Ryan Godling: Hotline Miami Comes To Steam

Hotline Miami will eat your children, and then you will ask to marry it. I have a new preview build on my PC, but I'm almost too intimidated by its brutal wonder to play it. While I attempt to gather courage, you could play it yourself if you're attending GamesCom. Or, if you can wait a little longer, you'll be able to buy it via Steam. That's today's announcement for Dennaton's neon-hued odyssey of top-down sadism, though sadly it is not accompanied by a release date. You'll have to make do with watching the new trailer below, featuring one of the best bits of the game's soundtrack, and wishing Hotline Miami would somehow materialise on your hard drive.

Someone asked in a comments while back why RPS would enthuse over this when we're so prone to being sneery about manshoots. Well, first of all, we're only sneery about the manshoots that are broadly just repetitions of manshoots previous.

Secondly, HLM's greatest trick - outside of its excellent style - is that each and every move and action must be planned in advance. In something like COD, you purely react to enemies as and when they appear in front of you. In HLM, you need to decide exactly what it is you're going to do, where you're going to aim and where you're going to move to after each flash of conflict- all in advance of taking even your first step. It's psychedelic chess in a blood-splattered sports jacket, not a pop-up shooting gallery.

More soon, once I've allowed this new build to dominate my being.