Hotline Miami
Tags: psychedelic, neo noir, violence

Plot synopsis:
=== Plot ===
Hotline Miami, taking place in Miami in 1989, employs an unreliable narrator and events are sometimes presented out of chronological order. The player takes the role of an unnamed man dubbed "Jacket" by fans for his distinctive letterman jacket. One day, Jacket receives a voicemail about a supposed delivery of 'cookies' to his home. He finds a package outside which contains a rooster mask and instructions to perform a hit on a group of criminals and steal a briefcase in their possession, threatening that he is being watched and that "failure is not an option." After Jacket completes this mission, he receives further messages on his answering machine, each asking him to take care of an innocuous "problem" at a specific address; these locations invariably contain a criminal operation, usually run by the Russian mob, that he must eliminate. Throughout the game Jacket has visions where he is confronted over his actions by three masked figures; the cryptic rooster-masked Richard, the hostile owl-masked Rasmus, and the sympathetic horse-masked Don Juan.
During a raid on the estate of a movie producer, Jacket rescues a woman who was being sexually abused and brings her home. In another mission Jacket is called to a phone company where he finds everyone dead except for a lone biker, whom Jacket then kills. Jacket can find other animal-masked killers dead or dying during his missions, and after each mission he visits a store or restaurant where the same bearded clerk greets him. "Beard" gives him encouragement and free samples of merchandise.
Jacket's perception of reality becomes increasingly surreal. He begins to see the talking corpses of his victims during his everyday life. Beard abruptly dies, his bloody corpse remaining at his places of work, and he is replaced by an abrasive bald man, Richter, who offers Jacket nothing. One day Jacket arrives home to find his girlfriend murdered and a man in a rat mask on his couch, who shoots him in the head. The attack puts Jacket in a coma; he wakes up in a hospital and overhears that his attacker is in police custody, whereupon he escapes and storms Miami police headquarters.
Jacket discovers his attacker was Richter, who had also been following the orders of threatening voicemails, and steals the file on the police's investigation of the killings. With this he raids the mob-owned nightclub the calls were tracked to, finding the address of the headquarters of Miami's Russian Mafia. Jacket then goes to this address and kills the syndicate's leaders.
The game's main story ends with Jacket killing off the Russian Mafia's leaders, but afterwards the player can play bonus levels as the Biker from the telephone company. Another recipient of the mysterious phonecalls, the Biker has gotten fed up of carrying out their assignments and is trying to track the callers down. From raiding the phone company the Biker traces the calls to the mob-owned nightclub, and when Jacket arrives the Biker kills him. At the nightclub the Biker finds a hidden basement, where two janitors have been sending out the mysterious phonecalls. If the player has found secret letters hidden in Jacket's levels, the Biker will crack their computer's password and learn the janitors work for 50 Blessings, an ostensibly-peaceful patriotic organization, and have been using its membership to carry out killings to derail an alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Janitors boast their "experiment" is only the "tip of the iceberg" of a larger conspiracy. Without the password, the janitors claim they were acting out of boredom and mock the Biker's attempt to rationalize his actions.
=== Characters ===
Most of these names are unofficial because they were not named in-game.
Jacket - He is the main protagonist of the game. He wears various masks and performs a number of brutal assassinations in response to cryptic messages left on his answering machine. He is later attacked by another masked assassin, who kills his girlfriend. Because of this, he pursues those he feels are responsible. While he is given no name, various pieces of merchandise and cross-promotion have adopted "Jacket" as his official moniker.
Biker - The protagonist in the chapters that occur after the main storyline is finished. He receives the same phone calls as Jacket, but is less willing to follow their instructions, eventually trying to end his affiliation with the group. This eventually leads him to a confrontation with Jacket. He is playable in the later chapters, but uses a different play-style than Jacket: he is unable to use stray weapons and can only use a cleaver as well as three throwing knives.
Richter - Another person receiving the same phone calls. He is the one who attacked Jacket and killed his girlfriend.
Richard, Rasmus, and Don Juan - Three masked personas that Jacket sees within his distorted reality.
Girlfriend - A woman the protagonist rescues early in the game. While nursing her back to health, it is implied the two begin a relationship. She is later murdered by Richter.
Beard - The only apparent friend of Jacket's, who works at every shop Jacket visits.
The Janitors - A couple of sneering green-attired "janitors", blonde and brown-haired, belonging to the militant American nationalist group 50 Blessings. They turn out to be behind the campaign of brutal terrorist violence in which Jacket, Biker, and Richter are involved as participants. They are modeled after the creators of the game, Wedin and Söderström.

Review: Miami Violence Never Looked So Good.
Hotline Miami is a insane, bloody, and super violent in the depths of the Miami criminal world.
You play as a guy who receives phone-calls every-night making you do the dirty work.
While you're doing the dirty work, you get to wear theses different type of mask which have special abilities on how to deal with things.
While you're violently killing your foes, you have this amazing soundtrack that goes along perfectly.
Though the story is simply weird when you start progressing further like you're entering a bloody nightmare.
Pros: Replay value is high,tons of masks,very violent,levels are challenging,worth the price,amazing soundtrack.Cons: The levels are a little bit small.
This game is awesome if you want a some quick gruesome fun..
Inovating, breath-taking indie title with 80's vibe..
It's Miami, late 80's.
You are in your home and someone calls you.
It has a certain job for you.
Everything you need is in a packaged that was left in your door.
Be discrete.Hotline Miami have a mysterious plot that feels like you are having a psychedelic dream.
Once you enter a room, the music starts pumping, bright colors flashing that makes you enter in a madness of murder.
Everything happens real fast and you have to be quick in your reflexes.
After you're done with the killing spree, the music stops and you can only hear a static sound.
Only in the way back to the car is where you can realize the mess you've made.
It's a game with a solid mechanic, fast reflexes and a good range of variety from weapons, masks and strategy you can plan for each map and room.The soundtrack is amazing, from a good range of talented independent artists that will make you remind from the 80's with a modern touch.The game, in the end, has one question for you.Do you like hurting people?.
One of the best games I have ever played.
Hotline Maimi is a wonderful trip, like a good abstract movie or a bad ass surrealist book.I played the game for the first time on 2012 on my PC, I found it extremely intense and difficult, so after like 8 chapters I quit.This year, I bought myself a brand new PS4, which came with a bonus 10$ PSN card, so I said why not, lets try again this retro indie game,and hell that was a good choice.The story of the game is a mystery from the begin to the end of the game, because that's the creator's intention, they want you to make the conclusions.The game-play is mainly a brutal-gory top down massacre, that can be very painful and stressful at first, but with the "try and error" system, you end up controlling the levels in a easier way, but if you want to complete the game at the 100%(as me), you are going to need time and a lot of patience, mainly trying to get the A+ on each level.The controls, at least on PS4, are very easy to handle, in my opinion, smoothers than the PC ones, although when you start, they take some time to handle, but with time there's no major difficult or struggle.The graphics have a cool retro style, which ironically, look extremely sweet on HD.
Beside this, the game have a very "intense" look, with each stage having a changing color background, which can get some people dizzy or with a headache(luckily that wasn't my case).
All the gore of the game, combined with the retro aspect, make the perfect ambient to this non-stop killing festival.The music is by far the best aspect of the game, having one of the best soundtrack that I've ever listened to, with house and electronic songs that fit absolutely perfect on each chapter, being the perfect addition to this thrilling adventure.Overall, the game, at least to me, is an indie master piece, being today, one of the best games that the PS4 have to offer.Absolutely recommended if you like the retro style games, the ultra violent games or the good games in general.10/10.
Simple but at times frustrating top down shooter.
Console: PS3 (via PSN store) Genre: Top down 3rd person shooter/brawler/puzzle game Story: You play a man with amnesia who receives messages on his answering machine to accomplish certain jobs.
The gameplay makes it seem clear that these messages are coded instructions to kill armed people at certain locations.
You have to find out who you are as well as who is behind the phone calls you are receiving.
Or maybe you are just insane?
Graphics: My first console was the N64, and the graphics on this predates the image quality on that console, even though it is a new game.
So, not sure of the right label for the graphics...8 bit?
32 bit?
32 bit?
In other words, it's very primitive looking character models and level models.
I think my TV signals that the source is 1080i when I load the game...but the graphics still look the oldest school.Sound: Old school (think pre PSOne consoles).
Alright.
Fortunately this is a game where you can turn the sound down and listen to whatever you want without any negative impact on the game play.
At times characters do speak in the game but there is no sound in any case and you can read the characters' comments.Gameplay: Each "mission" starts in your character's lounge room, with a message left on their answering machine.
You take your car to the location mentioned then enter a building swarming with thugs with melee weapons or various guns/rifles.
Utilising stealth or gung ho tactics you have to kill all the thugs in order to complete the chapter and receive your score.
Some buildings only have one level, but others have 2 or 3 floors you have to clear.
You can kill thugs whilst unarmed or you can use weapons you knock from the thugs or once you have killed them.
Later in the game you will have to deal with attack dogs.
Then you get "mini bosses" in chapters, followed by a few chapters of full on boss battles, which are markedly different from the usual gameplay.
Earning high scores for chapters sees you receive masks for your character, which you can wear to future missions...they act as power-ups at times.
E.g. one mask will allow you to start a chapter with a knife whereas the default starting situation is that your character is unarmed.Good about the game: Even though you can die often in a chapter, at times this can be fun, as you try and go about things the right way to finish the chapter.
The game therefore has repeat play value.Bad about the game: * You can die a lot in some sections of the game and this is really frustrating and exasperating and just kills the fun out of this game.
Mainly I have some of those few boss type battles in mind.
Even though I did complete the game, for some of those chapters it just felt that I lucked my victory so there is no sense that came upon a solution to the problem of that boss fight...although with more replays, that lessens.
Finding those solutions does seem a matter of luck too.* If this was a true "pick up and play" game, it would be a lot of fun, but if you find that you must quit the game for whatever reason before you have completed a chapter, then when you resume at some later point, you will have to start the entire chapter again, which can be extremely annoying if just getting to that final level in a chapter meant having to conquer a really tough previous level in that chapter.
So, you can find yourself having to spend more time on a chapter than you would if it really was "pick up and play"/"dip in and out".* It's frustrating that you can die in a chapter due to not seeing a thug because the graphics are so low resolution...they don't stand out from the corpses that you put there previously.* Combat ideally should have a rhythm to it in this game but early on especially I felt that juggling the combat features was too confusing, even though there aren't a lot of controller buttons to use...e.g. locking on to a thug to take them out and then locking onto another thug to repeat the process...once you get a few thugs racing towards you about to gank you, it's easy to forget what button to press to do such and such.* Probably the biggest negative for me is that is one of those games that you will have to go on to You Tube or on to Forums in order to finish the game 'properly'/solve the Puzzle that the game offers.
I replayed the game equipped with the mask for revealing Secrets (presumably which help you solve the Puzzle which allows you to get a score in the final chapter of the game proper (which I have not yet done)...yet have not found all the pieces to the Wheel Of Fortune like letters you need to presumably solve that puzzle.
It's probably the low resolution graphics here again...Puzzle pieces not standing out from the background or from other non-Puzzle pieces.
Once you need to You Tube or look up answers to complete the game, that becomes a big negative for me...I have a life you know!
My toenails aren't going to cut themselves!
General observations: This game reminded me of the Metal Gear Solid: Virtual Missions bonus disc for the PSOne, which I bought when I was playing the PS2.
However, it's more complex and complicated than that game...which came across as a negative point for me..
Possibly The best inde game ever made.
Hotline Miami is a simple but fun top down shooter game, However it is very hard and frustrating and is massively replay-able.
Although this game doesn't have many chapters it will still take 4+ hours to complete.
This game has a lot of over the top violence even though it is pix-elated but is very unlikely to offend any body The plot is simple, a man gets phone calls that instruct him to go places and kill people.
These people are later revealed to be the Russian mafia and the people telling you to kill are an independent group of people.
The game gets more surreal as the game goes on and it just looks like an acid trip.
The music is also very good and i downloaded it after playing the game 10/10.
Perfect at what it does, but not for everyone.
Best indie game of all time, as in it does what it sets out to do without flaw.
Gameplay is overhead action at its finest, and deceivingly simple, since it only uses 3 buttons.
It also has a lot of depth story-wise, with a plot that genuinely surprised me, making it also deceivingly simple in that respect.
Even the (spoiler) level Trauma is well done, despite being frequently criticized.
It works because of it has purpose, and breaks up the game play slightly.
Another thing this game does well, maybe even the best, is the whole descent into madness angle.
The only two things I can think of that may turn people off are the difficulty and the gore/presentation.
Even though this game is stylized, it is very graphic with its violence.
The style, difficulty, craziness narrative, and gore all play into the game's somewhat subtle social commentary on games and the media in general, sort of along the lines of the phenomenal new Spec Ops, but unlike The Line, HM isn't as in your face and obvious about it, despite the components of the theme being right in front of you.
And do I seriously need to mention the soundtrack?
10/10, one of the greatest games of all time.
My 2012 GOTY.