157 "A Gruesome Influence"
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January 11, 2013





After playing through the entire campaign three times in addition to playing random levels here and there, I can securely say that Hotline Miami is a ton of fun. Despite its pixelated art, it definitely is one of the more brutal games I've played recently--it doesn't take a lot of detail to see when you're painting rooms red with the blood of your victims. Some guy on the internet actually wrote an article about why the violence in Hotline Miami is a good thing. He makes some valid points, but I'm not sure I agree with the article as a whole. Either way, it's hard to not want to play a game with such a good soundtrack. The story took me a while to get figured out, but it's actually pretty good. Definitely the sort of thing you need to get through at least twice before everything makes sense, which works nicely for a game like this because it doesn't feel like a chore to any degree going through it a second time. Unless you're aiming at picking up those letters from all the levels; then some of them are kind of a pain.

Despite feeling like the Steam sales didn't offer as enticing deals as last year's, I still walked away from it with a fair number of new titles to play. My only regret is not grabbing Far Cry 3 when that was on sale. One of my roommates showed it to me and it looks pretty darn cool. Lucky for me, Steam loves having sales and I expect it won't be too long until it's at a discounted price again.