The question of 'what is a game?' is one that gets put through the wringer more and more, as titles that could maybe be better classed 'interactive narratives' like The Walking Dead or Gone Home start to receive some much needed praise. On the flip-side to all the potentially high-brow 'But what is it really saying?' conversations, is a title like Hotline Miami; the Drive-influenced 80's music-fuelled explosion of brutality and shotgun-kick firepower everyone needs in their collection. It may look primitive as hell - and graphically it is - but it's in the way it controls, the way it liberally celebrates just how well you can string together bludgeoning someone to death with a baseball bat before taking a machine gun the next room of goons and ending it with a few leg-slicing machete swipes that really gives it one hell of an identity. There are plenty titles that are more graphically accomplished in terms of aping real world scenery or film-based shooting techniques, but for pure visceral pleasure that has enough style to put a very wide grin on your face, Hotline succeeds in leaps and bounds.
