BAM!
The door gets bashed as my animal-masked psychopath as he knocks a ruskie to the ground. Before he gets to wake up, I BASH his head with my bare hands. I take the knife he drops, now the action assigned to muscle memory, I stab two guys in the next room. Fast and clean. I exchange my knife with a shotgun in the room. 6/6 bullets of destruction. I unload the rounds on the other goons, pixelated intensities everywhere! I take cover in another corner as more ruskies come. BAM! BAM! Brains leaked all over the wall.
I exchange my shotgun with an assault rifle. 24/24 bullets. Ready for action, I barrel down the hallway, making it nothing but a blood-soaked hallway. And as the last goon comes to try killing me, I kill him there's no tommorow.
"Chapter clear" The badass trance music stops... total silence.
I just completed a chapter, but the game doesn't crunch my scores yet. I have to go all the way back to the start of the level. Floor after floor, room after room filled with blood. Blood I caused, like an unstoppable engine of destruction. I was only stopped, repeatedly, one hit one kill, one hit one kill, many times, until I got the map down to my memory, until I applied my crosshair-focus and made every action count. And my reward is... to walk among the dead. Dozens of corpses. Decapitated, dismembered. Simple sprites, sure, but more unsettling. Outside, beyond the borders, there is no world, only undulating neon colors, and Hotline Miami hints at something deeper, more deeper.
Something darker. Your killings are framed by your visits to your apartment in 80's-era Miami, when you receive voicemails sending on you random hits. You visit friends after each episode, at VHS rental stores, pizza restaurant and convenience stores. And slowly, the world starts to change. Perhaps it has something to do with the dark visions, where masked men surround you in a unknown location, giving you questions to ponder, but no answers. What does it all mean?
I ain't gotta tell you all, but I finished it already and I think people oughta try it. Incredibly addicting, stylish, atmospheric, a great pumping soundtrack to boot. Hotline Miami is really something special. The fun when you get killed in one hit, and you retry again and again until you pull it successfully.
Stealth, action, puzzling, and score attack, all woven seamlessly as one, in a world that's warm and alluring even as it's paints in a bleak picture. This game is amazing. I hope anyone here on Game-IV give it a chance.