Yes, if you don't finish them off, when they get back up they'll race to the nearest weapon in sight, pick it up, and become a threat again.

GoG has hosted Postal 1 & 2 for a long time now. Two of the most senselessly violent games in existence. HM is too silly to be promoting violence in my opinion. Your average "realistic" war-based FPS does more to glorify violence than these games.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun published an interesting review of HLM this week: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/23/hotline-miami-review/

It calls the game a "This is a murder simulator, and it is not pretending not to be", while advocating on behalf of the game itself. Check it out.

A murder simulator with an interesting story and characters and a great soundtrack to boot. One of the best games of 2012.

Here's another interesting article on the subject of violence in HM: http://bitmob.com/articles/hotline-miami-glorifying-violence-i-think-not

Hotline Miami is one of the best indie games I've played all year. I think it's really good that it's on GOG.

I'd venture to say it's one of the best games I played all year period.

I thought it was obvious I was using hyperbole to make a point, but perhaps not.

Hyperbole isn't the best style to use when trying to make points on subjects like these.

(that was an understatement, by the way :) )

While the game does make use of EXTREME brutal violence, it is not glorifying it by any means. When you are in the mission, you are pumped and not dwelling on each kill, since you are focusing on THE NEXT one and then the next one and so on and so forth. Then, when you are done with the level, you are not booted back to the apartment, no, the music stops being the pumped up fast paced track, and instead becomes a strange ambient track. Almost like going out of a trance, you then have to go back and see the fruits of your labor.

That, combined with the camera sway, and the cycling colors makes it so that the game becomes rather nauseating. Your reaction can go from "hell yeah aced this" to "holy shit this was gruesome". Hell, even in the first level of the game, you are supposed to think that the actions of your character are nauseating, or at least the character reacts that way.

It is not glorifying violence, it is portraying HORRIFYING violence. Same as the movie Drive, the violence in the game is done in such a way as to be rather sickening.

As for the mechanic of having to kill downed enemies, that is a rather amazing gameplay mechanic. You can disable enemies to go for lower risk ones, or to make openings so you can continue your combo, but you have to juggle risk/reward on the fly.

It is a vile, nasty game, but I never feel it approves or condemns your behaviour. It frequently asks you why you're doing this and, as a commentary on gaming behaviour, it's very clever.

You can enjoy it on a pure arcade level, I suppose, but there's strong cognitive dissonance between what the game is and how it plays. There's something not right with the way you're behaving and it exaggerates it.

really enjoyed it as an experience.