Developed by: Dennaton
Published by: Devolver Digital
Release Date: March 10, 2015
Available on: PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC
Hotline Miami is one of my most favorite games of all time, and I truly believe that it’s one of the greatest pieces of art that the interactive medium has ever produced throughout its entire existence. Its blend of balls to the wall crazy and addictive action and pretty deep metaphors about the nature of humanity itself surprisingly fit like peanut butter and jelly. If you can overcome the rather intense levels of violence, Hotline Miami is an experience that must not be skipped. Naturally, the game became a sleeper hit, spawning everything from cosplay to its own line of action figures (no, seriously), so a sequel was inevitable. Two and a half years later, after numerous delays, teases and even some idiotic controversy, Hotline Miami 2 is finally upon us! And how does it hold up?
It’s alright.
It’s not a bad game, it’s actually pretty good. It’s got its strong suits, but it’s also very flawed, and a good chunk of the design choices work against it rather than for it. But it’s nowhere as good as its near-perfect predecessor. It’s almost as if some time traveler went and switched the two games around, because problems that didn’t exist in Hotline Miami suddenly appear in Wrong Number with no explanation. It is mind-boggling, and playing the game I couldn’t help but ask “What were they thinking?” numerous times, because frankly, some of these design decisions just don’t make any sort of logical sense.
Let’s start with the plot. Hotline Miami is known for having a pretty hard to decipher plot, as the player can never be quite sure which sequences happened and which are just part of the main character’s twisted imagination. But for the most part, the entire game (minus a few bonus chapters at the end) tells one coherent narrative that can be followed with relative ease from start to finish. You can forget about that in Wrong Number, as even beginning to understand the basic events that are going on in the characters’ lives requires pen and paper. There isn’t a plot, per say, just a bunch of individual vignettes, with the viewpoint and place in the timeline shifting constantly. And while the stories do cross over sometimes, each character is living his or her own life independent of the others. Think of it as Heavy Rain with as many as 9 characters and taking place over the span of years. And while I have to admit that sometimes this method of storytelling is used to great effect and provides us with some really cool twists (I went “NO WAY!” at least three times while playing, which is three times more than usual), for the most part the game doesn’t have a “plot” or a “story” that you can consistently follow.
The fact that you no longer play as just one character strips away one of the coolest aspects of Hotline Miami – the masks. In the first game, you could freely select one of dozens of masks, each granting you with a special ability, like lethal punches, extra speed or some kind of special weapon, depending on your playstyle. You were free to tackle each stage in any way you want, no limits. That freedom is gone from Wrong Number, as now only certain stages allow customization, and a very limited one at that. If the chapter you’re playing just so happens to be following The Fans, each of them has a different mask and a different ability to go with it, the most interesting of which being Ash & Alex – a brother/sister duo armed with pistols and a chainsaw, respectively But if you’re left with someone without masks, like the Detective, you’re screwed and you need to make do with what you’ve got without relying on special abilities. The worst are the characters that are actually take away default abilities, like the Writer who can’t use any firearms or the Soldier who’s stuck with a single gun and can only pick up ammo. Again – you don’t get to choose which character you play as, the game chooses that for you depending on the scene you’re in. On a related note, how come everyone and their mother suddenly got the ability to clear an entire building from baddies? I can understand a soldier or someone with a military past (like Jacket and Biker from the first game), but as I mentioned earlier, one of the playable characters is a writer. Not a badass masked vigilante, but a WRITER! Can you imagine us at WeTheNerdy walking around killing dozens of people all by ourselves?
Actually, I can totally imagine Sean Mesler doing that. Never mind.
Story and characters aside, though, the gameplay itself has undergone quite the metamorphosis. And what’s interesting is that the mechanics actually haven’t changed, it’s still the same old Hotline Miami – you’re thrown into an area full of baddies with nothing but your fists and you need to clear it out through a combination of reflexes, quick thinking and using whatever you can find as a weapon. But while the original’s levels played more like drug-fueled rampages giving you a whole bunch of points for flying in a room full of baddies with nothing but a frying pan, doing the same in Wrong Number will only end up getting you killed. The difficulty has been increased significantly from the already quite hard first installment – there are glass windows baddies will shoot you through everywhere, inconveniently placed sentries, large guys that require a firearm to kill in areas where there are none, all that good stuff. One notable difference is that, no longer confined by Game Maker’s limitations, the areas have now become significantly larger… and that’s really not a good thing. Since enemies can be anywhere, it requires you to actually stop and assess your situation, picking out your opponents one by one and advancing very slowly. Overall – if you want to survive, you need to stop thinking that you’re playing Hotline Miami and start thinking of it as a 2D SWAT title, which kind of breaks the immersion a bit, especially since the loud techno music is still encouraging you to throw caution to the wind and just go guns-crazy, like in the first game. Worst of all – bigger areas allow bad guys to hide way out of your field of vision, allowing them to snipe you before you’ve even had a chance to spot them, thus leading to a whole lot of cheap deaths. And for some mind-boggling reason, a few levels (such as the docks) have been specifically designed to allow enemies to do this.
One thing that I can absolutely praise about Wrong Number is its downright phenomenal soundtrack, which… might very well be the greatest one I’ve ever heard in any game, period. Keep in mind, the first game had a truly brilliant techno/electronic soundtrack designed to get you all pumped for the action, and Wrong Number‘s tracks manage to blow that out of the water completely. The OST has about 50 tracks in it (which is still pretty impressive for an indie title), and pretty much every single one of them is amazingly good. Pertubator and MOON, who also provided tracks for the first game, are now joined by Jasper Byrne (of Lone Survivor fame), MegaDrive and Magna, and let me tell you, if you even remotely enjoy techno/electronic music, you’re going to fall in love with this soundtrack so much you’d want to make sweet love to it all night long. I’m not exaggerating, that’s how I felt.
Overall, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number falls short of living up to the expectations set by its amazing predecessor. Most of the changes it makes to the formula are either unnecessary or just feel like a step backwards. While the game is still a solid experience, it doesn’t quite reach up to the potential it had, and would have been a vastly superior product if certain design decisions hadn’t been made. And while the soundtrack is amazingly good and the various story vignettes intertwine in interesting ways, ultimately it’s hard to recommend Wrong Number to anyone but the most hardcore Hotline Miami fans.
You must be logged in to post a comment.