Hotline Miami 2: Review

What can you say about Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number? Well, I can guarantee it will be along the lines of ‘MOTHERFUCKER, GODAMMIT! YOU BASTARD WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?”

Well this road had no alternatives…

Hotline Miami 2 certainly had a high bar set for it, and were it released by itself I doubt there would be much criticism at all because no other game is as unique as Hotline Miami, but that of course, is the only benchmark we have for the sequel.

Like the original, it’s a top-down game featuring extremely retro-pixelated graphics, and much like the first it is enormously difficult. Thankfully, the game plays to all the strengths of the original while simply adding more variety and complexity, rather nicely justifying its existence as a brand-new game rather than simply DLC content.

Hotline Miami 2: Miamier harder? I kknow it doesn’t work but, well..

The original game had the players take control of an unnamed protagonist (nicknamed by fans as ‘Jacket’) who would receive various message on his answering machine. At this point Jacket would emerge at a location and don an animal mask of the players’ choosing, each of which gave the player some small stats bonus.

Well, he’s never gonna be an Abercrombie and Fitch model, but that Jacket looks straight out of Old Navy.

While Hotline Miami 2 continues this tradition of masks affecting skill sets, instead of the original’s one (technically two) protagonist(s), the game flips back and forth between 13 characters each of whom has their own story, most of which coalesce or intersect at some point

The first game’s story became gradually more convoluted as ‘Jacket‘s reality seemed to break down, to the point where the game ends with two completely incompatible narratives. While the first may have seemed like the fevered dream of an early David Lynch movie, the second seems more like his later works – jumping both geographically and chronologically between events before the first game in 1989 and after in 1991.

This is a nice premise, but because of the nature and deliberately grotesque appearance on the character faces, I found myself consulting the Hotline Miami Wiki to see if I was revisiting a character from the first game or if this was simply a new, similar character. So expect to be confused at times and perhaps just go along for the ride.

‘Motley crew’ might be an understatement where ‘face-transplant-gone-awry’ would work better.

One of Hotline Miami’s more famous claims-to-fame was its hyperbolic gore, which it executed (har.) perfectly by using the pixelated graphics to depict violence without providing the player a form of lurid exhibitionism, and the second game continues this. While it’s hard to argue with a straight face that seeing your character rip a man’s head off and leave his spinal cord dangling isn’t over-the-top, the graphics are so stylized and cartoonish it almost borders on silly.

No, really, this hyperbolic level of of violence (And I am aware it’s a bond parody)

Gameplay features some nice changes to boot, but how you feel about them will depend on your skill level. In the original, the gameplay almost entirely consisted of busting down doors and simply blowing away anyone and anything in your way, but the second game features characters who can’t use weapons, another who employs stealth and yet another who – shockingly – doesn’t actually kill anyone.

While it’s arguable this makes the structure slightly uneven, it sometimes gives you a nice break from a five-story building mission to play a game more reminiscent of Metal Gear (Yes, I very much do mean the NES game)

So Boss is on the other side but there’s a double agent… oh, and you’re not Solid Snake so this might get—- Wait… Snake? SNAAAAAAAAAKE?

And while I won’t dwell on it, suffice to say that just like the original, the soundtrack is terrific. It combines dozens of artists to create the perfect atmosphere. If you play the game , you’re gonna want to buy the OST. The only problem is that there are a few tracks that, while very appropriate for the level, can become insanely repetitive, because whilst a veteran might blast through a level in 5 minutes, a player new to it could be there for well over an hour.

It’s only serious problem in terms of gameplay are two-fold – the first is that some of the levels are quite expansive, which leads to some irritants like being shot from beyond camera range by an enemy you cannot possibly see, even using your ability to pan the camera.

The second is that the dual-characters of Ash and Alex (a brother/sister pair) are enormously difficult to use. While Alex wields a melee chainsaw, Ash uses a gun, but the melee character Alex is the character the player controls. So the gun becomes functionally useless since you can try to burst through a door using the sibling you control, hoping to get the drop by firing a few rounds, only to find that Ash is stuck behind the  doorway.

Pictured: Nothing, because the game mercifully omits a ‘Game Over’ screen. But if there was one, I’d say “You’ll see this a lot! HAHAHAHA!”

Finally, about the ‘pseudo’ rape sequence. It occurs within minutes of the game starting, and while it is technically part of a ‘film shoot’ within the game’s canon, the very fact that the reality of the aggressor breaks down in later levels doesn’t really mitigate it much. What does mitigate it somewhat is the fact that, again, the graphics make it very basic and it’s cut off quite promptly. Further still, the game’s creators created a compromise offering you the ability to simply not see the cutscene without any impact on the game since they felt “That’s not what [Hotline Miami 2] is about”

It’s nice to see game creators actually take seriously concerns from its fans and offer an alternative, since both games have always been about looking at the exploitative gore of movies of the 80s and 90s and our obsession with them, it’s never really been about exploring sexual violence.

So, in conclusion, if you liked the first? You’ll like this. But don’t imagine you won’t have to check a plot synopsis afterwards. And I would pack away anything you might break before you play because… well, let’s just say I used to own a fully intact Commander Shepard  action figure.