I might have just insulted myself with that title.

But really, I was not expecting the kind of story that Hotline Miami brings to the table. When I got into the game, my first thought was, “top down, violent beat-em up that has puzzle like qualities and is stylistically ripped from the 80s? Cool.” Actually, my real thought was probably just “wow, beating up these dudes is oddly validating,” but you get the point.

I didn’t think twice about much story being involved. I figured what I was being fed was just simple filler to explain why I was I was going from point A to point B, bashing heads in along the way. But the further you get in the game, the more things get a little bit surreal. And without giving away too much (though, come on, we all should have beaten it at this point), there’s actually this weird, meta commentary going on about violent video games as a whole. It’s definitely not bashing games and saying “you’re a bad person for playing this,” but it does make you think.

Do we just play violent video games with question? Why are we blindly murdering these people, just because we’re told to? What is the best way to decapitate a man with a pool cue?

And so, Hotline Miami blew my mind. Not in the way Bioshock: Infinite blew my mind, but in the fact that I was not expecting anything remotely like this from a small indie game. I’m interested to see where  Hotline Miami 2 takes things. You can check out the teaser for it below:

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