Scoring

Defeating Biker[]

Biker is a very fast moving enemy that attempts to melee the player and occasionally throws their meat cleaver at the player. To defeat Biker, you must first pick up Golf Club from the bag at the bottom of the room. Biker may cut off your path to the bag so lure him around the room until you can grab the club safely. To win the fight you must avoid all Biker’s attacks and strike him when he’s busy with retrieving his thrown cleaver. Running around the edge of the room can be effective to avoiding Biker but you must take notice of how he is moving and adapt accordingly. If he looks like he will cut you off as you turn a corner, don’t take the corner and move in a different direction. Keep doing this until you see a safe way out. If you are constantly moving you should avoid getting hit by the thrown cleaver. Once you have hit Biker for the second time, he will comment on how ‘this can’t be happening… i’m so close…’ before Jacket apparently destroys his entire head with a club swing.

Biker Dead Body

Trivia[]

• When Jake speaks to the Manager in the intro scene, it can be seen that the Manager takes a little more serious attitude as Jake mentions about «strange phone calls».
• The song title «Quixotic» is a word that is used to describe a person that is impractical, unrealistic, and exceedingly foolish, especially in the pursuit of ideals and beliefs. The word itself is a very accurate description of Jake.
• Ironically, while in the ending where he is killed to ensure that his mouth stays shut, the other ending shows him keeping his promise and stoically remaining silent to the end.
• This was one of two scenes (the other being Richter’s scene, House Call) in which the level’s music was different whether you watched the intro or not. This has since been patched.
• This level takes place on the same day as Hot & Heavy.
• Meth labs will never explode if they are shot at with the Nail Gun.
• Sometimes it is possible to shoot the last enemy in the level and still die, which makes it impossible to finish the level since there aren’t any mobsters to drag Jake to the building featured in Hot & Heavy, preventing the player from continuing. This means that the player is forced to either restart the level or close the game completely. This bug is yet to be fixed.

Beta Features[]

• Create new scenes/levels for the game including furniture, enemies, weapons, and NPCs.
• Custom intros, outros, and cut-scenes for levels.
• Custom campaigns.
• Custom VHS covers for levels.
• A maximum of 7 floors/areas per level.
• Unlocked floor transitions. (No longer locked by location; can spawn the character anywhere within the map when transitioning)
• Locational weapon spawns. (Weapons spawn in the environment, rather than being limited to an enemy)
• Character Implementation:
  • Biker: Has the ability to kill Thugs.
  • Jacket: Ability to use all his masks from the original game. (It’s possible to restrict his mask usage to one or none)
  • H.M. Hammarin: The only character with full sprites for every enemy type.

• Re-addition of the Drill, Pot, Silenced Uzi, Cleaver, and Throwing Knives as usable weapons — only usable by Jacket (first two) and Biker (last two)
• Environmental Effect Filters:
  • Rain
  • Darkness
  • Daylight
  • Sunset
• Dynamic backgrounds:
  • Standard (Red-Aqua-Fuchsia)
  • Jungle (Lime colored trees)
  • Storm (Maroon, Black, with thunder)
  • Waves (Purple-Aqua-Fuchsia waves, as seen in Dead Ahead)
• Custom level borders.
• Third-party mod support using the HLM2 Wad Explorer.

Alpha Features[]

NOTE: The alpha version of the editor is incomplete. As such, it is no longer updated and lacks features and bug fixes the beta editor has. Use at your own risk.

• Selecting Manny Pardo, Jake, Evan, and sometimes The Fans will result in the level completely crashing.
• A lot of items aren’t finished.
• Many Items will crash the game, when selected.
• Many Walls from the games are not available. (ie, white brick walls, or indestructible mirrors/windows)
• Corner wall textures for the Sewer Walls, Wood Walls, and Movie Set Walls will not be placed.
• If too many walls are added, the game will crash.
• Many tiles from both games are also not available.
• The guns tab does not have any weapons that can be placed.
• Triggers can not be made. (For example, the elevator explosion in Casualties, or the «Get the Girl» objective scene in Final Cut)

Biker, Jacket and H.M. Hammarin are unusable.

Lethal knife throws will automatically turn the sprite into a mobster.

• No outro/intro/sprite editors.
• No cutscene editor.
• No campaign editor.

If you use The Pig Butcher, Richter or The Soldier, you won’t be able to finish the level.

Saves made in the alpha build will not carry over to the full version.

• The floor tiles tend to disappear while using the Rewind function and while renaming the level.
• Some songs are unlisted, such as iamthekidyouknowhatimean’s Run. Other songs are incorrectly labeled; for example, selecting Jasper Byrne’s Voyager will instead play Carpenter Brut’s Le Perv, and Scattle’s Bloodline is listed as Pursuit.
• If the player lowers the volume while in a level, the game will crash.
• Adding doors will occasionally result in a crash.
• If player replays the level the floor tiles will disappear, leaving only walls, items and enemies.

Trivia[]

• Judging by the Confederate flag lying on his couch, his desire for a tattoo of «Old Dixie» and his hatred towards Russians in Wrong Number, Jake is most likely a Neo-Confederate.
• Jake is the only 50 Blessings hitman who is shown to be a «true believer» who actually buys into their cause, unlike Biker, and Richter, who all clearly don’t believe in 50 Blessings’ cause and view it as ridiculous, but do their dirty work to avoid getting on their bad side, knowing what they’re capable of.
• Jake has an unused bloody face sprite, sprCobraBlood, apparently intended for Withdrawal’s outro. The face is a still image without the capacity to move because he was never intended to talk in this scene. This sprite is available for use in the Level Editor, but it’s positioning is off, displacing the sprite into the lower right corner of the screen.

• Jake gets his masks delivered from FEDUP delivery service, an obvious parody of FedEx.
• Jake’s Irvin mask features a nail gun, implying a history in hardware. The digital comics revealed that he originally worked in a junkyard until he was fired for having a bad attitude towards his boss.
• Jake is not Daniels, but has occasionally been confused for him by players due to their similar physique as well as the fact that Daniels wears a mask. However, there are enough differences between them physically to rectify that they are not the same person, with Daniels also having been killed in Hawaii in 1985 while staying behind with Barnes in his last moments. Barnes is also African-American, meaning it would be unlikely that Jake would be friends with him given his Neo-Confederate views, which always tend to be very racist towards African-Americans.
• He is the only 50 Blessings Operative other than Jacket to wear more than one mask.
• Jake has two possible cars in the game; one is a light green sedan, the other is a black truck. The truck only appears if Jake picks up the briefcase of money at the end of Act I, Scene 3: Hard News, implying that he used the stolen money to buy the truck.
• His name is, as proven by Dennis Wedin in his AMA, half a reference to his favorite professional wrestler Jake «The Snake» Roberts and half a reference to a friend of his named Jake the Snake.
• Jake’s snake mask could be a reference to the Gadsden flag, showing a snake with the words «Don’t tread on me.»
• Jake appears to have been trained in Karate, according to the game files at least.
• Jake’s expositional role paints a portrait of Hotline Miami fans who didn’t understand 50 Blessings were behind the calls, insinuating those players just wanted to kill Russians.
• Jake’s apartment theme is a slowed down version of the last minute of «Simma Hem» by Riddarna.
• In the Level Editor, there is an unused sprite of Jake wielding a single MP5. In the game itself, Jake is never able to pick up or use an MP5, as it is never used by the Russian Mafia, and does not spawn on his levels.
• The Dallas mask is unlocked after beating Jake’s final level, meaning it would only be usable on a replay.

Trivia[]

• The inclusion of animal masks was motivated by Dennis Wedin’s childhood nightmares that revolved around Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows.
• The inclusion of mask abilities wasn’t originally intended until Nigel at Devolver Digital mistakenly advertised mask abilities in an interview. Dennaton hastily created all of the first game’s mask abilities, and Dennis Wedin expressed regret that none required the player to play differently, and that the Tony Mask was overpowered. This led to the mask system getting completely overhauled in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number.
• Jake gets his masks from FEDUP delivery service, as a FEDUP box is shown every time he unlocks a mask.
• The Fans get their masks from Laughter Masquerade and Funny Stuff, as a Laughter box is shown every time the player unlocks a new Fan.
• Tony states that his mask was the one worn by Jacket himself, which is unlikely as it would have been taken as evidence during Jacket’s trial. It is more likely that the mask is the one worn by the man being interrogated in Tension.
• In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, most of the masks from the first game return, now being used by several NPCs.
  • A bartender seen in the intro for Down Under can be seen wearing a Panda mask, and someone behind the bar going through the fridge is wearing a Dennis mask. Additionally, the Tony and Jake masks are lying on the bar.
  • In The Abyss level, Evan Wright finds a group of hobos wearing all the masks worn by Jacket in Hotline Miami.

Личность Джекета

Теперь же перейдём к самому сюжету и его главному герою, непосредственному в первой части и являющимся тесно связанным с сюжетами второй части. Вообще у него нет имени, как и у многих персонажей игры, но в сообществе он известен под именем “Джекет” из-за его студенческой кофты, в которой он и ходит почти всю игру.

По лору игр, Джекет – ветеран советско-американской войны, был частью специального подразделения, которое выполняло особо важные задания на территории врага. Его командир, известный как “Борода” стал для Джекета лучшим другом, во многом потому что именно Борода спас будущего мстителя в маске от смерти, и даже на гражданке Джекет и Борода остались хорошими товарищами.

“Коронная фраза” Бороды, которая отпечаталась в памяти Джекета.

Всё это можно узнать из одного из сюжетов второй части, а вот в первой части мы смотрим на мир уже глазами самого Джекета, и вот тут начинается самое интересное. Его архетип типичен – бравый вояка, ушедший в отставку и оставшийся на обочине жизни, вот только есть у него одного существенное отличие – он сумасшедший в самом буквальном смысле этого слова. Война и ранение оставило на психике бедняги неизгладимый след, а сам смысл его существования он видел отныне лишь в войне. А как мы знаем, воевал Джекет с русскими.

Именно такой человек и нужен был “Пятидесяти Благословениям”

Techniques[]

The Son has the choice of 3 different techniques at the start of two of his levels, granting him specific abilities. A new technique is unlocked upon successfully completing a level.

Each ability is akin to that of The Fans, and is unlocked in a similar order:

Bodyguard

The Bodyguard’s old sunglasses, cracked when she was killed by Jacket.

Inherited from the blonde ninja girl from the first game, this is unlocked by default and activated with the space bar, granting the Son the ability to start with a Katana and has the ability to roll dodge. Similar to Corey, he is able to become temporally invulnerable, rolling under gunfire, and avoiding melee attacks.

While rolling, he cannot attack, but can do so immediately out of the roll. There is a short delay after the roll has finished in which he cannot roll again, meaning that he cannot constantly repeat this move to achieve a continuous state of invulnerability.

Dirty Hands

The Son gains the ability of Killing Punches, but cannot pick up any weapons. Similar to Tony, his punches kill standard enemies at the cost of being unable to use weapons, and he is able to kill fat enemies by first knocking them to the floor and then performing a ground execution, as well as being able to perform ground executions on dogs. The ability also trades his weaponless ground execution from a slow foot grind to a fast double punch execution. A noticeable difference between Tony and Dirty Hands is The Son’s punching speed is still the default used by most player characters rather than Tony’s rapid jabs.

Bloodline

You remember this?

Inherited from the Father, the Son gains the Fire Power ability, which allows him to start a level with a pair of MP5s that he dual wields. Similar to Mark, he is able to aim in separate directions; horizontally by holding down the right mouse button or left trigger of a controller, and vertically by holding the right mouse button and left shift.

The Numbers on the sprite are the date of Showdown in Hotline Miami, which is reference to the day his father and the grandfather were killed by Jacket.

He has a full magazine of ammo for each gun in reserve. After his ammunition is depleted, he drops his firearms on the ground and reverts to using other weapons normally. You are also able to pick up the MP5s after their ammo is depleted, but they will still remain unusable for the rest of the level. A notable difference between Bloodline and Mark is the inability to perform ground executions while using the MP5s, likely because of the relative lack of doors in The Son’s levels.

General Playstyle

Techniques aside, The Son’s general playstyle also features several characteristics that make him stand out from other playable characters. The first of these being that he swings several melee weapons at a slower speed than what their usual speed is (e.g. he swings the golf club much slower than the usual speed it swings at with most other playable characters).

The second and more notable characteristics is having several unique executions. His default execution is a stomping move, where The Son will quickly stomp on an enemy’s head and grind his foot into their heads. This is a rather long execution like most other playable character’s stomping executions (except for Martin Brown’s stomping execution, which is quite fast).

While using the golf club, The Son will perform a unique execution where he will smash the club across an enemy’s face in a golf-swinging posture (this execution is very similar to Jacket’s scripted execution on Biker).

While using the baton, the execution The Son performs involves smacking the baton across the enemy’s face three times, bludgeoning them to death. This execution is unique to the regular baton execution, where most playable characters will smash it down onto an enemy’s head.

While using the machete, he can execute an enemy by decapitating them via hacking them three times in the neck with it (This execution is shared with Jacket’s machete execution in the first game, although it is slower).

While using the butterfly knife, rather than simply slitting the enemy’s throat, The Son will swiftly stab the enemy in the side of the neck once.

Playstyle[]

Overall, Jake has a slow aiming speed and a stomping animation of average length (1.00 sec). He can wear three different snake masks, named Jake (his default starting mask), Irvin and Dallas (a cobra, a viper, and a black mamba, respectively) granting lethal throws, the Nail Gun weapon, and a killing punch ability, similar to Tony.

With the Jake Mask, the description of his ability literally means that any item that Jake can throw at an enemy will instantly kill them. This ability can come in handy a lot of the time, allowing Jake to use any weapon he comes across as a projectile against enemies (excluding dogs and thugs). It is also very useful when there are no guns around to pick up or whenever Jake runs out of ammo with a firearm, where he can then use said empty gun to use as a projectile. Each killing throw grants 400 points upon kill.

The Irvin Mask allows Jake to start off with a Nail Gun that Jake can drop or pick up at any time. The Nail Gun is loaded up with 20 «rounds» and is a silent weapon, where any shot won’t alert enemies to Jake’s presence. This can easily allow Jake to pick off a lot of enemies in an efficient stealth like fashion. However, the weapon itself is not very accurate and has a slow rate of fire. It essentially functions like a Silenced Heavy Pistol with extra ammo, but at the cost of less accuracy.

The Dallas Mask gives Jake the ability of killing punches, allowing him to also kill dogs and knock over thugs, which the latter can be finished off with a ground execution. The Dallas Mask also grants a special ability called «Havoc», where Jake swings nunchucks around that kill enemies that come into contact with them and increases his movement speed. The downside is that Jake cannot pick up any weapons. Also the special ability «Havoc» has a short startup and ending lag, which renders Jake vulnerable for enemy attacks.

1989[]

April

• 2nd — Richter begins his work with 50 Blessings shortly after they torched his car and threatened his mother for not doing as they say. He assaults a Russian-owned cafe flying USSR flags.
• 3rd — Jacket begins his work with 50 Blessings and goes to a subway station to collect a briefcase. Jacket throws the briefcase away into a dumpster and kills a homeless man on the way back to his car.
• 8th — Jacket arrives at an apartment complex inhabited by the Russian mafia and kills all inhabitants.
• 10th — Richter attacks a well-guarded Russian warehouse of USSR imported weapons, which the Son will later use.
• 16th — Jacket assaults another apartment building and murders all mobsters inside.
• 23rd — Richter assaults a Russian apartment.
• 25th — Jacket attacks a film producer’s villa and rescues a drug-addled young woman. Meanwhile, another masked vigilante known as Jake shaves his head and assaults a news station in the Russian mafia’s pocket. Unlike Richter, he is shown to have 50 Blessings’ newsletter.

May

• 5th — Jacket assaults a mafia-owned mansion and an explosion erupts from the second floor.
• 11th — Jacket performs another hit at a mafia-occupied house.
• 13th — Biker, having rejected a political hit job from 50 Blessings, follows a lead to the Blue Dragon, a Chinese restaurant, in order to find 50 Blessings and end his affiliation with the group. Meanwhile, under direct supervision of The Janitors, Jacket performs the political hit on the mob-protected Hotel Blue and kills three politicians, dealing a heavy blow to the Russo-American coalition.
• 16th — Biker attacks a mafia-inhabited casino and arcade.
• 23rd — Jacket invades an apartment complex before being tasked by 50 Blessings to stop Biker from tracing their calls. He drives to the local telephone company and hits Biker with a golf club, wounding him but failing to kill Biker.
• 24th — Biker discovers the heart of the operation, finds they’re a national organization with political ties, and flees Miami.
• 27th — Jacket performs another hit at a night club.
• 31st — Jacket intercepts a massive cocaine operation before the building is raided by the SWAT team and he narrowly escapes.

June

• 3rd — Jake visits the 50 Blessings HQ and finds out from the Manager working there that they are behind the phone call operation. Jake later performs a botched hit on a mafia-run apartment complex used for cooking meth, where he is wounded and taken away to a bath house. Petrov and the VIP Guard attempt to interrogate Jake, but they get no answers from him and shoot him in the head. Later, Jacket invades the bath house and clears it out.
• 8th — Jacket performs a hit on a mafia-owned office complex, and withstands an attack led by a Russian van driving hitman. When he returns to his home, his girlfriend has been assassinated by Richter, tasked to kill Jacket for his failure to kill Biker. Richter shoots Jacket and places him into a coma, where he relives the past few months in a dream.

July

• Unknown Date — Jacket drowsily overhears a conversation about Girlfriend’s death, his own coma, and Richter’s arrest between a nurse and a police officer.
• 21st — Waking up from his coma, Jacket escapes the hospital he was staying at before the police could question him. He returns home and rests for an indefinite amount of time.
• Unknown Date — Looking for Richter, Jacket attacks the local police precinct and kills every officer inside, including the station’s chief. Jacket finds and interrogates Richter, discovering that he receives the same phone calls sent out by 50 Blessings, and that his murder of Girlfriend was no personal vendetta in any way. Richter tips Jacket off with the police station containing more information on the case than that of Richter’s own knowledge, and Jacket steals confidential police files on the murders before leaving.
• 23rd — Jacket follows a police file to the Golden Truckstop, a mafia-run nightclub. He receives the location of the mafia boss’s mansion from the club manager. He brutally murders the club manager on the way out. Then Jacket kills off what is left of the Russian Mafia at The Father’s mansion, mistaking them for the source of the calls, but primarily looking to make himself feel better by killing affluent Russians. He resumes his smoking from Hawaii and tosses the Picture to the wind.

Bosses[]

As well as the Fans all being playable characters, they are also the final bosses in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, as well as the final bosses of the entire series. They appear in the final level of the game, Apocalypse, where they are all fought as monstrous, anthropomorphic beasts corresponding with each of the Fan’s masks. The order in which they are all fought also directly mirrors their order of appearances in Death Wish (as both Death Wish and Apocalypse cover the same events but from different perspectives). Their monstrous forms are the hallucinogenic result of The Son’s overdose on his own hallucinogenic designer drug pill product.

The Bear

The first of the four final bosses. Mark appears as the form of a large bear-like creature, being roughly two times the size of a thug. Upon entering the room, the Son will see Mark supposedly devouring a mobster next to a bag of golf clubs. Mark, bellowing at the Son as he enters the room, will begin to slowly advance towards the player.

If the player gets too close to Mark, he will begin charging towards the player. Immediate contact with Mark will kill the player. Mark can only be killed with a golf club if the player runs around him and grabs one from the bag.

Mark appears to have run out of ammo by the time of this fight, leaving the Son to best him with a long reaching melee object, emphasizing his lack of range after he «burns out» when playing as him.

The Zebra

The second of the four final bosses. After being inhaled by the Son’s own dialogue-head sprite, he will appear in an empty room with several windows surrounding it and a lone Magnum in the middle of the room.

A loud, distorted whinny suddenly shatters all the windows in the room before the beast-form of Corey begins repeatedly galloping through (roll dodging) the room from each outer side, changing her entry point each time. She appears as a zebra wearing her own signature jacket with blood-red eyes. Corey can be easily dispatched by the Son with a single shot from the Magnum, where she explodes into a cloud of blood largely but not entirely covered by her Miami Dolphins jacket.

The Tiger

The third of the four final bosses. The Son walks into a long hallway which slowly transforms into a jungle-like environment, where a pile of mangled corpses of several of the Son’s men lay with a shotgun on top. At the end of the hallway lurks the incredibly large, hulking monstrosity that is Tony, who appears as an anthropomorphic tiger with muscular human arms, a black vest and a tiger’s lower torso. Tony will roar at the Son and will slowly disappear behind his lair, apparently trying to intimidate the Son.

By backing away and not charging him, the player can cause a frustrated Tony to charge and can then blast him with shotgun pellets, noticeably causing him to evaporate instead of exploding into blood, indicating Tony survived but was glanced.

Tony may also be defeated by backing away unarmed and left clicking, but it’s unknown whether or not this is a bug.

The Swans

The fourth and last of the four final bosses. Two gargoyle-like entities fly across the screen as the Son reaches the roof with a fireaxe (in a non-hallucinogenic reality, he wields a magnum). Walking up to the helipad causes the two creatures to merge and create a huge flying swan-headed hydra, representing Alex and Ash. The creature will let out a screech before attacking the player.

The head on the left is Ash while the head on the right is Alex. Alex will lunge forward at the player and attempt to lick at the player with a what appears to be a chainsaw-esque tongue, while Ash backs up Alex by spitting out fire bolts at the player. The body itself will float around above the player. Attempting to walk beyond past the monster’s body while both heads are in tact will cause Ash to bombard the player with several fire bolts, guaranteeing the death of the player. It is preferable to take out Alex first, then take out Ash, both of which only needing single swings of the fireaxe.

Destroying the two heads will cause the swan-beast’s body to explode into a huge bloody mess and ray of colors. The Son will then approach what appears to be the Rainbow Bridge to Valhalla at the edge of the building, and walk across into a rainbow void, when in reality, he is falling to his death. This will trigger the end of the game and the credits.

Parallels in Other Media[]

• The Fans and their van are very similar to the characters from Contra Hard Corps.
• The Hotline Miami 2 poster strongly resembles the poster to Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs.
• Themes of the ambiguity between media and reality are explored in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, which is also the title of the ambiance after a level is cleared.
• Martin Brown’s solid pink phones are references to the solid colors of surreal items in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and surreal phone calls in David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
• Surreal phone calls and an escape to Hawaii are featured in Punch-Drunk Love.
• The alternating focus between vast areas and detailed often ugly faces, as well as sparse brief dialogue, is a style often used in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns such as The Man With No Name Trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West.
• The tracks over Homicide and First Blood are both direct references to James Cameron’s The Terminator.
• First Blood is a reference to the original Rambo movie First Blood.
• The organization and goals of 50 Blessings are very analogous to the fight club from David Fincher’s Fight Club.
• The idea of cycling through a vast array of characters and criminals in a city with themes of violent media is present in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
• The Son’s blaring white suit during Apocalypse is similar to John Woo protagonists such as Ah John / «Shrimp Head» from The Killer.
• The Colonel is a double reference to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and Lt. General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove: or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
• The bags of money acquired by the Russian Henchman and Richter are both references to the 2011 movie Drive, as is the fact that both these characters are on the run with a woman to lose.
• The idea of different characters all meeting a surrealistic entity, reacting differently to it, and dying is present in The Seventh Seal.
• Manny Pardo, while based on a real person, has parallels to Dirty Harry from Dirty Harry and Cobra Cobretti from the movie Cobra, the latter of which subsequently inspired the Driver from Drive.
• Evan Wright is based on the writer of Generation Kill and American Desperado, the latter of which’s cover seems to be the source of his appearance.
• The idea of extremely violent outlaws dying in a climactic suicide mission can be found in The Wild Bunch.
• The Son has a scar on his face, does cocaine and is a mafia head in Miami with animosity toward South Americans, similar to Tony Montana from Scarface.
• The concept of using both a gun and a chainsaw and a character named Ash is found in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy.
• Ash is also the name of the condescending techie scientist from Alien.
• The concept of a writer who alienates his family writing about killers is found in the David Fincher drama Zodiac.