Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number · 2:48am May 10th, 2015
I really wanted to like this game.
Some of you may know that I really love the Hotline Miami series. Hell, part of my name is an homage to it. I love it. I love the spot-on gameplay. I love the adrenalin-inducing music. I love the Dark Souls-esque sense of accomplishment when you get past that area that you were trying really hard to get past.
The first Hotline Miami had all of these things, and Hotline Miami 2 only had one.
I just beat the game, and so I figured I'd pop in for a little bit and talk about it.
So, let's get the good stuff about Wrong Number out there, because I don't hate Hotline Miami 2. I think it's a major downgrade from the original, which I'll talk about later, but it wasn't all bad.
The one great thing that Hotline Miami 2 carried over from its predecessor was the music. I actually think that the music in Wrong Number was a step up. It features tracks from some really amazing returning artists like Perturbator, M|O|O|N, and Scattle. It also features tracks from newcomers to the games, like Carpenter Brut, Magic Sword, and EL TIGR3. The music is really, really good, and it usually fits the level (the one exception, I think, is the level "No Mercy". I thought the track was too calm).
Another thing that Wrong Number did really well was the characters, especially the addition of Richard (the rooster mask) as an actual character. He appears throughout the game as an ethereal figure, warning characters of their futures. He's essentially the Grim Reaper who has come to collect, and his dialogue with the characters was a joy to experience. Every time he came onto the scene, a chill went down my spine and I loved it. The Fans are somewhat lackluster, but the best non-Richard character is, far and away, Detective Manny Pardo who (spoiler alert) is the 'Miami Mutilator' serial killer, who he is actually trying to track down throughout the game. He does it in an attempt to get media attention, as can be seen by his occasional habit of seeing cameras and boom mics appear, and telling Tony that the Fans "just wanted [their] fifteen minutes of fame!" just before killing Tony. Hotline Miami also expands on Richter, the guy who killed Hooker and tried to kill Jacket in the original game. His encounter with Richard is my favorite scene in the whole game.
Aside from those upsides, though, Hotline Miami 2 has some major downsides.
The first and most obvious is the way that the game forces you into playing certain playstyles. In the original Hotline Miami, you had choices for a lot of masks, and you could pick the one you wanted to fit your preferred playstyle. If you liked guns, pick a character like Aubrey (more guns spawn) or George (guns are more accurate). If you liked melee styles, pick masks like Charlie (more melee weapons spawn) or Dennis (spawn with a knife). The best part about it was that the masks didn't have any actual downsides, so if a level wasn't suited to your mask, you weren't penalized.
Hotline Miami 2 forgoes this and instead makes you play as characters that are designed for a very specific playstyle. The absolute worst offender is the missions where you play as the Soldier, a lieutenant in the Russo-American War taking place in Hawaii. These missions are really bad. Before you start, you pick a gun and you leave. You cannot swap this gun out at all, and if you run out of ammo, the only way to get more is to find an open supply crate on the map that only opens when you run out of ammo. Your only other weapon is a knife. The point of these missions is obviously to conserve your ammo until you need it to kill, say, enemies that require guns to kill (you'll be encountering a lot of those enemies, by the way). The Soldier missions felt needlessly frustrating. I didn't feel like some psycho with nothing but what I took from my enemies; I felt like some random soldier just waddling around hoping not to get shot. Missions like these severely limited your playstyle options, which essentially stabbed a huge part of the fun of Hotline Miami and left it to die.
Soldier missions like that are only the worst offenders. There are some other bad ones, too; one of the Fans, Tony, has lethal punches, but is balanced by the fact that he cannot pick up weapons at all. This basically makes you a sitting duck at long ranges, and the only way I could really get around it was to pop around a corner and wait for people to come at me (this strategy is actually required to beat a level in the game that forces you to play as each of the Fans in a set order). The least offensive Fan is Corey, whose special ability is that she can dodge-roll. The problem with dodge rolling, though, is that it's bound to the same key as executing a downed enemy, so good luck trying to bust into a room, knock someone over, and then dodge roll. Chances are you'll end up trying to execute him and get beaten to death by some guy with a pipe. I haven't found many good uses for it; it's pretty situational. It's supposed to be used to dodge gunfire while rolling across large doorways, I think, but it's not necessary, so I forgot to use it.
Another character, the Writer, forces you to use melee weapons if you want to get a high score. By default, the Writer unloads a gun as soon as he picks it up, which gives you 1000 points and adds to a combo. If the player kills two enemies by executing them more than usual (when you down an enemy, the Writer can knock them out [which is basically a kill] by punching them twice, but the player can keep going if they wish), the Writer enters a rage mode and can use guns and bladed weapons. Problem being is that killing with guns gives you less points; this was something taken from the first Hotline Miami, but it didn't bother me too much in the prequel, as the maps didn't usually require guns 24/7. In Wrong Number, though, guns are sometimes your only option (which I will talk about later).
Wrong Number's levels are the most fun when playing characters like the Detective, the Henchman, or Richter, and that is precisely because these characters are the most similar to the original game. They have no special abilities whatsoever (the only exception is the Henchman, who starts with a silenced pistol on his level; but it can be discarded if the player doesn't want to use it, essentially making him a normal character). They don't feel limited by the mask they're wearing or the level they're on; they are the psychos who I like to play as. They're the ones who really get the adrenalin pumping, since you can plan your moves based on your enemies rather than your character's limitations.
However, Wrong Number squanders even these moments of fantastic gameplay with terrible level design. Wrong Number features a lot - and I mean a LOT - of very long, wide-open corridors. This is a problem since Wrong Number also loves to give practically every enemy on the map a gun, especially in Soldier levels. The worst part is that the enemies can see you down at the ends of these corridors, but you can't see them (even if you use your look around to the very maximum). It became very hard to plan my moves when faced with these huge corridors, because I couldn't tell where my enemies were. When I finally made it past like sections like this, I didn't feel like someone who just outsmarted dozens of enemies; I felt like someone who just got really lucky with her spawns.
Another problem with Wrong Number is the glitches, especially enemy detection, and especially with dogs. Enemies detecting you is incredibly inconsistent, and it makes it very hard to plan all your moves when you don't know if an enemy is going to see you when you walk right into their face or not. I especially encountered this problem with dogs; I would constantly be able to walk right over them, only for them to then notice me through a wall. There was even an instance where a dog phased through a wall and killed me. There's also the inconsistencies with enemies like Thugs, who require guns to kill, and how many shots they actually take. Sometimes they'd go down with a pistol shot, and other times it'd take an entire machine gun clip to take one down. These inconsistencies made it very hard to do the one thing that Hotline Miami practically requires you to do: plan.
So, to sum it up: while Wrong Number has a stellar soundtrack and interesting characters, the simple facts are that the forced gameplay mechanics, the poorly-designed maps, and the sheer glitchiness of the game make it nigh-impossible for you to plan your movements and execute your strategy, which was the best part of the first Hotline Miami. You don't feel like a strategic genius after beating a level; you feel like someone who just got lucky with enemy spawns.
Anyways, that's just my two cents. Leave your thoughts below, and I will see you all later.
Huh. I was right after all. Go figure.
Looks like I am marking this one as "get when it is on Humble Bundle with the soundtrack".