What went wrong?

This was the main issue, everything else was fine.

>a LOT more focus on story
>can't play as any mask/character on every level like in the first game
>characters' abilities aren't interesting enough to warrant levels specifically designed for them
>windows and open areas everywhere
>enemies shooting you from off screen
>complete levels by shooting at specific angles where you know enemies are from pure trial and error instead of having to think on your feet and react quickly to rushing enemies
>giga niggas everywhere
>enemies that are behind giga niggas can shoot THROUGH him and kill you but giga nigga blocks your bullets from killing the enemies, forming a one-way wall
>too many guns because there are too many giga niggas
>much longer combo window lowering the skill ceiling and allowing for easier A+ ratings

I was truly disappointed in this game, the first was better by far. The only things that I consider improvements are the music and the absolutely kino ending sequence.

>All the characters were uninteresting compared to Jacket from the first game
>Jacket
>character

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>Why the fuck can't you pick up gun from enemies with 50% of the characters?

Because they went for gimmickery instead of fun. This kind of describes the entirety of HM2 for me. Playing HM2 actually made me see some of the issues HM1 had as well but were a lot less obvious. I still like HM1 though, and dislike HM2.

>Incredibly satisfying
dying in this game was a lot more frustrating and the ratio of frustration to satisfaction was completely fucked. It's retarded to use the rating system of the first game that rewards boldness in stages in which boldness is heavily punished.

The soundtrack in hotline miami 2 was a lot better though

Enemy placement can be a bit shitty sometimes, some of the levels didn't have good flow such as the Detectives boat mission on hard mode, having to lure guys out wasn't fun.

This.

Not that user, and I didn't find Jacket very interesting, but what kind of retarded post is this?

It didn't have pic related
Gotta go fast

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the level design was objectively worse in the sequel

The name of the protagonist in the first game is Jacket

What kind of characteristics Jacket even has to be considered a character? We know almost nothing about him.

I've seen people unironically praise the fucking football pitch levels. Apparently memorizing where every off-screen enemy is and just shooting at specific angles around the edge of your monitor is very skillful.

A character we don't know much about is still a character, my guy. There are tons of characters like this in all forms of media.

This.

Hard mode should have been the default

Nothing. First game was shit too.

At least the soundtrack was boner
Le Perv + the prison break was about as kino as the game got
plus mannyposting

>nothing went wrong
>first game was shit too

Do you have brain damage? Don't answer that. Rhetorical question.

I got it just for the level editor. I like level editors.

What exactly is he if not a character?

I know. And it felt too damn god to actually beat the game by it's rules despite all the odds.
Dead Ahead, Death Wish and Release almost made me lose my mind when I was doing an A+ run, though. Didn't have such problems with Vietnam levels for some reason.

I like you

This and only this.

He's just the protagonist, not a character.

>first game is praised for its tight level design and frenetic, improvisational gameplay; short floors and instant restarts encourage the player to tackle everything at light speed because dying only ever means losing twenty seconds at most
>second game is pretentious non-linear storytelling wank with levels that punish you for not stopping and shift-looking around every corner, trying to improvise instead of just baiting/kiting enemies and ambushing them; mask mechanic is gutted; huge open floors with windows everywhere and randomized infinite-line-of-sight enemy spawns make improvisation impracticable and memorization impossible, and you lose minutes when you die
I'd love to praise the soundtrack, but it's obvious that the devs just dumped their fucking Soundcloud playlists into the game without any regard for how each song suited the level design. Why was Roller Mobster used for Pardo's first level?

>The soundtrack in hotline miami 2 was a lot better though
I see that a lot but there is a eery quality to the first one that I think is kinda lost in the HM2 Perturbator was fine when it was one track in the middle of more experimental and underground music, like youtu.be/JiiDKw4ktdM
this one is less bombastic and more grim than most of HM2 I think it fits the theme of jacket being insane, lost and outright having a deathwish while fighting enemies for reasons he will never understand ( a theme that is explored more in HM2 when you undestand that he's been doing this since Hawai and that his friend/bartendrer/bodega guy/VHS renter is an illusion of a long lost friend)

Less freedom if I'm being honest. I appreciate the handicaps limited to characters in some scenarios, but the game stripped a lot of the flow of "do it your way" that the first game had, mostly because the goal was more to tie the entire thing together lore wise.

That being said. I loved it still.

>Roller Mobster used for Pardo's first level

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>Didn't have such problems with Vietnam levels for some reason
Yeah those weren't particularly hard but it was dumb idea to force the player to use only two weapons when soldiers should be able to operate enemy weapons too.
>Dead Ahead, Death Wish and Release almost made me lose my mind when I was doing an A+ run
Dead Ahead and Death Wish were good stages but Release was annoying when it had fat enemies immune to meelee and lightning fast muscular enemies that could dodge all your bullets

>bought a 55 song album
>got a free game and payday 2 character
Only thing wrong was the number

spbp
It's better than the first

protagonist noun
pro·tag·o·nist | \ prō-ˈta-gə-nist\

Definition of protagonist

1a(1) : the principal CHARACTER in a literary work (such as a drama or story)
(2) : the leading actor or principal CHARACTER in a television show, movie, book, etc.

>It's better than the first
wrong

fucking not, the first one had this super meat boy quality of being too fast to be frustrating, and with all the masks and weapons there was a sandbox to play with. HM2 is way more linear with much more emphasis on weapons and sniping, and being slow and careful wich imensely break the pace

I can't even begin to imagine having taste this shit. HM2 just tries to do too many things at once and does them all with mediocrity at best. I bet you like the sequels to Matrix more than the original too

>i dont get it
>therefore its pretentious
t. brainlet
also
>Why was Roller Mobster used for Pardo's first level?
Did you even play the game?

>i dont get it
Pull your head out of your ass, it was convoluted, not deep. Everybody got it.
>Did you even play the game?
I 100%ed years soon after release and haven't played it since.

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It plays faster than 1 thanks to the increased enemy count and emphasis on guns but also leads to you getting shot off screen because of the more open environments

Also Henchman did nothing wrong and got brutally cucked and murdered

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maps too big causing the player to be killed by a NPC off-screen
the rest is good

why would you 100% a game that you don't like?

He's an autist.

I fell for the GIT GUD meme.
All I discovered was that my initial impressions of the gameplay were spot-on, and if HM2 apologists can't fall back on that meme, then they have no response to criticism of the gameplay.

If only more people were interested in this game. Then more people would be pointing and laughing at this fucking moron.

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A lot
But also a lot went right.
I think it’s best not to argue about HLM1 VS HML2 because despite the genre and controls they’re totally different games. Hell they might not even be canon to eachother. Crazy shit.

>he didnt get good
lmao git gud

Thank you for illustrating.

windows that you get shot through can be used to your advantage

what the fuck

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He needs to HAVE character to BE a character, you absolute fucking brainlet retard

Yeah, you die to off screen enemies, restart the level and then shoot in the direction they previously shot you from, killing them without even seeing them. SKILL

it did, you just couldn't play as him

>Le Perv + the prison break was about as kino as the game got
but that's not Run + the subway

>implying video related isn't the best song on the best level in the game

youtube.com/watch?v=DyCtfd8w6JQ

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For a second I thought I was in Persona 5 thread and it was argument about whether Joker is a character.

Talking about Persona 5, you really shouldn't have made fun of the Midnight Animal developer. It would be much funnier if he actually released it first.

this

hm1 levels and pacing were more about emulating a slasher movie, with you swooping in and lurking behind corners
hm2 demands you expose yourself repeatedly for a good score
still a fun game but it's not really something you can play and replay in one go

the number

based
Everyone hated it because it's not what they wanted from a sequel but it's actually an amazing game

What makes it amazing compared to the first? There was more story, music, characters yet the gameplay wasn't improved in any way and was in fact made worse.

Am I the only one who preferred HM1's soundtrack more than the sequel's?

It's much more atmospheric and laidback, while HM2 is more techno and eurobeat-driven.

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I think the soundtrack in 1 is of a higher quality, but only slightly. I prefer 2's because it has like 3 times as many different tracks though. And there are some pretty laid back tracks in it too.

You know that one shitty level in HM1? The entirety of HM2 was like that.

hotline miami is the Pulp Fiction of indie games. Just slick, irreverent, tight gameplay with a nice non-linear story that yet was easy to digest.

hm2 was like a 7-season American remake of a great 4 episode British television show.

>one shitty level
Fun & Games?
>The entirety of HM2 was like that.
I agree.

It got banned in my country.
My government decided for me that a fictional pixel people rape in a fictional game would be too much for my feeble Australian mind to handle.

Literally this, and I know exactly what that one shitty level is in HM1

pirate it fag

Music taste is subjective, but I can see why a lot of people would prefer HM2's OST. I just thought it was a bit more forgettable while a lot of the songs in HM1 became like earworms for me. Maybe also for the fact that I replayed hm1 many more times than hm2.

I'm pretty sure 90% of people on Yea Forums pirated it.

You know the woman who wrote the article responsible for that ban, Cara Ellison? She's a writer on the new VtMB game.

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It wasn't even a rape, just an implication that it should start now and a fat guy's crack. And the game had the option to turn off even this babbie shit. Man, aussie policy is weird.

It’s hawaii not Vietnam senpai

Alex and Ash mechanic is extremely underutilized.

Thank God I was never interested in vampire faggotry in the first place.

HM2 was an upgrade from HM1. The basic but catchy music from HM1 has been replaced with much more agressive and over the top music. The HM2 gameplay is much more complex and tight with an extra difficulty setting that increases replayability. Going back to HM1 after finishing HM2 on harderst, feels ridiculously easy. I also enjoyed the HM2 story and how is being connected to the first one. The negatives are the fact that enemies can kill you off screen, more glass windows that I would like, and the broken door issues from HM1 are here as well. Also I didnt get enough chances to enjoy the akimbo guns from the bear guy and the rolling zebra guy and the duck duo are too random. All in all HM2 is a hardcore game that along with the combo system, emulates the killer's rush very well.

>HM2 was an upgrade from HM1

It was an upgrade in all the most superficial ways but the gameplay was downgraded.

>cons
-enemies killing you from off screen more often
-removing the mask system from the first game
>pros
-one of if not the best OSTs in all of vidya
-great story
-memorable characters
overall i prefer the first game, mainly for the masks giving the levels more replayability, but this is still one of the best games ive played in years

HM2 is harder at first, but HM1 has a higher skill ceiling. After going for world records on a couple of HM1 levels, HM2 with its prolonged combo window felt far easier to get high scores in. The combo window in HM2 was literally as long as the one in HM1 when you use the Zach mask that is specifically in the game to prolong the combo window. HM1 is just a lot faster and skill based instead of based on memorization of enemy positions.

Good God what the fuck is this creature you call Cara?

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If we had a free mode with any character available for any map hm2 would be infinitely better, prove me wrong.

>the academic Anita Sarkeesian

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>gameplay was downgraded
I wouldnt say that. I think the HM1 gameplay has the freedom of approach but eventually it could get too comfy or too unfair depending on your mask choice. Its unbalanced. HM2 is much more straightforward. It ditches that aspect so that the devs can work on the difficulty. In the end HM2 feels almost like a different approach so both games cant be really compared.

>Not having foreign friends to buy it for you
God, you're pathetic

t. Aussie who owns Hotline Miami 2

The first game did something so well that everything after that wouldnt improve it. It was a bright flare that snuffed itself out

Just like most of the old cunts that control our media, they don't know fucking anything and the faster they die the better. It's the only way that things might change.

In HM2, getting good means learning the level so well that you kill most enemies before you're even in their range because you know where to shoot at the edge of your screen.

In HM1, getting good at the game means having quick reflexes, thinking on your feet and quickly switching weapons to always have the best one for each scenario while not breaking your combo

The more I played HM2 the more I found myself just using cheap methods to get high combos. The more I played HM1, the better I was at it and the more enjoyable it became.

The first game was relatively short, had tight gamplay, levels, soundtrack and just everything about it felt breezy and slick. It had the right balance of everything. I don't understand people who prefer hm2 based on how "harder" and more "complex" it is.

The thing is, it's not really even harder or more complex. It just throws more characters at you that play slightly differently and you'll die more to off screen enemies you had absolutely no way of knowing were there before dying to them

Does anyone remember the dude that leaked that unreleased HM2 animated trailer? That was cool as fuck.

>It plays faster than 1 thanks to the increased enemy count and emphasis on guns but also leads to you getting shot off screen because of the more open environments
It would play faster if the player wasn't forced to do 2d peek-a-boo to trick the AI. The off screen enemies ruin the gameplay pace completely

>Everyone hated it because it's not what they wanted from a sequel but it's actually an amazing game
They dropped the ball when they reduced freedom and made the stages worse

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that really was one of the craziest endings to any video game i've ever played

>Roller Mobster
>Pardo's level
user you might have some actual brain damage

GOTTA GET A GRIP!

Based henchman sympathizer

Thats true. In HM2 hard mode, I abused the probematic doors to confuse the ai. I dont know if how high score works exactly, but when I replayed HM1 again I was getting that s rank pretty easily. I wasnt looking to go futher with the high scores. I was satisfied with HM1 S and with HM2 S on standard difficulty. I guess the variery of characters and the settings along with the more agressive sountrack, HM2 got me coming back more frequently.

Right, it was Technoir I was thinking of. Any other corrections you'd like issued, or are you content to let the rest of that post stand as fact?

God the level design was so fucking bad. The game was such a slog.

The fact that the story is pretentious,the fact that there were many levels that abused the glass windows and that memorization was basically impossible to have in the game

Nothing

isnt HM2 the pulp fictionesque one?

bugs
too hard for casuals
terrible pace compared to the first game
story pretentious as fuck
unlike the first it wasn't a novelty

>Why was Roller Mobster used for Pardo's first level?
That one was in the level with all the fans one after the other, wasn't it.

>The fact that the story is pretentious
It is.
>that there were many levels that abused the glass windows
Never said "many."
>memorization was basically impossible
It is. There are enemies whose positions and weapons are fixed, while others are randomized.

Not enough rape scenes.

it's a crutch for baddies, in 1's cramped levels you had to git gud because going in was the only option, in 2 just retry until you know all enemies you can cheese with offscreen shots