Hotline Miami review: American psycho

Masks like those worn by your captors can be found or earned. Each grants a special ability — the owl mask makes hidden objects easier to find, for example, and the unicorn mask silences weapons. They are replay tools, most of which changed the way I approached a challenge. I found myself replaying missions to see how they handled with a certain buff or bonus weapon.

Slamming a door into an unsuspecting enemy will stun them. You may then use the dazed goon as a hostage / living shield, the closest the game comes to a defensive maneuver. Defense rarely works. The "hero" is as vulnerable as his enemies, succumbing to a single strike.

And so Hotline Miami is a mix of trial-and-error with run-and-gun. Test a strategy, die and apply what you learned. Never stop moving. You never feel safe; it turns you into a neurotic, mouse-smashing maniac. The second I died, I was hungry to start again. The repetition doesn't feel like a chore because of the quick retry system. Killing in Hotline Miami is more like a sport.

If anything spoils Hotline Miami, it's how loosely assembled it feels. Enemy AI can be borderline vegetative, and bugs crashed my game a couple of times. And then there's the late-game stealth mission, which, while narratively powerful, is a missed beat in an otherwise adroitly tempoed campaign.

Murder is messy; you leave behind maimed corpses and Pollock-esque spatterings of blood. Bodies never disappear, a visual decision the developer underlines, bolds and highlights by making players hike through their destruction at the end of each stage. To continue with the painter metaphor: you enter a Thomas Kinkade, you exit a Gustave Doré.

Playing Hotline Miami made me feel like an empowered homicidal maniac. I punched open the front door, knocked down the first guard, stole his knife and threw it into his colleague's neck. Before the second wave of guards could step out of the patrol room, I'd sliced them in half with a samurai sword stored in the maintenance closet. I ran into a bathroom, grabbed a man from the urinal mid-stream and tossed him to the floor, printing his face in the decorative tiles. Three guards approached the room, but they didn't know I'd trained a shotgun on the doorknob, just waiting for them to enter. And when they did...

Non-violent encounters bookend missions in the world we know: The main character tries to go about his life — renting videos, visiting bars, grabbing pizza — but the dissonance is disorienting for the player and the character. It's refreshing to have a protagonist react believably to the absurdity and tragedy of his behavior.