ItвЂ™s a cool restriction that forces you to approach those levels differently. You can refill your ammo at boxes on every screen, but you canвЂ™t grab new weapons off of the people you take out. One of the most interesting ones has you choosing between a shotgun and an assault rifle at the beginning of the mission and then limiting you to that weapon and your back-up knife only. In some levels, you arenвЂ™t even playing as these masked assholes, and itВ introduces special conditions. You have to keep both of them alive, so this setup is for players who didnвЂ™t think their guy presented a large enough target for all the men with guns looking to make them past tense. The most interesting playable character is actually two guys one has a chain saw, the other has a gun, and you control them simultaneously. One can dodge, another can kill enemies with thrown objects (instead of just stunning them), the third delivers lethal punches but canвЂ™t pick up weapons, and so on. Instead of controlling one mass-murderer with a bunch of masks, you get several вЂњfansвЂќ of the first gameвЂ™s main character, and each has his own abilities. The originalвЂ™s core gameplay remains В Wrong Number adds some interesting variations and new characters to keep you thinking. New level types and characters add tons of variety It was a lesson in how it feels to be a sociopath or what one must do to live and work among them.ДЄnd that kind of creeped me out, so the good news is that I am not, in fact, a sociopath. The repetition further removed me, although I was fully invested, and I realized that this is how the world feels to its collection of amoral and vicious characters.

And while you will react with some combination of revulsion or morbid fascination, youвЂ™re never quite a part of your own actions.ДЄnd as I plowed through my trials, learning some lessons on one attempt, forgetting them the next (but generally moving toward that one go that would leave me the last one standing), I found myself falling into each levelвЂ™s rhythm: move, lock, shoot, feint, hide, ambush, shoot, lock, shoot, move, door, punch, lock, shoot, shoot. You watch them unfold from above, every cloud of bloody mist and guard-dog carcass rendered in tiny squares, your victimsвЂ™ faces indistinguishable from one another.

ItвЂ™s horrible, but the top-down perspective and quaint graphics remove you from these events. You will use powerful shotguns to blast enemiesвЂ™ torsos apart and leave them sleeping eternally under a comforter made of their own intestines. You will jump on defenseless enemies and slit their throats.

You will blow peopleвЂ™s heads off in this game. Hotline Miami 2В takes place in the late вЂ™80s/early вЂ™90s, and it has graphics to match. ItвЂ™s hard to describe a game as brutally violent and occasionally terrible (thematically) as Hotline Miami 2 as вЂњcharming,вЂќ but the innocence of the visuals provides an interesting contrast to how many of those pixels end up being red. The retro aesthetic charms while it pummels you Image Credit: Evan Killham/GamesBeat What youвЂ™ll like

Hotline miami 1 vs 2