Finally... A Better Hotline Miami

I fuckin love Hotline Miami.

It's a 10+ year old 2D top-down, four-hour, two-man indie shooter made in GameMaker with music licensed by whoever said yes on Bandcamp, and it's still talked about fondly today, to the point where John Wick 4's big scene is attributed to it.

For a whole generation of gamers, who didn't grow up with SmashTV, Death Rally, GTA1+2, and Metal Gear, Hotline Miami wasgenesis.

Unlike the 90s, where the perspective had to be used due to limited technology, Hotline Miami (and by coincidentally Binding of Issac) was people's first taste of a Top Down game that was appealing stylistically.

The list of reasons why is about as long as an arm.

The satisfying yet unnerving violence, surreal atmosphere, bright color palette, fast-paced action, even faster restarts, great difficulty, and of course…

The soundtrack.

None of those things are about gameplay though.

"What are you suggesting, Ray. Hotline Miami's gameplay is fun!"

Yes, it is, but there's lots of films that are fun, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Punisher War Zone, The Fanatic, The Room, Chinese Steven Seagal films, and a word I wouldn’t use to describe them is crafted.

Same goes for Hotline Miami. Combat is incredibly visceral, fast, satisfying, chaotic, and intense… and shockingly basic.

What really demonstrated this was the game's sequel, where all of the original's irritations and lacking depth (the inconsistent doors, binary enemies, off-screen shotgunners, item pickups, and more) were all left completely untouched, making me question if Hotline Miami's gameplay formula was something carefully considered over a period of years or coded overnight after a weekend pub crawl.

All the other Top Down shooters I've played though are very much doing they're own thing, or step backwards even further from Hotline Miami 2, leading to this awkward scenario where a ten year old game based off a ten year old prototype which isn't all that different is still one of the most satisfying games on the market.

That's where OTXO comes in…

It's got weapons which sound even more devastating, an environment that's even more unreal, and soundtrack that's even more intense, but adds so many little refinements which collectively add up to make the gameplay I've always wanted to… well, play.

Firstly…
YOU CAN RELOAD WEAPONS.

No more incorporating thrown weapons into your routine with the enthusiasm of breakfast cereal, now, you can carry a shotgun and enjoy its qualities for more than a handful of shots.

This is always because…

YOU DON'T DIE IN ONE SHOT, and NEITHER DO ENEMIES.

I must clarify here, that I'm not saying Hotline Miami's sequel must've done this. I'm saying, it was always an option, and OTXO proves that removing the one-shot kill mechanic for the player and enemies doesn't in-fact immediately lower the game's intensity.

Enemies often die in 2-3 hits, but what retains the intensity is that now enemies don't die in one hit, weapons can vary significantly.

In Hotline Miami, the Shotgun, isn't a Shotgun, it's a multi-lane plasma cannon. You don't use it to deal more damage to enemies at close range, because in Hotline Miami, your knife has the same output as a Barret .50 Cal.

By giving the enemies just a little bit of health, and by granting the player a small but vulnerable safety net, firefights end up retaining their intensity independent of the level design, which could've been out of the necessity that this game's levels are procedurally generated, though the end result is you never suffer from the eye rolling tedium of that Shipping Container level.

Lastly…
ENEMIES AREN'T DUMB.

Hotline Miami's AI isn't uncommon, hell, two years before it, Ubisoft had the same design in Splinter Cell Conviction, but it does remove a lot of player agency from battles.

What is the point of quickly moving from room to room, exposing yourself to the one round that'll end your potentially 2-3 minute run depending on the level, when you could just watch the enemies one by one sprint into a spinning door?

That's not to say Hotline Miami is easy because of the AI, easy is not a word to describe it or its sequel, but it's difficulty is often dealt with via cheesy, static, and boring tactics like that which from just the little I've played of OTXO, doesn't seem to replicate.

Enemies hold position, they come around corners when you're exposed, and hearing gunfire doesn't immediately send them headlong into your plasma cannon…

I mean Shotgun.

As said, I really love Hotline Miami, and there's a ton of things it has that OTXO doesn't, mainly a linear campaign which is a personal preference of mine as somebody who just generally doesn't dump their hours into rogue-likes where the opening levels, despite their randomly generated layouts, end up playing the same once you've gotten to a certain experience level.

I just love though, seeing things been iterated, which despite the thousands and thousands of video-games that existed, for certain genres and playstyles, doesn't happen as much as you'd think.

Whether it's Arcade racing games, non-cover-based third-person shooters, or Gamemaker bloodfests, there's a bunch of games that've been left in the dust, so it's always nice to see someone dust them off, and show what was always possible with them.