Please Try Again – Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Preview

All Hotline Miami 2 really needs to do is deliver more of the same. All that people really want is another game set in that world with the same style of gameplay, wrapped up in a new story.

So it’s fitting that Hotline Miami 2 is shaping up to be the very definition of a sequel. If you’ve played and enjoyed the first, this is exactly what you will want to see. However, it does bring with it some subtle and considered changes.

“So we are actually doing this?” asks one of The Fans, during the opening cutscene, as a group of Jacket wannabes decide to don masks of their own and indulge in their own tale of vigilante justice. It looks like we are.

Hopping out of the luridly coloured van, the first level provides that feeling of instant familiarity. Playing on the Vita’s screen and with the same tightly defined controls is a joy, with the left stick for movement, right for aiming and shoulder buttons for picking up/throwing weapons and shooting, and I’m quickly falling back into the old routines.

There were just two masks available for this demo (which I believe has been doing the rounds for quite a while)  with Corey, the Zebra, being your typical all-rounder. As I take a few attempts to clear the floor, he gives me a chance to try out a couple of the new weapons, added in to spice things up a little. Admittedly, there didn’t seem to be anything too groundbreaking, with the most memorable being a chain which I could use to slash at enemies for melee kills.

It’s when playing as Tony the Tiger, a returning mask from the original, that some more important tweaks start to come into focus. It’s not ground-breaking, but as one of the more powerful masks in the first game, Tony has been changed a little, so that you can no longer pick up weapons.

Considering that he still has single punch kills, that’s not such a big deal, but it means that he’ll now be less suited to certain situations. Rushing headlong into the fray was never a solution in the original, but with just his fists to rely on, it turns Tony into a slightly stealthier mask, so you need to time you assaults better and indulge in more trial and error to learn the levels.

The presentation is just as stylised as ever, with the gentle rolling of the levels as you play, presumably to induce sea sickness, alongside the the 80s Miami Vice aesthetic and the VHS-like visual noise. It’s still so very distinct and individual.

As are the cutscenes. The crudely drawn faces go through strange or gruesome transformations in bizarre dream sequences or vigilante murders. With the story of the original quite neatly wrapped up, the new plot and cast of characters have to find a way to extend that. Already within these first two levels, there are hints at The Fans uncovering some new drug-addled mystery, while the other cutscene plays host to a very trippy interview dream sequence surrounding the other side to the plot, the Pig Butcher film, in which Richard makes a reappearance.

As I said at the start, all that Hotline Miami 2 really needed to do was deliver more of what made the original such a hit. By all counts, it’s doing just that, with a tweaked version of the finely tuned gameplay and style which is sure to delight fans with another murderous rampage.