izigame.me

Hotline Miami 2 is misunderstood. I feel like a lot of people miss out on certain themes either from just not caring or being too ignorant to comment on them and will thus call stuff they don't like "convoluted" or "pretentious" or "thinking it's way smarter than it actually is." Insults like that always come across to me as projection, and here it's no different.
Hotline Miami 2 not only comments on certain concepts in its own world, but in a genius way offers a meta idea with each of these concepts. The fans are obviously representative of the people who loved Hotline Miami 1 and wanted more of the violence, action, power trips, and insanity in that game. The henchman represents the more human aspect of the enemies, and also tells the player that these pixel enemies are actual people in their own world. The question of how we process and look at violence in video games and other forms of media is everywhere here. And the developers actually take it a step further and shows you what constant escalation of violence leads to. For that, you'll have to play the game for yourself and either be alert to the subtle world building and underlying messages here.
Now onto the gameplay. If you liked Hotline Miami 1 this is essentially more of the same. Super addicting, super violent, and super fast paced. I've seen some people call these levels bad because they're difficult, but I strongly disagree. For starters, the more difficult levels they're referring to actually have a narrative reason for being so difficult. You try raiding a f*cking nuclear power plant with a squad of 4 soldiers, knowing that the military is expecting you to die and is only sending you because you're expendable. Or try getting revenge on a different mafia family that took advantage of the fact that you were so targeted by the main character in the first game. To me, the added difficulty is appreciated and makes a lot of sense. Plus, let's be real it's not like any of this is impossible. You can get through this game in like 5 hours if you just use some strategy ffs.
The presentation is incredible, so much so that I can't think of many games that can pull it off so effortlessly as the Hotline Miami games. The soundtrack is superb all the way through, the visuals are fun, vibrant, and chaotic, and there's some really nice imagery. My favorite example of this imagery would have to be Richard and his role as a foreshadow of death. It's really quality stuff that is hard to not love.
Overall, this game is mostly what you'd expect: Hotline Miami 2. But it takes the first game and greatly increases the scope of everything. I don't know which one I like more, but they're both classic games that you should play.