Hotline Miami

You already know what quote I would use.

The Hotline Miami series (I will refer to it just as "Hotline Miami"), is genuinely tough to get through at parts. I've always been more skeptical of more "wholesome" indie games (for example, Celeste), as I often do not relate to them that well. That isn't to discount them, there are parts where I did truly feel something.

Hotline Miami, however, spoke to me. Hang on, let me explain.

I played Hotline Miami during a very difficult time in my life, a phase which really only ended early this year. I am not an outwardly angry person. Instead, that outward anger is turned inwards, and for a long time, I became very angry on the inside. Mostly angry at myself. Hotline Miami is a game which exhudes this sort of deep, brutal anger which I had grown familiar with in my own headspace. The way Jacket's inner animals taunted him was very reminiscent of what I went through, and so the story told through the games helped me understand the anger I was feeling, where it was coming from, and where it could lead. My self hatred began to poison me; I began to hate everything, hate my life especially. As silly as it sounds, the story told in these two pixelated indie games about killing people changed me. It helped me overcome my hatred by showing me the end result. Hotline Miami helped me overcome my self hatred, and made me feel again. It is sad that a lot of people I think don't really understand the message of the games, and the second game commentates on this.

What was particularly entertaining about the second game wasn't the gameplay, though that was still great, it was how well the narrative has aged. When seeking discussions on certain media which serve as commentaries, especially on masculinity (think Fight Club, Blade Runner 2049, American Psycho,) You will quickly see a certain kind of misguided person. The "Literally me" type. This was commented on by Hotline Miami 2, as the first game experienced a similar kind of fanbase; people who thought that the main character, Jacket, was "literally them," entirely missing the point that Jacket hated what he did. In the second game, you partially play as a group called "The Fans," who seek to replicate the violence caused by Jacket in his wild murder sprees, with them going on copycat killings, wearing animal masks like Jacket did. The game showed where that led, with all of them getting killed with no fanfare. The second game, once again, depicted how I felt about people who idolized people like Jacket. I related to people like Jacket, and before I started transitioning, and even still, I related heavily to depictions of men destroying themselves through the masculine system, killing their souls. But relating to is entirely different from idolizing. I didn't WANT to be like Jacket, but I saw myself in him.

There was a character who I wanted to be in the second game, who was different than all the others you play as. In Hotline Miami 2, there is a reporter, and his levels are different from the others. In most stages, you kill without remorse, but, when you play as the reporter, you have the option to be non-lethal. As the reporter, you are given the only real choice in the game. It is only through the perspective of this pacifistic character, that you are given the only meaningful choice in the entire series. Unlike everyone else, he still has free will. He still has the will to choose who he can be.

The game doesn't have a happy ending. In the end, the people who manipulated the characters you played as won out, and started a nuclear conflict, which presumably wipes out humanity. The last scenes show everyone you played as die in nuclear fire. As I watched this, I just stared. It took me about an hour to snap out of it, it felt like my world had changed. It was from this that I realized that this destructive path I chose was no longer needed; by continuing such destruction upon myself, by still feeling such pain from these events in my past, I was set upon a path of destruction, just like everyone that died in the game. When one character talked with Richard, the rooster figure who appeared throughotu both games, I realized this was a conversation I needed to have with myself. I needed to understand that the pain was over, and unlike those in the series, it wasn't too late for me.

I found hope, and it was from this hope that I could begin to find myself, like how Madeline began to find herself in her own game. Don't worry, that will get its own page.

Oh, also, the music fucking slaps.