Playing Hotline Miami again for the first time, if that makes sense. I played it and sweated myself to death with anxiety when it first came out. I had undiagnosed anxiety and depression and didn’t know i was NB, and I think this game’s hostility really hit me the wrong way. I loved playing the game but hate-hate-hated the ending.
Now that I’m older and properly diagnosed and out, I’ve got far less stock in my self-image and therefore the idea of the game criticizing me for playing it is a little less sharp and makes me less defensive. But I also don’t think this game is as perfectly designed as I did when I originally played it! It’s interesting.
In any case, I think that Hotline Miami is deconstructing game narratives in an interesting way. It’s very dreamlike. Games are already sort of dreamlike, of course, and I think that taking this dreaminess and leaning into it is a smart move. It’s also very opaque about everything other than the second-to-second play. Like, the grading of your performance, how your score is calculated, what the narrative is trying to say, the ending…none of it makes any sense, or if it makes sense it’s much harder to pull apart than I’m willing to care about. It all adds to this sense of “I can move around and do stuff, but nothing connects together in a meaningful way,” much like a dream.
One of cactus’ previous games (and yes I am vaguely aware that cactus sucks or something, but i think this is worth talking about) is Psychosomnium, a game where the protagonist dies very unexpectedly near the beginning of the game, and the character on the screen takes over as protagonist, and this happens like 5 times throughout the game.
I think that Hotline Miami is playing with this concept of the Wrong Protagonist - the first playable character, Jacket Guy, is acting on behalf of unknown agents and kills the narratively interesting character about halfway through. That is to say, Motorcycle Guy is the one driving the stereotypical Protagonist Narrative, but halfway through the Jacket Guy meets him and kills him without learning anything from him. There’s no narrative satisfaction, because you killed the narrative.
But if you do continue searching for narrative satisfaction, you find out that even the motorcycle guy learns nothing, it’s just a couple of janitors fucking with you. Of course, if you do even more digging, it turns into this nonsense about US/Russia relations. Equally unsatisfying. (At least, this is how I remember it. I have not finished the game again)
So yeah, I think the way it undermines the concept of narratives existing at all is very fascinating. I also think some of the level design stinks, and it’s not nearly as precise to control as I remember it.
Looking forward to finishing it again, eventually.