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It starts with an unskippable movie intro. This is the first sign that Hotline Miami 2 is certainly bigger and longer, but not always better and stronger. It's a step towards something more traditional - this is a big name game now. It also means a step away from the delirious, radical air of Hotline Miami's ferocious debut, which now seems minimalist in comparison. Thankfully, Hotline Miami 2 maintains the wild spirit that made Hotline Miami so magical, but the gameplay is shackled to the story in a way that constrains choice, making the sequel a series of jumbled, brilliant fragments rather than a glorious, shining whole.It may sound like a damning statement, or the indignant snub of a ludo-supremacist, but the story dominates Hotline Miami 2's flow in a detrimental manner. Don't get me wrong - the gameplay is consistently brilliant, and the extended cast expands Hotline Miami's horizons in fabulous ways. There's much to master, and plenty of shlock savagery to wade through. There are plenty of neat locales and plenty of moments of greatness. The problem is in how they're doled out.
Hotline Miami 2 uses a non-linear narrative to tell its stories. It runs like Pulp Fiction set in a straight-to-video VHS collection - and VHS seems to be a central love for Dennaton. Each level is represented by a tape, and a visible fondness for VHS tracking artifacts, interference, noise and static crops up regularly. It's also worth noting that the pause menu is a thing of skeuomorphic beauty, and may be my favourite pause menu of all time.
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