LET'S PLAY HOTLINE MIAMI 1 & 2 - America is a tune, it must be sung together.

HM2 SCENE 22 - BLOOD MONEY

DECEMBER 7TH 1991
ACCOMPLICES
Smiler - Patito - FanboyMaster
SOUNDTRACK
Dag Unenge - The Winding Theme #1
Mega Drive - Acid Spit

"Do you have any idea who you're stealing from?! You and your friends are dead!"

QUICK NOTES

• SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS. What better way to get ready to rob a fucking mob bank?
• JUST WALK IN THE FRONT DOOR LIKE EVERYTHING'S COOL. "Yeah guys we're just here to talk about getting a small business loan."
• NAH JK THIS IS A FUCKING MURDERROBERY. At least it's not like playing Payday 2 with the skype crew, where we always spend the first 5 minutes trying to act like we can actually stealth it before throwing on masks and going to war.
• YOU DON'T ACTUALLY GET TO USE A SPECIAL PLAY STYLE FOR THIS LEVEL. I guess it sorta makes sense because our heist team kicks things off by walking in all casual like, which probably wouldn't fly if the son was just openly walking around with knuckledusters, a pair of M-50s or a fucking katana. On the upside they give you a really nice machine gun right off the bat. Not bad, not bad.
• YOU COME IN WITH TWO HELPER DUDES BUT THEY NEVER ACTUALLY HELP. Nowhere is this more apparent then on the second segment, where one of them can be seen firing around a pillar in what's sorta the general direction of some enemies in cover. Not only do you have to kill all the enemies he's (presumably) firing at for him, but once they're all dead he just stays right there emptying clip after clip into the back wall until you finally clear the rest of the area out.
• I NEVER ACTUALLY SAW THE LITTLE SCENE AFTER THE SECOND SEGMENT BEFORE RECORDING THIS STREAM. Seriously! I always just went straight for the exit. It never even occurred to me to follow Mr. Wallshoots to the other end of the hall after the place was clear. Super missable.
• IN PRACTICE THE THIRD SEGMENT ALWAYS TOOK ME FOREVER. Like seriously one of my worst segments, at times taking me upwards 20 minutes to clear. Hence my surprise when I just somehow breeze through it without a single death!
• WE MAKE IT INTO THE VAULT AND… DAD? Yeah, it's one of those scenes.

IN GREATER DETAIL

VISIT FROM THE OLD MANAGEMENT TEAM. Once inside the vault, the son has one of those visions everybody seems to be getting. Three people standing in the shadows, his father, his wheelchair-bound grandfather, and his dad's old ninja bodyguard/girlfriend(?) acting as their attendant. The son asks him why he's here, and the father responds with the only obvious answer: that he's not here at all. He's dead. He died years ago. Then when the vision asks the Son the same question, and the Son draws a complete blank. After all, what is the point of trying to make someone proud if they don't even exist?

To drive the whole thing home our good old friend Richard suddenly takes the place of his grandfather and starts doing his usual Richard thing. None of the Son's old motivations matter, so why on earth does he think it's so important to keep following the path he's on? The son's absentminded, distracted response "But… father" says more than a 20 paragraph argument for why it is imperative his organization take on the cartels ever could.

HM2 SCENE 23 - CAUGHT

DATE MISSING
FILM CREW
Smiler - Patito - FanboyMaster
SOUNDTRACK
Mega Drive - Slum Lord

You're gonna be a big deal, Manny!

You're gonna be a star!

QUICK NOTES

• ANOTHER MIAMI MUTILATOR ATTACK. I've already covered at length how it's totally, totally Manny, but it seems like the cops aren't as quick on the uptake. Manny gives the CSI guys a hard time for a few seconds, then heads home and goes to bed.
• THEN SHIT GETS WEIRD. Suddenly it's the middle of the night and Manny is tearing his apartment to pieces screaming about how he "can't find it". Eventually he leaves his home, and returns to the scene of the last Miami mutilator attack.
• THERE HE FINDS HIS "SON", IN THE FORM OF A HORRIBLE VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY. The thing sits at the kitchen table, with Manny's Handgun, the item Manny was looking for. After a short exchange that I'll cover in greater detail below, Manny's secret porcelain baby attacks him, then immediately dies once Manny shoves it away.
• SUDDENLY THE WHOLE ROOM IS JUST A FAKE MOVIE SET. And some dude is yelling at Manny that they need him at the next scene. Uh... Okay?
• THE NEXT SCENE IS THE CHIEF OF POLICE YELLING THAT THEY KNOW MANNY'S THE MUTILATOR, AND THAT THEY'RE GIVING HIM A CHANCE TO TURN HIMSELF IN. Manny keeps his poker face and unflinchingly claims that he has no idea what they're talking about. Eventually he storms out of the room, and the level proper begins.
• THE "LEVEL PROPER" IS SLAUGHTERING AN ENTIRE POLICE PRECINCT. Huh. That sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it? Weird. Wonder why that is?
• IN TERMS OF ACTUAL GAMEPLAY, THIS LEVEL IS PRETTY HARD, BUT NOT OVERLY LONG. It's two relatively small sections, but both of them have a lot of tricky segments that you really can only figure out with a lot of trial and error. Fortunately for me, this is far from my first time at the rodeo.
• EVENTUALLY MANNY MAKES IT OUT OF THE BUILDING TO FIND A WHOLE BUNCH OF COPS WAITING FOR HIM. He tries to do the whole "it's cool I'm a cop" routine that he used back in his first appearance. This time it doesn't work, and Manny is cut down by a hailstorm of gunfire.
• SURPRISE! IT WAS ALL A DREAM! Were you fooled? I sure was fooled! Manny wakes up in his apartment to a phone call from the precinct, telling him that it's a madhouse at work and they totally need him to come do his actual job. Manny tells them he's feeling sick and won't be in today,then just hangs up on them. He then pulls the gun that he never actually lost from his pocket and just stares at it in his hand as the scene fades to black.

IN GREATER DETAIL

THE DUMMY REPRESENTS THE MIAMI MUTILATOR. The scene is pretty blatant about the whole thing but I really like it all the same. When you see a ventriloquist act where a person talks and interacts with their puppet, the desired effect is that it appears to be like two separate entities. But it's not. It's just one person pretending to be two people.

The Miami Mutilator isn't some alternate personality that Manny is struggling to control. It's just Manny being Manny. He created it, hence it is his "son" but it's completely under his power. That's also why Manny's reaction to it is just a no nonsense cop response instead of the terror any reasonable person would experience in the situation. It's his puppet and he's the ventriloquist, and when it becomes cumbersome he just shoves it over and destroys the illusion.

A final note on the dummy, the soundtrack that plays when we meet him is the same one that plays when anyone else has a vision of Richard. Manny is the only 1991 character to never encounter old chickenface in the normal course of his story.

ONCE THE ILLUSION BREAKS DOWN, WE CAN SEE WHAT MANNY REALLY WANTS. Manny wants to be a goddamn movie star. The walls suddenly become fake plywood props, and some guy in a golf cart suddenly shows up to take him to shoot the next scene. Once he arrives at the next equally fake set the camera crew that he imagined way back in the outtro of his first level are already there waiting for him to say his scripted lines with almost the same conviction and energy as someone who actually believes them. Eventually he does the classic storm out of the office routine, to do his film's big huge finale: A tense shootout in the police station.

Hey, isn't that also the big finale of Midnight Animal starring acclaimed actor Martin Brown? Both fight their way though a heavily armed police station that's also completely fake and both of them end with the "main character" being shot to death. The contrast is that the fake Killer's trip became all too real, when Martin Brown was shot to death. Likewise the real killer's shooting was what revealed his fight to be completely fake, when Manny responded to the hail of gunfire by simply waking up.

MANNY'S FINAL CHOICE REVEALS HIS COWARDICE. Think back to the little NG+ Bonus Scene we saw at the very start of Hotline 2. It's the only place in the game where you'll actually see Richard and Manny speak to eachother.
Manny gets all pissed off at Richard acting like he knows it all, but Richard responds that he actually has no goddamn idea why Manny does the things he does. He's referring to this scene in particular. After his bad dream, Manny becomes paranoid that the police are onto him that he just pulls out his gun and waits for the force to come bust down the door. It's a complete 180 from the bravado he exhibited up to this point. He's was so wrapped up in his sick fantasies, that once they're revealed as fantasies he just shuts down completely. He was so obsessed with them it never even occurred to him to think about the reason he had them in the first place. It's because of this egomania and disconnected lack of self-awareness that instead of getting a vision of Richard, Manny has a vision of himself.

HM2 SCENE 24 - TAKE OVER

DECEMBER 14TH 1991
STRIKE TEAM.
Smiler - Patito - FanboyMaster
SOUNDTRACK
PERTURBATOR - Future Club

It's time guys! after today, we'll be in the big leagues again!

QUICK NOTES

• HEY MANNY, SHOULDN'T YOU BE COWERING IN YOUR APARTMENT? Yeah this scene takes place a few weeks before that last one, don't worry about it. He tries to pay the Son a visit, but the son's secretary stonewalls him until he just gives up and leaves.
• THE SON WAS ACTUALLY BUSY THOUGH. Busy "questioning" members of the rival cartel. And by "questioning" I mean "savagely beating to death". You know, regular mob stuff.
• "ALL RIGHT, I'M GOING IN. WISH ME LUCK, BOYS! With some encouraging words to his underlings, the son heads down to his awesome custom car and drives off to his biggest job yet: a direct attack against the Miami HQ of the Colombian Cartel.
• THIS LEVEL IS WAY, WAY HARD. Appropriate as it's the final "normal" level in the game. The Son has to make his way through three massive floors of heavily armed enemies with plenty of firearms and plenty of windows for them to shoot them through. It also introduces a new variation on the berserkers from the prison levels that I hated so much. Presenting...
• THE NINJAS. They don't behave quite like the berserkers, they run in much straighter lines, attack with a sword instead of grappling, and it's possible to lose them around corners, causing them to run back to their original station. That said their still super fast and every bit as bulletproof. I don't find them quite as hard to deal with as their prisoner predecessors, but that's not saying much. They tend to be surrounded with machine gun and shotgun mooks to keep you from just running up and killing them but a few truly horrible ones are stationed right next to heavy enemies, which you absolutely NEED firearms to kill.
• PICKING THE BLOODLINE LOADOUT MEANS YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO SPEND ALL THE BULLETS BEFORE THE END OF THE FIRST FLOOR. There's only one ninja on the floor but like I said, you can't kill him with bullets. Farewell my favorite special power. I will miss you.
• THIS LEVEL IS ALL ABOUT LURING ENEMIES TO WHERE YOU WANT THEM. Fire off a loud gun near a doorway to make people come check it out, then kill them all as they come around the corner. Let a ninja see you through a window and be waiting for him in the hallway he has to run down to get to you. Ect. Ect.
• SOMEHOW I MANAGE TO FINISH THE LEVEL IN A SEMI-RESPECTABLE AMOUNT OF TIME. It's not great and it's far from a deathless run, but shit, I'll take it.
• THE SON ENDS HIS RAMPAGE BY JUST WALKING RIGHT UP TO THE CARTEL BOSS. Tells him he's got to the count of 10 to surrender. The Cartel boss laughs at him. Sure The son Killed a ton of his men, but he's got like 10 guys with all their weapons trained on his head right now. What could the son possibly do?! He's so preoccupied with the Son's inevitable death, that he doesn't even notice the Russians slowly getting into position outside his windows.
• SEVEN... EIGHT... NINE... TEN! The Russian hit squad opens fire and the Colombian boss and all his men are promptly cut down. Also it looks like the Russian Mooks immunity to friendly fire as enemies carries over to cutscenes too, since they basically shot right through eachother. How about that. Fade to black as the son surveys the carnage in his new office.

Finally the Russians are back on top!

Wonder how long that'll last?

One week.

It'll last one fucking week.

A̴P̀͟͢҉̢O̵͡Ç̛͞҉A̷̴͜͠L͟҉̴̢͠Ỳ̴̡͢Ṕ̶̵͢S̀͜E͏͠

DECEMBER 20TH 1991
TERRIBLE HALLUCINATIONS
Smiler - Patito - FanboyMaster
SOUNDTRACK
Light Club - Fahkeet
M|O|O|N - Dust

"You all came back huh? Why? You all know how this ends, don't you?"

QUICK NOTES

• HEY, DEC 20TH? THAT DATE SOUNDS FAMILIAR. Sure enough, the scene opens with the son trying to call his old bodyguard to invite him to the massive party they're all throwing to celebrate their victory. The same call the fans received back in Scene 12. That's uh, that's not good.
• HEY BOSS, TAKE IT EASY ON THOSE PILLS. I'm sorry are you the boss? No? Oh! Okay then so WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO ORDER THE BOSS AROUND?! Yeah that's what I thought! Boss stops taking pills when boss says he's done!
• WOOOOOOOAAAAAH. Maybe uh... maybe we should have stopped a few pills earlier. Maybe.
• I GOTTA GET A GRIIIIIIPPPPPP. Allow me to just say the visuals of this final level are FUCKING AMAZING. We're treated to a constantly moving and evolving drug trip of a last level that does stuff with the game I never would have guessed was even possible. The Son staggers from room to room marveling at the absolute madness in front of him while doing things that might or might not be actually happening.
• FIRST, WE KILL A BEAR. Hey, what's a bear doing in here?! I don't remember having a bear room.
• THEN WE KILL A ZEBRA. The zebra crashes through the windows of the room at high speed until we finally manage to explode in a giant blast of blood and a familiar green jacket.
• THEN WE KILL A TIGER. Our suspension of disbelief is only minorly affected when we get a good look at the tiger's incredibly goofy sprite. Nice arms bro. Nice arms.
• THEN WE KILL SOME SWANS... OR NOT. For reasons that are a mystery even to me, I managed to totally blank on how to murder this thing, and as such died like 20 fucking times. It seriously isn't that hard! Just absolutely forgot how to video games there. Fortunately for all of us, I cut most of my humiliating failures out of the final video. I am so sorry.
• THEN WE FINALLY KILL SOME SWANS. About goddamn time.
• ALL HIS ENEMIES DEFEATED, THE SON SEES A GOLDEN GATE OPEN UP TO A RAINBOW BRIDGE. He walks onto in confidently and with purpose. For a moment it seems like he's actually going somewhere. Then slowly, it becomes apparent that he's plummeting towards the ground. And that my friends, is how the son ended up underneath a tarp at the end of the scene 12 outtro.
• ROLL CREDITS, FADE TO BLACK. Thank you for playing. Winners don't use drugs.

So the Son and the Fans are dead, Manny's locked himself in in his apartment jumping at shadows, Evan's back with his family, and Richter's chilling with his mother on the Hawaiian islands. We're done here now, right?

Right?

EPILOGUE

DECEMBER 28TH 1991
GONE
Smiler - Patito - FanboyMaster
SOUNDTRACK
Castanets - You Are The Blood

You know what they say about good times, right?

Yeah. Good times never last.

QUICK NOTES

• WE OPEN ON RICHTER IN HIS VERY NICE BEACH HOUSE. Just sitting next to his mother on the couch, watching TV. Had I sent Evan back to his typewriter at the end of Scene 20, it would be him on the screen talking about his new book. As it is, it's Martin Brown's interview about his new movie. Does that mean Martin's alive? Who knows!
• WE ARE INTERRUPTING THIS PROGRAM FOR AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST. Looks like 50 blessings decided to stop fucking around and straight up murdered the US president during a conference with the Russian one. Ironically the Russian President was also killed, not because he was a primary target, but just in the confusion of the ensuing firefight. Boy I hope that doesn't piss off the Russians, seeing as how they've already demonstrated they're totally willing to go nuclear, right?
• RICHARD APPEARS, AND HE AND RICHTER HAVE A SURPRISINGLY FRIENDLY CONVERSATION. It's easily my favorite character moment in the whole game. Richter determines that there is nothing he can do, and therefore no reason to fight it. Richard says he's glad Richter understands, and that leaving the world isn't quite as scary as it sounds.
• THEN COMES THE LIGHT AND THE FIRE. Hawaii is hit first but that's just because the missile had less distance to travel. Miami, and presumably every other US City quickly follows suite as Russia fires off the entire arsenal it had pointed at the US for years. It's possible the US managed to launch its own as a final fuck you once they knew Russia's Nukes left the ground, but it's also possible in the confusion of losing the commander in chief that they all just sat there waiting in their silos when the Russian strike hit. We'll never know.
• ONE BY ONE WE SEE THE LAST MOMENTS OF THE SURVIVING CAST. Evan is enjoying dinner with his wife and children. Manny is still cowering in his apartment, gun trained on the front door that he's pushed a couch in front of, waiting for the big Miami Mutiliator showdown that will never happen. Martin Brown's costar, Rachel Vard is just sitting alone in her trailer. Finally there's Jacket, patiently sitting in his jail cell. None of them are spared.
• HOTLINE MIAMI 3?! Haha no. Note the destroyed buildings in the background of the fakeout title screen. Then take another moment to note that the actual title screen is Miami mid-nuking. It was there the whole time! This fucking game you guys.

You did it, you won!

This is what winning's like, right?

There's no one left to inflict brutal murder on, so...probably!

EPILOGUE BONUS POST!
IS THE VIOLENCE IN THESE GAMES INHERENTLY HYPOCRITICAL?
Nah.

ARE THESE GAMES ART?
Obvs.

COOL.
Totally.

SO THAT'S IT? NO BIG MULTI-PARAGRAPH CLOSING THING?
Dude did you even look at this thread? There's already way too many words in it. Just, I dunno, go read them again or something.

CREDITS:
SKYPE BROS:
FanboyMaster: My main man who knows way too much about wrestling!
Smiler: Might have been the only other guy on all the calls that actually played both games!
Patito: The titan of level-headed politeness strikes again!
Nodal: Openly did not care about this game at all!
Magflare: Was on for some other stream but got dragged in!
Phat: Talkin bout [NSFW]
StushCinta: I love you, strange Australia man.
Kalir: Wanted in and got in!
MorningSong: Twitter friends represent!

NON-SKYPE BROS:
RebleFire: Continually contributed excellent knowledge to the thread, and went to the trouble of beating hard mode so I could steal the final poem from his screenshots!
aturtledoesbite: For all the positive encouragement and posts in the thread! I can't overstate how motivating they are!
Zero-ELEC: The hitbox Chat Champ keeps showing up! One of these days I'm gonna have to have him on video in a capacity that's not "having his text read by someone who's paying attention."
EndyBeast: For all the encouragement on the twitters! Yeah I twitter! What's it to you?!

AND FINALLY...
YOU: For toughing it out through 49 videos and then 49 ridiculously in-depth writeups I felt compelled to put under them. Thank you so much for lending me your time and attention. I hope I was able to entertain, you and maybe even provide a little insight on a series I've clearly spent far too much time thinking about. Thank you so much!

Couple of last neat things:

if you happen to choose typewriter, during the end scene where evan is talking about his book, they talk briefly about whether someone was right and it wasn't a conspiracy. i wonder who that could be

second, look back at Ambush, during the bar scene




naw, that couldnt be....

Thanks for the LP! I watched it and read the posts quietly, cause really I have nothing to say about this series since I think the most I did was stall out around chapter 7 or 8 of the first one.

It was exciting to watch and a great way to experience a pretty good game story.

Well, they do have some combat experience so it's not totally out of the window.

On the other hand, the devs love reusing sprites (like the guy with the scarf who looks like Jake but isn't, and that Richter was Beard without hair in HM1), so maybe it's just laziness.

Yeah, I actually mentioned that in the giant stupid writeup Jake's one alternate ending. It's totally the fans.
My pesonal stance is that the fans probably weren't involved in the Hawaii. that's based entirely on the general sentiment that they don't seem like soldier to me. They're more like a bunch of stupid kids that got all caught up in a popular trend.

So basically I base it on NOTHING AT ALL but like I've said in the LP, Hotline Miami isn't really that concerned about what is and is not cannon.

It's not just laziness. They completely redrew the sprites bodies so that the fans would all be wearing Army uniforms, and they're all in unique poses.

Also aside from them both being chubby white guys with close haircuts, Jake the Snake and Daniels (The army Guy) don't actually look that much alike. Richter is TOTALLY beard without the beard though, but I'm okay with that because it fits right in with the weird dream logic of the first game.

Thanks man! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

i missed that. oops!

I have to add to the chorus that enjoyed this LP. I tried playing Hotline Miami some time ago, acknowledged it wasn't really "for me", and moved on. I'm happy to see this game is a lot more than what was on the surface.

So, Beat, you mention that no one in the present day does anything that matters to anything, given the whole nuclear obliteration thing. Usually when you see a story like this, there's some tragedy that, oh, if only John had told Martha he loved her, the universe wouldn't have been destroyed. And there's certainly something here about everyone "wasting" their limited time on the whole super murder thing. That said, question: Is there ANYTHING any of the characters could have done differently that would have averted the ending crisis? Just curious.

Well, I've been unable to watch the videos (i will amend that when i can, BEAT, don't worry), but from what I gathered from his write-ups, Russia's full-scale nuclear assault was caused by the Russian President's murder. Had 50 Blessings not accidentally killed him, things would've been okay(-ish).

Yeah, it seems like what could have changed it wasn't anything the playable characters did. If the insane colonel/general from the Hawaii missions didn't start 50 Blessings, things wouldn't have turned out the way they did.

I think this game might do a better job of deconstructing videogame sociopathic behavior than Spec Ops: The Line did. I liked that game but it gets really moralistic in the end. Hotline Miami doesn't put a lot of moral judgment at the player's feet.

Nope. Not a single thing.

We play as a total of four guys in 1989, but only two of them actually manage to figure out what 50 blessing's actual deal is. Of those 2, Jake is so enthusiastically Onboard that even if he had survived he wouldn't have done anything to stop them, and Biker, by the time 1991 rolls around is so crazy he can't even share the information when he tries. And that's If he's even actually alive (he might not actually be alive). All of the 1991 guys are all just running around doing their own thing without ever thinking about Russo-American Coalition or 50 blessings, much more concerned with the spectacle of the killings of 89 than trying to figure out what it actually meant.

The lone exception to that rule is Evan, who's obsessive investigation of the killings of 89 brings him closer and closer to figuring out that 50 blessings was running the show. That puts him in the best position to reveal the organization for what it truely is, and possibly put the Colonel (Who is now a General) behind bars for conspiracy, thus preventing the deaths of the US and Russian Presidents and averting the apocalypse.

But he can't.

Even if Evan does everything right. If he runs with the information he can get from Biker, if he manages to find the Disc in Jake's Pocket, if he forgoes that whole having a family thing and gets right back to his typewriter. it's still all too little too late to stop the General's shootout. In the ending where you do everything you possibly can in the name of exposing the truth by the time the nukes fly Evan is just making TV announcing that he has a hunch that the whole slaughter of 89 wasn't set up by the Russian mob. He then goes on to say that he's still working on his full report and book when the emergency broadcast interrupts him with news that both presidents have been shot and the Russians hit launch.

One of the underlying themes in these games is futility. In the first game Richard Actually spells it right out for Jacket. "What you do from here won't serve any purpose." And if you try to do it over again in hotline 2, Maybe under the impression that this time you'll be able to stop it, Richard Greets you with a brand new Cutscene, just to ask you Why you're bothering. "You all know how this ends, don't you?"

wait a minute

this isnt done yet

beat you forgot Abyss

Huh! Guess I did! Also the hotline 1 bonus level.

Guess I'll take a crack at em the next time I just feel like fucking around with streaming whatever nbd.

HM2 ISSUE 1 - WHAT THE END LOOKS LIKE

JULY 23RD 1989
Story by Maurizio Furini & Federico Chemllo
Art by Alberto Massaggia

Figured I'd take a crack at these why not.

QUICK SYNOPSIS

The comic opens on Jacket's final scene from the end of Hotline Miami 1. He smokes a cigarette on the balcony and waits while the police sirens grow nearer.

The perspective changes to that of a news station's coverage of Jacket's arrest. The reporter at the scene and the Anchor back on set talk about what a huge deal it is that the possible "leader" of the masked killers is finally in custody.

On the last page we see the fans, watching the report together, they're all very upset about their hero getting arrested, but seem to cheer up a bit when Tony points out that with Jacket gone it's their turn now.

RANDOM BABBLE

SO NOT A LOT HAPPENED THERE, HUH? Yeah but this was kinda unavoidable. It's part 1 of a 5 part promotional series that was released before Hotline 2 came out. As such it's mostly just a quick primer on the state of the game's world as of the end of the first game. Jacket's in custody, but nobody really knows why he and the other masked killers did what they did, and their actions are already inspiring others to violence. Neat if you read it back before the game came out, but If you've followed this LP it's all stuff you already know.

That said, while the whole "News at 9" thing is a bit of a cliche, I honestly really like how they used it to demonstrate just how little everyone knows about the whole thing for example, they know that Jacket killed the film producer in his mansion (back in chapter 3), but they mention him among the "innocent victims" meaning they never connected him back to the mob, or picked up on the fact that he was torturing women to death. They assume that Jacket kidnapped Hooker instead of rescuing her from a different sort of sociopath. They refer to Jacket as the leader, and speculate that his capture means the whole thing is now over, when in fact Jacket was nothing but an effective but still clueless pawn, and the worst is yet to come. It reinforces just how confused and desperate for answers everyone is about the whole mess, which is pretty cool.

I KINDA TOTALLY DIG THE STARK BLACK AND WHITE ART. Like, check out this panel from the first page that I cropped and then shrank way the hell down.


It's a massive departure from the screaming loud colors of the games, but it gets the job done. I love the detail of the photograph blowing away in the wind. Also it might just be me, but the more I look at it, the more I get the feeling that everything is very slightly off, like we're seeing a slightly fucked-up vision of a deeply fucked-up world. I don't know if that's intentional or not, and I'm assuming anyone with any knowledge of art would have much smarter things to say about it, so I'll just leave it at "I think it fits and also looks cool".

THERE'S ALSO A FEW DETAILS FOR SERIES NERDS LIKE ME TO GO BACK AND PICK UP ON. There are a few panels scattered throughout of random people watching the news report on Jacket's arrest. Most of them seem to be just random people, but then we got chubby scarface here.


I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be Daniels, who we last saw trying to comfort a dying Barnes at the end of Scene 16. So I guess he made it out alive after all?


We also learn that the fans all had their own masks picked out way back in 1989, 2 years before the first time we see them go nuts in Hotline. Note that they're all wearing them while doing nothing more special than hanging out in one of their living rooms watching TV. Kinda drives home just how obsessed these motherfuckers really are.

OH YEAH ALSO WE FIND OUT THE NAMES OF SOME CHARACTERS. Looks like the mob boss was named "Ivan Lebedev" and the film producer was named "Wilson Fisk". Like the name of Marvel's Kingpin character. Neato. Anything else?

I CROSSED OUT THE DATE CUZ IT'S WRONG. Jacket's last stand took place on July 23rd, not June 23rd! I cannot forgive this incredibly minor error because I'm the asshole that arranged every event in both games into chronological order.

HM2 ISSUE 2 - TIME TO KICK BACK

APRIL 27TH 1989
Story by Maurizio Furini & Federico Chemllo
Art by Alberto Massaggia

Oh man, this guy again.

QUICK SYNOPSIS

We open on Jake, at his day job in an auto scrapyard, where instead of doing any sort of work he's just sitting around reading a 50 blessings flyer. Excited by the fact that other people hate the Russians almost as much as he does, he immediately fills out the form to join their mailing list, then calls his boss to ask for Saturday off. When his boss refuses, he quits his job

That Saturday Jake joins a bunch of like-minded individuals in the "American Pride March". The "Peaceful" protest immediately turns violent when someone in the crowd notices some Russian bystanders and savagely attack them. Jake enthusiastically joins in, attacking several before the police are able to break the fight up.

Jake walks home thinking about how great it was to stand up for Real Americans by beating the shit out of some defenseless innocents. When he arrives, he finds a package waiting outside his apartment. He opens it to find his cobra mask.

RANDOM BABBLE

THIS ISSUE DOES A FANTASTIC JOB OF MAKING JAKE LOOK LIKE AN ABSOLUTE TOOL. It might even do the job too well. I mean just look at this motherfucker.


Back in my Scene 3 writeup, I described the guy as "every redneck stereotype that ever existed in the form of a singular jackass". These 10 pages drive home that idea much harder than the quick glimpses we get of him in the game's cutscenes. Jake is designed to be so terrible that we won't feel the slightest bit bad when he dies. Which is good, because even before Hotline 2 was released, the fact that this guy was doomed was pretty hard to miss.


I LIKE THIS ISSUE A LOT MORE THAN THE LAST ONE. Issue one was mostly just a quick recap and setup, by contrast what we have here feels a lot more substantial. We get to see parts of Hotline's alternate 1989 that aren't limited to violent psychotics murdering buildings full of people. A few moments with people who are less unstoppable killing machine and more frustrated angry citizens, living under the thumb of a nation that nuked them.


MORE WRONG DATES BLAH BLAH BLAH NERD RAGE. Hotline 1 and Hotline 2 were pretty meticulous to make sure all their 1989 dates lined up with eachother perfectly. The comics dropped the ball on that though, claiming that Jake signed up for 50 blessings on April 27th, two days AFTER his first in game mission on April 25th. I am 100% positive they did this on purpose just to spite timeline nerds like me.