Like some crazily gore-filled fever-dream that you can voluntarily inject straight into your cerebral cortex, Hotline Miami's unique mix of top-down dual-joystick shooter controls and ridiculously glorified blood n' guts is a recipe for quick thrills and an everlasting impression. Playing as a no-named character who you only ever control from above, it's a neon-drenched romp through 80's clubs and locales as mysterious phone calls are made to your dilapidated apartment, causing a spree of mass-murders around the city that are played out as one-man-vs-the-mob style scenarios. It quickly becomes apparent that there's far more to this story than just mindless killing, but the tightness of the controls, the overwhelming visual style and the exemplary custom-soundtrack that powers each night of mass-slaughter with blazing electronica-fuelled beats means Hotline will immediately carve out a suitable space to rest on your subconscious until you can play it again. With a general pace that calls just enough on the idea you're fairly proficient with how to handle a controller by this point, it remains a shining example of a perfectly-executed walk across the mainstream/indie-developer divide, ramping up the difficulty and instant-retries to junkie-in-need-of-a-fix levels, whilst being the perfect example of a phrase as old as gaming itself; "Just one more go."
