(Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/18/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
Developer: Dennaton
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Genre(s): Shoot 'em Up, Multidirectional Shooter
Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4, PS Vita
Release Date: March 10, 2015
Let’s quickly recap Hotline Miami’s gameplay loop that set the indie sphere ablaze. The player is dropped into an enclosed area, mainly via a swanky vehicle that Don Johnson would likely be driving in Miami Vice, and is tasked to kill every living, breathing creature within its walls with a tactful array of melee weapons and firearms. The core stipulation at play regarding this mission is that the player cannot sustain any semblance of harm. Receiving any kind of damage will stop the player in their tracks, and they will be forced to restart the level from its entrance, or at least from the last floor they’ve cleared. The core concept of Hotline Miami’s gameplay is as solid as quartzite, and its relative simplicity lends well to player enjoyment and emulation from other indie developers. Still, no sequel should simply be content to coast entirely on its predecessor, regardless of its steadfast refinement. The obligatory quality-of-life improvements that Hotline Miami 2 adds to the first game’s fine formula are minimal, but are nonetheless appreciated. Firstly, whenever the player is brandishing a gun, an icon in the bottom left corner now indicates the type of ammunition they’re currently using. It may already seem obvious to the player which type of gun they are using, but in an environment where lightning-fast reactions are key to survival, the player cannot waste even a second wondering what their current ammunition consists of through guesswork. In instances where the player stalls ever-so-slightly in these tense situations, the blowback they are likely to receive from an enemy is not always guaranteed to be fatal. If the player is nicked by a pistol bullet in Hotline Miami 2, there seems to be a chance that they’ll be able to continue their murderous rampage relatively unscathed. They’ll spurt a pint of blood onto the floor, but not enough to render them unconscious, apparently. One might play through the game to its entirety and never even notice these alterations, but it’s nice to know that the developers put even a modicum of consideration into improving their product, as minuscule as it might have been.
Given the minor changes made to Hotline Miami’s formula in this sequel, one might assume that it's a modest rehash of its predecessor that could’ve arguably been better suited as glorified DLC. In regard to every other aspect of Hotline Miami 2, the developers have stretched the parameters of the series to its breaking point. In a literal sense of this statement, the levels in Hotline Miami 2 are far more spacious than those of the first game. The game is mostly set in the foreground of Florida’s southernmost major metropolitan area, but the enemies have evidently picked less dingy, back-alley architectures to establish a stronghold. I’m no architect, but I can discern an expansion in cubic diameter compared to the relatively confined spaces that comprised the previous game’s levels. Some levels in Hotline Miami 2 even divert away from the Sunshine State all the way to the middle of the Pacific in Hawaii. I’ll divulge the context behind this chronic shift in setting soon, but for now, I’d like to use these new, sprawling types of environments to illustrate the fundamental issue in expanding the space of a Hotline Miami level.
Using the Hawaii levels as an example, the lack of defined walls in these outdoor settings greatly increases the rate of vulnerability, positions that are especially worrisome in a game that harshly penalizes the player for any amount of damage they receive. Lest we forget that the enemies in Hotline Miami are hopped up on speed, which gives their fire rate deadeye precision. Even in the enclosed areas set in buildings, the settings are so expansive that they’ll still have to acclimate to dealing with a bevy of blind spots around every corner. I was dusted by the spray of a shotgun blast from an enemy that I couldn’t conceivably catch from my viewpoint too many times to count, and it pissed me off royally. One could argue that all the player needs to do is learn the layout of every enemy’s trajectory and snipe them swiftly with this information, but enemy placement seems to be an inconsistent variable. Not to mention, every inch of each level is crawling with enemies like spiderlings hatched from an egg, so every angle of the level is a possible point of being executed in a flash. On top of obscuring a vital amount of the player’s view needed to detect enemy movement, Hotline Miami 2 adds plenty of level gimmicks that muddle their line of sight to a greater extent in the name of diversifying the series' formula. By far, the level “Seizure” suffers the most from this initiative. The dimly lit aura of a nightclub may be appropriate for the decadent sleaze Hotline Miami exudes, but this type of environment is anything but practical as a level. Maybe I would’ve eaten more carrots over the course of my life if I knew I’d be struggling immensely trying to acclimate to Hotline Miami 2’s misdirection. Trial and error was a relevant gameplay factor in the first game, but the guesswork involved with the sequel’s levels makes the majority of them unnecessarily demanding.
The developers also seem to subscribe to my statement that Hotline Miami is a game that should ideally generate copycats because that’s the conceit that drives the sequel’s narrative. Jacket has become an urban legend since his solo adventure down the rabbit hole of a Miami mafia conspiracy, and his actions have resonated strongly with several of the city’s citizens. A director has been tasked to dramatize the events of the first game through his film titled “Midnight Animal,” using a slovenly man in a pig mask to play Jacket. Putting a cherry on top of the ultraviolence in this film is a good ol’ fashioned rape scene, the most scandalous talking point on the sequel’s graphic content and something I’m almost certain Jacket did not commit. Whether or not the heinousness here is fabricated for shock value on the director’s part, its inclusion is intended to highlight how the severity of these actions is lifted once it’s revealed to be an artistic display in the realm of fiction. However, the veil of celluloid fantasy is blurred when Jacket’s actor, Martin Brown, starts expressing serious intent for real violence, which results in getting him gunned down on set by the film’s lead actress as an act of self-defense. Jacket’s impact doesn’t stop there, as the sequel also dedicates a considerable chunk of screen time to four friends who espouse Jacket’s radical methods. When they all attempt to execute a mission of political upheaval as Jacket did, let’s just say that their results are unfavorable compared to their inspiration. Manny Pardo brandishes the respectable badge of the Miami police force, but he’s eventually revealed to be a notorious serial killer who stalks the city streets. We now get to experience the downfall of the super jingoistic Jake, who was briefly mentioned in the first game. We also see the trials and tribulations of the red long-haired man, who goes by many aliases, as he storms the Pacific front of Hawaii earlier in the 1980s. Between all of the fresh-faced psychotics and fleshing out the stories of supporting characters, there’s an investigative journalist named Evan Wright attempting to make sense of Jacket’s criminal past and the mimicked occurrences of late. Me too, dude.
Hopping to and fro from protagonist to protagonist may diminish any impact of their story arcs, but each character essentially provides the consistent standard of Hotline Miami’s gameplay. Some exceptions where the player is given the same choice of specializing in a quirk that’s granted by a mask depend on the characters, such as the distinctive attributes of the four “fans.” However, the game still tends to forgo the freedom of choice in many instances. Namely, when the player is forced to alternate between the four friends in their climactic level of “Death Wish,” an epic endurance test of a level divided into four sections, where each participant gets their time to shine. Each portion of this level is daunting in its own right, and imagine how excruciating some of the sections are when the player sticks to the specialties of one mask as they would in the first game. This level and “Seizure” are on my Hotline Miami shitlist for imposing the steepest stipulations across all Hotline Miami chapters.
Before anyone attempts to wrap their heads around this jumbled mess of a narrative and streamline it to a point of cohesion, I advise approaching the “story” of Hotline Miami 2 from a different perspective. Linearity and conciseness are evidently not relevant factors to Hotline Miami 2, given how the game teleports from character to character without letting their individual arc breathe for a second. My summation is that Hotline Miami 2’s narrative is not intended as a typical story, but as an essay with each character’s arc as an argumentative body paragraph with a thesis that connects them all. The thesis in question relates to the subject of violence, specifically, violence in the media, and how it can leave a lasting impression on the audience that consumes it. The four “fans” who emulate Jacket’s actions right down to storming the base of the Russian mafia are a given, but I don’t think the developers are suggesting that Miami, or the whole world, was a halcyon utopia before Jacket corrupted it by blowing the brains out of an incalculable number of Russians. “Beard” was putting lethal holes into Russians way out in the Pacific four whole years before the thought of doing so ever crossed Jacket’s mind, and Jake was a contemporary of Jacket’s whose anti-communist fervor ignited a bloodbath whose onus fell completely on him and him alone. The rogue cop, Manny Pardo, can’t resist abusing his badge and creating carnage, and Martin Brown’s lack of capacity to understand the difference between fictional violence and the real thing is disturbing. With these characters, Hotline Miami 2 seems to suggest that humans crave violence and hold a disposition to enact terrible instances of it on the slightest whim. It’s the most primal unit of our ID that we cannot suppress, no matter how base and undignifying it may be. However, some may argue the productivity of that violence depending on the character, for one could justify the intent of someone like Jacket or Beard, whereas there is no excuse for someone like Manny or Martin. Still, at the end of the day, violence is a disgusting mistress no matter its impetus. Solving the crisis of having several unhinged reprobates by disposing of them with a nuclear blast may be a bit dramatic for my tastes, but I suppose it complements the apocalyptic undertones woven in the fabric of Hotline Miami.
As par for the course regarding any sequel, Hotline Miami 2 is bigger than its predecessors, but unfortunately, in all of the wrong ways (no pun intended). The sequel proves that it’s difficult to augment the game’s tried and true formula significantly and produce a product of higher quality as a result, so the developers compensated for a dearth of mechanical inspiration by expanding some of the facets that should’ve been left alone. Widening the parameters of each level and adding arbitrary conditions does not result in a more engaging experience, nor does broadening the story's scope to incomprehensible heights equate to genius narrative building. All it amounts to is frustration, and not the organic kind that marked the first game’s success. Still, despite Dennaton’s efforts to bloat the series like Violet Beauregarde, the fact that they couldn't adulterate Hotline Miami’s foundation too drastically means that the game still retains the addictive essence of the first game, just with a few additional pounds attached. Besides, pretension in a medium generally perceived as a pedestrian time-waster inherently elevates its artistic potential, even if it's unsavory. As long as there is still a game to be played, all instances of auteurism are acceptable, and Hotline Miami 2 skates on this line by the skin of its teeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment