I played both Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, and they were both amazing games. They were way different from what I expected. Very dark, gritty, a little twiste…

I played both Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, and they were both amazing games. They were way different from what I expected. Very dark, gritty, a little twisted, and honestly pretty messed up in places, especially depending on what weapon you’re using. Some of those missions are absolutely infuriating. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. There were a few that I got hung up on for a while, and it took me a lot of time to get through them. But I love the mechanics, the gameplay, and the combat. I love how much the angles, distance, and timing matter. You can come around a corner thinking you have a shot lined up, miss, and suddenly the whole thing has gone to hell. That precision is a big part of what makes it so good. You have to pay attention to where you are, where the enemies are, and what you’re actually carrying. Looking at a room and getting through that room are two very different things. For me, this probably isn’t a series I’d want to sit down and beat straight through, both games back to back, without taking breaks. With breaks, though, it was an amazing experience. Being frustrated with a mission doesn’t mean I didn’t love the game. Sometimes it just means I needed to put it down for a little while. I’ve been going back through some older games I’ve beaten and putting together a few posts about the things I remember. I wasn’t posting on X when I originally played a lot of them, so to an extent, I’m treating this almost like a personal blog. Something comes to mind, I want to talk about it, and I get a little obsessive about covering the things that are sitting in my head. It’s been a little while since I played these, so I pulled the game back up and double-checked a few things. I wanted to put together a breakdown of the weapons and the different masks across both games, because there’s quite a bit more going on there than just picking the animal head you like. Those are the next things I’m going to cover. Both games are great, both can be frustrating as hell, and both are worth talking about.