Hotline Miami 2 Review

I've now played through the entire story of Hotline Miami 2 since my previous post and this one will go more in depth about the game. Warning this article contains major spoilers to Hotline Miami 1 & 2

HM2 takes everything people liked about Hotline Miami like its psychedelic soundtrack and high octane game play that left you shaking with adrenaline after countless failures finally morph themselves into the perfect run of the level.

The Hotline Miami universe takes place in an alternate timeline where Russia fills the role as the great super power due to a large arsenal of nukes. The U.S. eventually goes to war with the Russia on the Russian controlled Hawaiian islands. Thanks to the help of an elite group of soldiers known as the "Wolf Squad" the U.S. drives Russian presence out of Hawaii. Later on April 3rd 1986 a catastrophic event happens destroying San Francisco (don't want to mention it as its a major spoiler) which causes the 50 blessing organization to form. Flash forward 3 more years and the events of Hotline Miami take place.

Aside from the fans the player are given control of other characters with their own stories and motives. Manny Pardo is a Miami police detective who doesn't follow the rules and abuses his badge, he plays fairly basically but starts his levels with access to a shotgun. There is also the mobster who works for the Russian mafia doing their dirty work even though he just wants out of it all. along with them you get to play as a member of Wolf squad during the Hawaiian islands conflict, Richter who's in the 50 blessings program, Jake another 50 blessings member (and the original owner of the Jake mask Jacket finds in the first game) Evan a freelance writer doing a story on the "masked vigilantes of Miami" and a friend of Manny Pardo and you even get to play as the leader of the Russian mob.

The game is split up into 6 acts plus an intro and outro level at the beginning/end of the game. Each act is about 4-6 levels and the game is in a anachronistic form which means in order to fully get the plot you'll have to piece the timeline together yourself using the time stamp at the beginning of each level to put them in chronological order. 

Hotline Miami 2 really lived up to expectations of the series fans and was definitely the perfect way to close off the series. For now there isn't much to do with the game after beating it except improving scores and achievement hunting but that will certainly change when they release the level editor (which was planned as a way for players to start creating their own stories and essentially their very own Hotline Miami game.)