In another level, an enemy wandered off the screen and wouldn’t come back. And that’s the only reason I’m pretty sure it wasn’t some kind of nostalgia Easter egg - this game would never go out of its way to make things easier on you, even if it was period-authentic. The slowdown usually worked out in my favor, because it gave me a little more time to react. But this also surely isn’t the most processor-taxing game I’ve ever played on it. I was playing on a late-2011 MacBook Pro, so it wasn’t the absolute latest in gaming hardware. Sometimes, my screen would contain more nostalgia and murder than it could handle, apparently, and Hotline Miami 2 would lag. Some unfortunate retro glitches challenge your nostalgia Or just drive around with either of them playing and feel super-awesome. And then listen to them and envy those who have committed brave and terrible deeds with that music playing in the background. The new soundtrack is just as amazing as the last oneįans of the original’s tunes will find even more thumping, synth-heavy tracks to murder to, and if you haven’t heard it, go check out that and the similarly great soundtrack to director Nicholas Winding Refn’s brilliant crime film, Drive. It’s a cool restriction that forces you to approach those levels differently. You can refill your ammo at boxes on every screen, but you can’t grab new weapons off of the people you take out. One of the most interesting ones has you choosing between a shotgun and an assault rifle at the beginning of the mission and then limiting you to that weapon and your back-up knife only. In some levels, you aren’t even playing as these masked assholes, and it introduces special conditions. You have to keep both of them alive, so this setup is for players who didn’t think their guy presented a large enough target for all the men with guns looking to make them past tense. The most interesting playable character is actually two guys one has a chain saw, the other has a gun, and you control them simultaneously.
![jake hotline miami jake hotline miami](https://64.media.tumblr.com/649c645cc9231a643e81e511dc052f0b/tumblr_ot0kb4cwFn1t0dwi1o2_400.png)
One can dodge, another can kill enemies with thrown objects (instead of just stunning them), the third delivers lethal punches but can’t pick up weapons, and so on. Instead of controlling one mass-murderer with a bunch of masks, you get several “fans” of the first game’s main character, and each has his own abilities. The original’s core gameplay remains Wrong Number adds some interesting variations and new characters to keep you thinking. New level types and characters add tons of variety
![jake hotline miami jake hotline miami](https://img.ifunny.co/images/9c36bd9a482fabbf2a22beb14987162a6efb1af60ed4b6da61760aa30ea7e3bd_1.jpg)
It was a lesson in how it feels to be a sociopath or what one must do to live and work among them.Īnd that kind of creeped me out, so the good news is that I am not, in fact, a sociopath. The repetition further removed me, although I was fully invested, and I realized that this is how the world feels to its collection of amoral and vicious characters. And while you will react with some combination of revulsion or morbid fascination, you’re never quite a part of your own actions.Īnd as I plowed through my trials, learning some lessons on one attempt, forgetting them the next (but generally moving toward that one go that would leave me the last one standing), I found myself falling into each level’s rhythm: move, lock, shoot, feint, hide, ambush, shoot, lock, shoot, move, door, punch, lock, shoot, shoot. You watch them unfold from above, every cloud of bloody mist and guard-dog carcass rendered in tiny squares, your victims’ faces indistinguishable from one another. It’s horrible, but the top-down perspective and quaint graphics remove you from these events. You will use powerful shotguns to blast enemies’ torsos apart and leave them sleeping eternally under a comforter made of their own intestines.
![jake hotline miami jake hotline miami](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/147/295/119.png)
You will jump on defenseless enemies and slit their throats. You will blow people’s heads off in this game. Hotline Miami 2 takes place in the late ’80s/early ’90s, and it has graphics to match. It’s hard to describe a game as brutally violent and occasionally terrible (thematically) as Hotline Miami 2 as “charming,” but the innocence of the visuals provides an interesting contrast to how many of those pixels end up being red. The retro aesthetic charms while it pummels you Image Credit: Evan Killham/GamesBeat What you’ll like