my life, of course not. the slightest thought of it would make me vomit the way jacket did after killing the homeless man. but what is the visceral emotional response that occurs for you and i? a lot of the fulfillment of hotline miami has to do with the way it is presented, a drug filled haze of neon and gore do you like hurting other people? what seems like a morally easy question is in fact answered easily by jacket bludgeoning a russian mafia member followed by a bloody bullet spray. jacket does like hurting other people. he has made homicide habitual, but while richard is a figment of jacket’s subconscious as he asks himself this, richard isn’t asking jacket, he’s asking the person playing the game. do you? hotline miami is at its core an ultra violent, brilliantly presented game that, arguably, brought about the revival of 80s synth wave; and by the sum of its graphic, confusing parts, a visceral commentary on violence in video games. this duality of hotline miami is what makes the game beautiful and deserving of its masterful sequal hotline miami 2. hotline miami is a seductive guilty pleasure, a violence you can’t take your eyes away from. in the easiest medium to present graphic murder, every death leaves a mark as you walk over their bodies back to your car. did you like it? hotline miami is dark, and it is beautiful.