Hotline Miami 1 and 2 Analysis

 

To Make A Sequel-An Analysis of Hotline Miami 1 and 2

This week we are gonna do things a little differently. In replacement of the typical weekly review I wanted to take some time and really analyze what I believe to be an interesting case study on what can make or break a sequel in the indie sphere.

Where it Began

To me Hotline Miami was an incredible peak for the indie community and a game so influential it catapulted Devolver Digital into the spotlight it has today not only as a developer, but a highly touted publisher as well. Other than simply sales, HM1 is a fantastic triumph of game design and has outstanding mechanics.

So where was it so strong mechanically? I believe it boils down to the one shot one kill mechanics (you kill all enemies in 1 hit yet you also die in 1 hit as well) as well as a strong sense of player freedom on how to tackle its levels. Effectively, there are two main ways of traversing every stage in HM1-to either sneak around and kill each enemy before they notice you, or to run headfirst into conflict and rack up insane combos in a flash of bullets, blood, and gore. Because of this dichotomy, every level in the game feels completely beatable and never gets to the point of frustration. 

Even more important than fairness, HM1 is what I would consider a game that does not overstay its welcome. The ~25 level campaign ends at the perfect time, and allows for explicit divulgence into its mechanics without monotony. There was never a point in HM1 where I was left thinking “ok I’ve seen this gimmick way too many times can we move on already.”



Hotline Miami 1 also was one of the first games to have a truly redefined soundtrack, instead choosing to contract independent artists to make what is by many considered to be a perfect ost. If you get anything out of this piece, make it to go and listen to the soundtracks between these two games, they’re fantastic.

So what happened in the sequel?

Hotline Miami 2 should have been a smash hit, but, as a simple search on Metacritic will show you, things went south. So why exactly is that?

A part of this blame comes down to Devolver Digital’s decision to create a completely new game engine for the second game instead of building upon the first one. While this could have been fine, albeit a lot of work for little to no reason, it turned into a tire fire as the game is so much more buggy than the first, making some areas of the game far too inconsistent to be fair. 

Another reason for the decline, and I feel this is the most important part, is the change of direction Devolver Digital had for the sequel. Areas are much more open, and give the player far less room to plan and hide, pushing the player completely away from the freedom of the first. This change in level design, as well as the more aggressive and accurate enemies, removes the stealthy options you could take in the first game and cranks the difficulty up to insane. I could not even begin to count the amount of times I was sniped from across the map by an enemy I had zero chance of recognizing first. HM2 will force you to memorize levels to even beat them, not content with allowing you to make it through on instinct. 

So, overall, the 1)more open level design, 2)much more difficult enemies, and 3)much buggier engine transform what was once a hard but fair series into a game that I only beat out of spite to say I completed it. Some levels can take upwards of 45 minutes to finish and when you do finally conquer them, it feels like a hollow victory. Not to mention that the second game is far larger in scope, somewhere around 2 times as long as the first, and it surely overstays its welcome.

A much longer campaign only exacerbated the issues of Hotline Miami 2


A point to note is that the game is not explicitly horrible, but it hurts that the high points of the game-the much more solid narrative and robust level creator-are overshadowed by the various problems previously mentioned. A reminder that anyone can create a bad game, but to make something with lost potential is a real shame. 

Conclusion

Hotline Miami 2 is an Icarus-like tale of when aspirations can become too bloated and cause a game to crash and burn. The game was built upon a fantastic premise, yet due to some poor decisions in game design it comes off as blatantly less enjoyable than the first. May developers in the future return to this series to be forewarned of what can go wrong in a sequel. 

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