Vortex Sound Research

hotline miami is a good game, the soundtrack is even better, how would I go about making synths that sound grimy, violent, and overall badass as stuff like roller mobster, paris, overdrive, le perv, escape from midwich valley, and pursuit. I think distortion and focusing on more bassy synths is a direction i need to follow. Free/open source stuff is definitely more my vibe, I'm willing to put in the effort to understand unintuitive machines. I have dexed and i know its an FM synth, is a specific type what I need to go for?