Monday, February 11, 2013

A thing about Hotline Miami.


I've been procrastinating about writing a big piece about Hotline Miami, looking at every level and the interstitial segments of unconvincing normality. But like I said, procrastination.

So I'm going to just put one thought out there - and I haven't seen anyone else raise it yet. Hopefully I'm not thinking this is some great gaming epiphany that others pointed out on day one. But it convinced me there was much more darkness to Hotline Miami's design than just what's in the plot.

Here we go:

Hotline Miami (with a few unfortunate boss fight exceptions) is one hit, one kill. So a single click of the mouse and you have dispatched your adversary. Except when your victim is helpless. Then you must press "Space" and then click. And then click again. And sometimes again. And again. And again.

And sometimes it's forcing you to do this to a clearly innocent individual. That's when it first struck me. When I realised that here I was, clicking away almost mindlessly, trying to squeeze (well, more gouge) the life out of some poor innocent.

What devious, evil design from Dennaton.