Hotline Miami OST

Hot blooded brutality slops over every note in the bubbling brilliance that is this soundtrack.

Dark, cramped and dirty. A distorted bassline drops like a corpse from the ceiling. Flies litter the air as the electric cries of a misused guitar rub the scene wrong. Wading through the twilight you find a door and push it open. Three men in poor-fitting animal masks sit silently. The room shivers in the tired green static of an unseen lamp; cockroaches roam the grease stained carpet. Looking up, the man in a horse skull mask rocks his head backwards and forwards. "And who do we have here?"

Welcome to Hotline Miami - a game so overpowering that you can almost taste the thick sweat of delirium... delirium and death. Developed by the indie studio Dennaton Games and thanks to the glorious collaborative effort of nine independent electronic musicians, Hotline Miami was and is nothing short of a triumph.

Released on October 23rd 2012 the game and its humble soundtrack leaped onto the scene like a pair of machete wielding madmen demanding mass attention and immediately garnering praise from a number of the industry's leading game reviewers (including IGN's 'Best PC Sound of 2012'). It stands today as one of the highest rated games of 2012, indie or otherwise. 

Palm trees, seasick pinks and blues and a whole lot of red: this will be your world for many hours to comes.

Set in late 1980's Miami, the sickly sweet neon pallet and drugged up visuals work hand in hand with the game's intoxicating soundtrack. From the moment the menu stumbles lethargically into view the player is introduced to the tone of the game: waves slosh in the distance as drums, with the lopsided grace of a drunkard, totter around lo-fi basslines and a soporific tambourine. A hazed and sleepy guitar refrain reverberates along an unseen coast as the near-spiritual echoes of a distant doped up vocalist ready the player for their dip into insanity. A wonderfully apt introduction to the mind of the 'protagonist'.

Once you've hit the start button it's time for you to truly enter into the fray of things. Here you'll be greeted by what I can only describe as one of the most effective moral lubricants since alcohol - with songs like Release coming at you thick and fast it's hard to resist slipping into the darkly caffeinated concentration of our one and only mass-murdering main character. Hell, I dived right in.

Warning: side effects may include hair-raising immersion, creepy dreams and a sudden unquenchable desire to download the soundtrack.

Ever seen the movie Fight Club? Well this game is built on similar foundations: not only does it revel violence, but it has a turn of phrase which somehow glamorizes it. In Hotline Miami you are nothing more or less than a no-name broken brawler living in a warped world, fearless in his trip. You are, to all concerned (and killed), a man masquerading as a beast, a primal drive embodied. Even when the masks come off, the soundtrack ensures you retain those alpha feelings - with songs like It's Safe Now and Daisuke it's simply impossible to exude anything but a bloodcurdling calmness.... an implied superiority. There's a reason why the shop clerk gives you free food everyday - I would too!

This simple 2D top-down shooter presented the world with the opportunity to revel in meaningless violence, moral nihilism and a savagely satisfying digital trip - an alarmingly successful combination. The soundtrack is the perfect audio accompaniment to frenetic violence of this caliber - violence which forces you to reject your own ethical perspectives and embrace the broken mind of an unnamed antagonist.

An amazing game, and a top notch electronic score.

Personal rating: 8/10