Hotline Miami
Hotline Miami | |
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![]() Cover art by Niklas Åkerblad | |
Developer(s) | Dennaton Games |
Publisher(s) | Devolver Digital |
Designer(s) |
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Programmer(s) | Jonatan Söderström |
Artist(s) | Dennis Wedin |
Writer(s) |
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Engine |
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Platform(s) | |
Release | 23 October 2012
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Genre(s) | Top-down shooter |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Hotline Miami is a 2012 top-down shooter game developed by Dennaton Games and published by Devolver Digital. In the game, players take on the role of an unnamed silent protagonist—known outside of the game as "Jacket"—while committing massacres against the local Russian mafia. In each level, the player is tasked with defeating every single enemy through any means necessary, ranging from firearms and melee weapons, to more specific methods such as knocking enemies out with doors. At the beginning of each level, the player chooses from a variety of masks, which offer unique abilities. The game is set in Miami in 1989, and primarily tells its story through cryptic dream cutscenes where masked figures berate Jacket for his actions and foreshadow upcoming events.
Hotline Miami was the first commercial release of developers Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin, who both faced financial difficulties following past failed development ventures. Using a scrapped prototype developed by Söderström years prior as a basis, the team developed Hotline Miami throughout the course of nine months. The game was released in October 2012 for Windows, with the game being ported to OS X and Linux the next year in March and September respectively. Versions that were partially developed by Abstraction Games were released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita that year in June. A version for PlayStation 4 followed in August 2014.
Hotline Miami received generally positive reviews from critics upon release, with praise focused on its atmosphere, soundtrack, and gameplay. The game's themes and storytelling were also a point of discussion, with critics commenting on the games "anti-violence" message by making the player feel guilt. A sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released in March 2015. Hotline Miami was re-released alongside its sequel as part of the localized Hotline Miami: Collected Edition in Japan that same year. Another compilation, the Hotline Miami Collection, released for Nintendo Switch in August 2019, and was later ported to Xbox One, Stadia, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
In the years since release, Hotline Miami has often been considered one of the most influential indie games, and has been considered one of the best video games ever made. Its success inspired many to begin developing games, contributing to a rise in indie game releases during the 2010s. Many of the games created during this period had elements influenced from Hotline Miami, ranging from gameplay to its soundtrack and narrative. It has considered the "breakout title" of its publisher Devolver Digital, and many of its published games have been inspired by Hotline Miami.
Gameplay
[edit]![The protagonist Jacket on the level Hot and Heavy, shooting a machine gun at Russian Mafia breaking down the door.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/Hotline_Miami_Gameplay_%282012%29.png/220px-Hotline_Miami_Gameplay_%282012%29.png)
Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter game set in Miami during the 1980s.[1] The game is divided into several chapters,[2] which are further divided into floors.[3] At the beginning of each chapter, the player character "Jacket"[a] receives a message his answering machine, instructing him to travel to a different part of Miami and eliminate all enemies present. The player is able to defeat their opponents through a variety of melee and ranged attacks, ranging from knives and crowbars to firearms.[1] Additional methods available to the player include knocking out enemies with a door, using them as a human shield for defense, or kicking them against the wall. If the enemy is not immediately killed in an attack, the player can perform a finishing move.[3][6] Later stages in the game have the player take control of a different character, known as the Biker, who only uses knives and can't use other weapons.[7]
Both the player and enemies can be felled from a single attack. To compensate, the player is able to quickly restart the current stage after death, letting the player to rethink their strategy.[8] Different types of enemies appear throughout the game, such as guard dogs.[8] The enemy AI is inconsistent, with reactions to attacks ranging from responding immediately to doing nothing.[2] The player is awarded points for each enemy they kill, with bonus points awarded based on the method of execution or the amount of enemies killed in a short period of time.[6]
Before each chapter begins, the player can choose from a variety of animal masks,[4] which grant different abilities depending on the mask chosen. These attributes include the players gunshots being silenced or finishing moves being sped up.[3] At the end of each chapter, the total score is tallied up and the player is given a final rating based on their performance.[9][3] The players score is further adjusted based on their playstyle, which is given a classification such as "coward" or "sadist".[10] High scores unlock new masks and weapons for the player to use.[9][3] The game also supports achievements, which are obtained by doing specific challenges like killing two enemies with one brick throw.[11]
Synopsis
[edit]In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door containing a rooster mask. Alongside the package, there are strict instructions advising Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station using violence. Jacket continues to receive messages on his answering machine instructing him to conduct more massacres. After each massacre, Jacket visits a store or a restaurant where a man known as Beard[b] meets him and gives away free items such as pizza, films, and alcoholic beverages. During an assault on the estate of a film producer, Jacket rescues a girl and takes her to his apartment, nursing her back to good health and developing a romantic relationship with her. After this assault, Jacket is visited by three masked personas who question him for his actions, with these encounters continuing throughout the game. In another assault on a phone company, Jacket finds everybody dead except another operative known as the Biker, who is attempting to access a computer, and the two fight to the death.[c]
As Jacket continues his massacres, his perception of reality becomes increasingly more surreal. Talking corpses begin appearing at Beard's places of work, and eventually Beard himself abruptly dies, replaced by a bald man named Richter that offers Jacket nothing. After coming home one night, Jacket discovers his girlfriend murdered and a rat-masked man on his couch, who shoots him and places him into a coma. In one final encounter with the masked persona Richard, he tells Jacket that he will "never see the full picture". It is afterwards revealed that Jacket was reliving the events of the past two months while comatose after being shot by Richter. After waking up, Jacket overhears that his attacker has been put in police custody, and escapes the hospital in search of him. He storms Miami police headquarters, killing everyone inside and finds his attacker to be Richter, who had also been receiving messages on his answering machine. After interrogating him, Jacket spares his life and steals the file on the police investigations of the killings before heading to a nightclub that the calls were tracked to. He finds the address to be that of the Russian Mafia headquarters, kills all of the guards, and confronts both leaders of the syndicate. After Jacket kills his personal bodyguard and injures his hands, one of the leaders "spares him the pleasure" and commits suicide. When Jacket confronts the other, he contemplates the things he did and allows Jacket to kill him without resistance. Afterwards, a victorious Jacket walks out onto the balcony and lights a cigarette, taking a photo out of his pocket and throwing it out.
After the completion of the Jacket levels, the player unlocks a series of levels where the player character is the Biker. Similarly to Jacket, the Biker has been receiving messages on his answering machine, and is dedicated to identify their source. After the encounter with Jacket depicted earlier and various interrogations, he finds the source of the messages to be 50 Blessings, a group operated by two janitors that attempts to undermine the Russo-American Coalition, which they view as "anti-American", by ordering their operatives to commit numerous anti-Russian massacres. The game features two endings, with the full ending requiring the player to find puzzle pieces scattered throughout the game to crack 50 Blessings' password. If the player manages to crack the password, the Biker uncovers their secrets and political agenda. Without the password, the Biker is mocked and fails to discover the truth. In both endings, the player has the option to either kill or spare the janitors. Afterwards, the Biker departs from Miami.[7][10]
Themes and analysis
[edit]Hotline Miami advocates an anti-violence message through making the player feel guilt for their in-game massacres.[13] This is primarily done through the utilization of upbeat music and its score system to drive the player to commit the massacres, though the violence in each killing is greatly exaggerated. As the game is fast paced, the player may enter a state where they're focused exclusively on their inputs and become desensitized to the actions they are committing, assuming they were not already desensitized.[7][13] According to Pitchfork's Nina Corcoran, the game's upbeat soundtrack contributes to this by ratcheting the players anxiety and increasing player focus, while also desensitizing them.[14] At the end of each level, the upbeat music is replaced with ambience as the player exits the building as the motionless, gory remains of enemies flood the floor.[7]
Each of the game's masked personas serve a specific purpose in these encounters. The yellow-tinted Richard is often inquisitive, the blue-tinted Don Juan is generally passive and friendly, while the red-tinted Rasmus is aggressive. All interrogate the player through their own ways, with Don Juan's dialog including lines such as "knowing oneself means acknowledging one’s actions", while Richard's dialog is more direct, asking questions like "do you like hurting other people?"[10] Additionally, the masked figures never reveal any details about the identity of Jacket, instead teasing the player directly.[15] The masked figures also foreshadow upcoming events in the game's narrative, such as hinting at the murder of Jacket's girlfriend.[7][10]
The differing behavior of the masked figures were noted by Luca Papale and Lorenzo Fazio to possibly represent a dissociative identity disorder in Jacket.[4] Similar thoughts were written by Marco Caracciolo of the University of Groningen, who believed that the masked personas to possibly be "projections of Jacket’s disturbed psyche." He additionally wrote that the games plot is 'destined not to make any sense", citing the behavior of the masked figures as well as the contradictions between the perspectives of Jacket and the Biker.[15] Papale and Fazio considered Jacket to be an example of the first example of a "meta-avatar", a type of character with the ability to cause players to rethink their own actions and cause instability within their identity.[4] This type of character was compared to Doomguy from the DOOM series and Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, both of which were considered to fall under "mask digital prosthesis", which refers to the overlapping of identities between a player and a game's protagonist.[4]
Development
[edit]![A 25 year old Swedish man in a grey jacket, black pants, and green hat speaking at a conference.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Jonatan_S%C3%B6derstr%C3%B6m_%28Cactus%29_-_Game_Developers_Conference_2010_%282%29.jpg/220px-Jonatan_S%C3%B6derstr%C3%B6m_%28Cactus%29_-_Game_Developers_Conference_2010_%282%29.jpg)
Hotline Miami was developed by Dennaton Games, a team composed of designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström and artist Dennis Wedin.[16][17]: 7:10 Söderström had previously developed numerous freeware indie games, such as the puzzle game Tuning,[18] which won the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival in 2010.[19] Around this time, he developed numerous projects that were never completed, which he put in a group known as the "unfinished and unreleased box". Among these was a top-down shooter tilted Super Carnage, a game where the goal was to kill as many people as possible. He began development of Super Carnage in 2004 at the age of 18, but abandoned the project after facing difficulties with developing the game's AI.[20]
Years later, Söderström met Wedin, a singer and keyboard player for synthpunk band Fucking Werewolf Asso. The two collaborated in making a promotional game based on the band, titled Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, as well as a separate project named Life/Death/Island. The latter became too much work for them to handle, and the project was abandoned. Following this, the two experienced financial difficulties and decided their next game would be a commercial release. Wedin began searching through Söderström's unfinished projects, and came across the Super Carnage project.[20] With Wedin seeing potential in the concept after previously playing similar games such as Gauntlet (1985) and Chaos Engine (1993),[17]: 5:00 the two began developing Hotline Miami.[20][21] The game was originally titled Cocaine Cowboy, named after the 2006 documentary of the same name.[20][21]
The game was developed using the GameMaker engine over the course of nine months.[20] Uncertain on whether or not the game would be successful, combined with developing the game with little to no budget, the team repeatedly lost and regained motivation. In an interview with Edge Wedin described the development of the game as "fucking hard".[20] During development, Wedin faced mental health related issues following a break up, and was hospitalized for two weeks.[22] Due to being developed with an outdated version of GameMaker that had compatibility issues with newer operating systems, Dennaton faced numerous strange problems while developing the game, dealing with various bugs reported by playtesters. One of these bugs was one that would cause the game to crash if certain printers were plugged into the players computer. The team also faced difficulties with developing the game's AI, conflicted on whether to make it more "believable" or to intentionally make it varied in behavior. The team chose the latter.[20]
Before they began development on the game, the team watched numerous movies to use as inspiration for its writing. Among these were the works of David Lynch, the superhero comedy film Kick-Ass (2010), the Miami-oriented aforementioned documentary Cocaine Cowboys, and Drive (2010).[20][23] In an interview, Söderström described that Lynch's work left the largest influence overall. With Drive in particular, Söderström was a fan of the film's minimal dialogue and critique of violence, inspiring Söderström to create a game that had similar aspects. This led to the creation of Hotline Miami's masked personas and the scenes they appear in.[20] The character Beard was based on artist Niklas Åkerblad, a friend of Dennaton and the owner of the apartment the two developed the game in.[24] Other inspirations that impacted the games narrative include Gordon Freeman, the silent protagonist of the Half-Life series.[23]
Music
[edit]The soundtrack of Hotline Miami was a focus of the developers, with Söderström describing that they found it to be a "crucial" element. Their goal was to create a soundtrack that did not sound "like game music", but rather a soundtrack from a movie.[21][14] After failing to obtain the licenses for a temporary soundtrack they put together early in the games development, the team began searching Bandcamp for tracks that were free to download; according to Söderström, the team listened to up to two thousand tracks. Some artists (such as M.O.O.N.) were found through this process, while other artists such as Scattle contacted Dennaton themselves after seeing blog posts of the games development. Tracks from M.O.O.N. were directly added to the game, while Scattle was tasked with composing unique music inspired by movies Hotline Miami was based on using Renoise.[21] Other artists Dennaton licensed music from included Coconuts and Sun Araw,[25] and artists such as Åkerblad (under the alias "El Huervo") made direct contributions themselves.[26] The final soundtrack featured tracks of various different styles, ranging from tracks that primarily use bass and drums such as the aforementioned "Hydrogen", to more up-beat pop tracks like "Miami Disco" by Perturbator.[27]
Marketing and release
[edit]During the development of Hotline Miami, the game development studio Vlambeer submitted a demo of the game to Devolver Digital after they expressed interest in Dennaton's work. Upon receiving the copy of the game, members of Devolver such as co-founder Graeme Struthers found the game enjoyable, and a deal was made to publish the game.[20][17]: 5:30 They presented it at the Rezzed exposition in Brighton,[20] where it was praised by attendees, being the most played game at the expo and winning the Game Of The Show award; Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer described the game as the "best example of the sort of game we invented the show for."[28] For the game's promotion, Dennaton purchased a phone number in the Miami area that allowed people to leave messages that would later be used in the game's trailer.[29] Hotline Miami released on Steam on 23 October 2012.[30] Support for MacOS and Linux released on 19 March and 19 September respectively in 2013.[31][32] The game's box art was designed by Åkerblad.[24]
An update released in early November 2012 fixed numerous bugs, added support for gamepads, and made minor adjustments to graphics and gameplay. This update also added a bonus level known as "Highball", which has no relation to any other levels in the game.[33] Alongside this update, Söderström developed numerous patches for pirated versions of Hotline Miami after several users of The Pirate Bay reported issues with the game, stating that he wanted players to "experience the game the way it's meant to be experienced", regardless of whether they bought the game or pirated it.[34] The game's soundtrack was released via Steam in January 2013.[35]
Versions of Hotline Miami for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita released on 25 July 2013 in North America, and a day later in Europe. These ports were handled by Abstraction Games, and supported cross-buy, allowing players who purchased the game on one platform to receive it on the other.[36][37] These ports also added a bonus mask, leaderboards, and touchscreen support on Vita.[37] A version for PlayStation 4, also supporting cross-buy, released on 19 August 2014.[38][39] A Japan-localized compilation, featuring Hotline Miami alongside its sequel Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), titled Hotline Miami: Collected Edition, was released in June 2015.[40] On 19 August 2019, Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2 were re-released as part of the Hotline Miami Collection for Nintendo Switch.[41] The Hotline Miami Collection was later ported to Xbox One and Stadia on 7 April and 22 September 2020 respectively,[42][43] and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 23 October 2023.[44]
Reception
[edit]Critical reception
[edit]Aggregator | Score |
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Metacritic | (PC) 85/100[45] (PS3) 87/100[45] (Vita) 85/100[45] |
Publication | Score |
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Eurogamer | 10/10[11] |
Game Informer | 7.75/10[1] |
GameSpot | 8.5/10[3] |
GamesRadar+ | 4/5[2] |
GameTrailers | 8.7/10[46] |
IGN | 8.8/10[9] |
PC Gamer (US) | 86/100[8] |
Polygon | 8.5/10[6] |
VideoGamer.com | 9/10[47] |
PopMatters | 9/10[48] |
Hotline Miami received generally positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, it holds an aggregated score of 85 per cent based on 51 reviews for the PC version, 87 per cent based on 19 reviews for the PlayStation 3 version, and 85 per cent based on 27 reviews for the PlayStation Vita version.[45]
Several reviewers praised the gameplay of Hotline Miami. Many found the game to be enjoyable despite constant death as a result of other its design, considering the game to be addicting.[1][3][11] Polygon's Chris Plante considered playing the game to be similar to playing a sport, stating that the game compensated for being repetitive by allowing the player to restart quickly, and found the game to be addicting.[6] Graham Smith of PC Gamer shared similar thoughts, writing that the game was designed to "inspire a fever," and that "once you're hooked, it's easy to get carried away." He also wrote that, even when putting the game's addicting nature aside, the game was still "tight" and "efficient".[8] Phill Cameron of VideoGamer.com described the game as "five seconds of action that you can lose yourself in for five hours."[47] Some criticisms were made towards the games controls,[1][47][48][49] with Ben Reeves of Game Informer writing that the controls inhibited what was otherwise "one of the most creative indie titles of the year."[1] Eric Swain of PopMatters believed that the PlayStation 3 version's control differences made the game easier, and consequentially made players "miss out" on the original game's "tone."[48]
The game's atmosphere and art direction were very positively received. Cameron of VideoGamer.com wrote that the atmosphere does "an awfully good job of desensitizing you to the violence".[47] Smith of PC Gamer praised the game's story for not attempting to give a cliché justification for the player's violence.[8] Danny O'Dwyer of GameSpot described the game as a "wonderful barrage of the senses".[3] The atmosphere and violence was not without some criticism however, such as that from Chris Kohler of Wired, who named Hotline Miami the "most disgusting video game of all time".[50]
The soundtrack was acclaimed across various publications for working with the game's atmosphere. Reeves of Game Informer praised the music, describing it to "perfectly place you inside the mind of a serial killer".[1] Giancarlo Saldana of GamesRadar+ and Onyett of IGN described the music as "very effective" and "meshing perfectly" respectively.[2][9]
Sales
[edit]Hotline Miami sold over 130,000 units within the first seven weeks of its initial release.[51] By the time the game was announced in February 2013 to be releasing for PlayStation 3, the game had sold 300,000 units. According to Anthony John Agnello of Digital Trends, the games commercial success up to that point was the reason Sony wanted Hotline Miami on the platform, which helped the company "maintain its reputation" as a "purveyor" of indie titles after the success of Journey (2012 video game) (2012).[52] The game has sold over 1.5 million units as of May 2015.[53]
Awards
[edit]The game was nominated for several awards by IGN at its "Best of 2012" awards,[54][55] such as "Best Overall Game".[56] It was also nominated for "Best PC Action Game",[55] "Best PC Story",[57] "Best PC Game",[58] "Best Overall Action Game",[59] "Best Overall Music",[60] and won "Best PC Sound".[54] PC Gamer selected Hotline Miami as the recipient of its "The Best Music of the Year 2012" award.[61] At the 2012 Machinima's Inside Gaming Awards, the game received the "Most Original Game" award.[62][63]
Legacy
[edit]In the years since its release, Hotline Miami has been considered one of the most influential indie games, as well as one of the most critically and financially successful.[64][65][66][27] Its success inspired many to begin developing video games,[64] contributing to an increase in indie game releases throughout the 2010s.[14] Many of these games took inspiration from Hotline Miami, often incorporating similar narrative themes, gameplay mechanics, or soundtracks.[64][14][27] Games inspired by Hotline Miami continued to be made over a decade after its release,[66] ranging from indie games to games made by larger studios with larger budgets like The Last of Us Part II (2020).[64] The game has also been attributed to the success of its publisher, Devolver Digital, being considered its "breakout title." Since the game's success, Devolver Digital has become one of the most successful indie game publishers, with many of its titles being influenced by Hotline Miami.[65]
The Verge's Aleksha McLoughli described Hotline Miami as the "gold standard" for an indie game, and believed that none of the game's in its sub-genre were able to compare to its success, including its sequel.[64] Nina Corcoran of Pitchfork had similar beliefs, writing that the game was designed by Dennaton with "one foot in the past and another in the future," and was "incredibly replayable" several years later.[14] In a 2022 article published by The Ringer, Lewis Gordon described Hotline Miami as a game that "[stretched] the boundaries" of the video game industry, as one of the more "warmly-regarded" indie games.[65] Christopher Cruz of Rolling Stone described Hotline Miami as a "titan of indie gaming," one with an "impact [that] has reached far and wide."[27] It has been considered one of the best video games ever made by the editorial teams of several media outlets. These include the teams of GamesRadar+, Slant Magazine, HardcoreGaming101, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated, as well as being listed in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.[67]
The game's soundtrack has also been influential separately from the game itself,[68][69][27] being considered a primarily influence on the popularization of the synthwave music genre alongside Drive.[69] According to Pitchfork, many of the video games inspired by Hotline Miami often featured similar music in their soundtracks.[14] In the book The Business of Indie Games, Alex Josef and others estimated that the Hotline Miami soundtrack was likely one of the most successful from an indie game based on sales figures from 2013, believing around 5% of the game's players on Steam purchased the soundtrack as well.[68]
In a 2019 retrospective article from Vice's Cameron Kunzelman, he described the anti-violence messages portrayed by Hotline Miami as an "emblem of a forgotten regime" alongside titles such as Spec Ops: The Line (2012). He highlighted its release in a time where he believed violence was used to demonstrate "seriousness" in video game storytelling, with examples such as the trailer for The Last of Us (2013) where a person's head is shot off with a shotgun. Comparing that to more recent times, Kunzelman believed the video game industry and critics had become desensitized to violence in video games, and that video games were due "another shift" in how violence was treated, and that the original messages of Hotline Miami had been lost.[13]
Sequel and franchise
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/New_York_Comic_Con_2015_-_The_Fans_%2821442072064%29.jpg/220px-New_York_Comic_Con_2015_-_The_Fans_%2821442072064%29.jpg)
Following the success of Hotline Miami, Dennaton began developing downloadable content for the game to expand upon its story, as well as add a level editor.[70] When the proposed length of the project surpassed that of the main game, the project became its own standalone title. Announced ten days after the release of Hotline Miami and released in March 2015,[71][72] Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number expanded upon the universe of the original, introducing new characters and focusing on the background and aftermath of Jacket's massacres. It also served as the conclusion of the series story.[5][73] Due to differences in gameplay and level design, Hotline Miami 2 wasn't received as well as it's predecessor, with critic reviews being generally lower[66] and player feedback being divisive.[17]: 20:30 Both games were included in the Hotline Miami Collection, which first released in August 2019.[41] As of October 2022, both games have sold over five million units combined.[65]
In 2016, an eight-part comic book series based on the games, Hotline Miami: Wildlife, was announced and released digitally over the course of several months. A spin-off of the main Hotline Miami series, it follows a protagonist named Chris and depicts events not considered canon to the main Hotline Miami story.[74] A parody of the game, "Hotline Milwaukee", is included as part of Devolver Bootleg, a 2019 compilation of parodies of numerous Devolver Digital games.[75] The character Jacket has appeared as a playable character in other games, such as Payday 2 (2013) and Dead Cells (2019).[76][77]
Notes
[edit]- ^ Jacket is a fan-assigned name to an otherwise unnamed protagonist.[4] The name was adopted by Dennaton themselves afterwards.[5]
- ^ Similarly to Jacket, Beard goes unnamed in the game, but is referred to as such elsewhere. In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, the character is known as The Soldier.[12]
- ^ Jacket and the Biker fight each other twice, with both times having a different outcome.[7].
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g Reeves, Ben (5 November 2012). "Hotline Miami – A Demented Tour Through The Mind Of A Killer". Game Informer. GameStop. Archived from the original on 29 March 2013. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ a b c d Giancarlo, Saldana (26 June 2013). "Hotline Miami review". GamesRadar. Future US. Archived from the original on 15 August 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Hotline Miami Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 20 June 2023. Retrieved 23 June 2023.
- ^ a b c d e Papale, Luca; Fazio, Lorenzo (2018). "Player Identity and Avatars in Meta-Narrative Video Games: A Reading of Hotline Miami". Springer Science+Business Media. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 11318. pp. 270–274. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_28. ISBN 978-3-030-04027-7.
- ^ a b PC Gamer (2 January 2015). "The making of Hotline Miami 2". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 26 August 2023. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
- ^ a b c d Plante, Chris (25 October 2012). "Hotline Miami review: American psycho". Polygon. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f Ismail, Rami. "Why Hotline Miami is an important game". www.gamedeveloper.com. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Smith, Graham (1 November 2012). "Hotline Miami review". PC Gamer. Future US. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ a b c d Onyett, Charles (26 October 2012). "Hotline Miami Review – 147 Crazy kills". IGN. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on 31 October 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ a b c d Vujanov, Jovana (2021). "The Emptiness of Hardcore: Consuming Violence in Hotline: Miami". Polish Journal for American Studies. 15 (15 (Autumn 2021)): 303–315. doi:10.7311/PJAS.15/2/2021.09.
- ^ a b c Bramwell, Tom (23 October 2012). "Hotline Miami review – Call now to avoid disappointment". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. Archived from the original on 11 January 2016. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ Cook, Dave (17 April 2015). "The Story of 'Hotline Miami 2' Explained". Vice. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
- ^ a b c Kunzelman, Cameron (2 August 2019). "'Hotline Miami' Showed the Futility of Ultra-Violence as Critique". Vice. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Corcoran, Nina (8 March 2023). "Hotline Miami and the Rise of Techno in Ultra-Violent Video Games". Pitchfork. Retrieved 27 June 2024.
- ^ a b Caracciolo, Marco (2014). "Unknowable Protagonists and Narrative Delirium in American Psycho and Hotline Miami: A Case Study in Character Engagement Across the Media". Central and Eastern European Online Library (9): 189–207.
- ^ "Hotline Miami: From Super Carnage to indie success story". Destructoid. 1 July 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ a b c d Noclip - Video Game Documentaries (17 January 2022). Hotline Miami Creators Break Down its Design & Legacy. Retrieved 21 August 2024 – via YouTube.
- ^ Webster, Andrew (1 October 2012). "Blood and pixels on the beach: the story of 'Hotline Miami'". The Verge. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ "2010 Independent Games Festival Winners & Finalists". Independent Games Festival. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "The Making Of: Hotline Miami". Edge. Future plc. 30 June 2013. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
- ^ a b c d Valjalo, David (21 January 2013). "Behind the sounds: Hotline Miami and FTL". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ "It's time to talk about mental illness in indie development". Engadget. 4 April 2018. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ a b "We Ask Indies: Cactus, creator of Hotline Miami and tons of other weird titles". www.gamedeveloper.com. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ a b Hester, Blake (27 August 2015). "How some of the game industry's best teams make box art". Polygon. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- ^ Francis, Tom (1 December 2012). "Hotline Miami interview: Dennaton Games on creating carnage to delight and disgust". PC Gamer. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
- ^ kotakuinternational (5 June 2017). "Hotline Miami Cover Artist On His Distinct Visual Style, Music, And Beard". Kotaku Australia. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
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External links
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