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Hotline Miami

Developer: Dennaton Games Publisher: Devolver Digital
23 October 2012
Hotline Miami - cover art
Glitchwave rating
3.99 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
3,902 Ratings / 9 Reviews
#172 All-time
#5 for 2012
A masked individual receives anonymous phone calls to exterminate the Russian mafia in late 80's Miami.
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(This review is based on the game as it was on release. Some of the things covered have since been patched out or improved.)

Pointing a gun and firing comes easy in video games. Ethics and morals never factor in during those moments of decision and there certainly isn’t any remorse. These are virtual bullets reserved for virtual enemies, after all. This thoughtless violence has become central to many game narratives as of late, including Dishonored, Spec Ops: The Line, and now Hotline Miami.

“I’m here to tell you how to kill people,” a grizzled homeless man tells the player upon starting the game. As if we don’t already know.

Hotline Miami is a game about impactful killing. It asks players to focus on the details of invasion and murder that we don’t often consider in games. If Max Payne diving through a window, holding guns akimbo, is on one side of the spectrum of action games, Hotline Miami exists on the other side. And, it’s a very lonely place.

After a brief, ominous intro where a horse and rooster boss the player around, you are sent off to do some good old-fashioned killing. While the top-down perspective brings to mind Smash TV and Loaded, Hotline is not so generous with health and ammo. You’ll be lucky to find a gun with a full clip and even luckier if a bullet doesn’t send you back to the start. One bullet is all it takes, so being quiet and clever is essential to survival.

As a result, the game puts an emphasis on stealth and environmental awareness. The quicker you take down a room of enemies, the more likely you are to move on to the next. Knocking an enemy down by slamming the door, grabbing a melee weapon, and pummeling him while he is on the ground are regular acts of aggression in Hotline. There are plenty of guns, but firing one will summon most enemies in a level -- and they have plenty of guns, too. In some cases, you'll need to go in guns-blazing but it's not always the most effective approach.

Hotline doesn’t have the gentlest learning curve. Knowing when to swing a golf club and figuring out which doors you can blast through with a shotgun will take time. The game can be defined as brutal in more ways than one. There is no difficulty option and you’ll often find yourself stuck, as you try to figure out how to approach a punishing level. Dogs can’t be punched, big guys take more than one shot, and enemies can see you through windows: Finding your way through these constant obstacles gives Hotline almost puzzle game-like qualities and keeps combat mentally engaging.

Narrative and mechanics share the spotlight equally. Each level starts with a new week where you receive a new phone call, directing you to the next assignment. Once you clear out an area, you’ll head over to a pizza joint, bar, or video store for a brief story segment. Your actions are rated at the end of each chapter through killings, boldness, combos, time, flexibility (never score above a zero in this category), and mobility. The game never explains its system, but you’ll want to learn it to the best of your ability since doing well unlocks new weapons. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for masks which you can equip before a mission for perks. These perks range from starting off with a certain weapon to turning dogs into passive enemies. For whatever reason, you can't change masks at the start which can be very frustrating when you choose one not fit for the current mission or, even worse, when you choose a novelty mask without having a clear understanding of its effects (such as, making the screen look like a Virtual Boy).

I had no intention of playing this game in one night. It just kind of happened. Hotline is a game that will beat you down, enthrall you, and make you beg for mercy, often all at the same time. Brilliance is abound in Hotline. Its low-rent visuals could have been a disaster, but smart neon filters make it an oddly immersive and nauseating nightmare that you can’t easily walk away from. The soundtrack adds to the atmosphere, bordering on David Lynch and David Cronenberg fandom with a dash of ‘80s cool (think Drive). VHS shops and a sweet DeLorean are there to remind you this is 1989.

Back to the beating you down thing: Hotline Miami is 2012’s damaged gem. It’s an addictive, fun, and clever game but Goddarn if it couldn’t have used another month in development. Many if, not all, of its systems lack a layer of polish that is to be expected for a retail game. For example, its save system is a mess. Not only does the game not save checkpoints within chapters, upon leaving the game, it also occasionally will not even save when you start a new level. I had to replay an entire level as a result, which wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't the worst level in the game (and maybe the entire year -- it was a stealth level ...) I was right to play through Hotline in one sitting, because I regretted every time I exited the program.

Hotline’s controls could also have used some more work, as well. Walking with the WASD-keys and looking with the mouse feels okay but there should have been a sensitivity option for aiming. Since you’ll be dealing with large areas, you’ll need to hold down shift in order to look down a hallway. I’m baffled that the game restricts your view, yet offers a mask that increases your eyesight. This design decision often cuts into the playability of the game. The game wants you to be cautious, but how can you be cautious if you don’t even know what’s around the corner? Being able to see the entire map should have been the default option, not a bonus. Thankfully, restarting from a checkpoint happens in a flash, making for some painful stop-start sessions that bring back repressed memories of Super Meat Boy.

I blew through Hotline in four or five hours, occasionally managing to regain my breath and sanity in between intense firefights. I probably would have got through it faster if not for the misguided boss fights that act as the game’s biggest offender. These poorly designed sequences often are only solved in one way which goes against the freedom of play that the rest of the game promotes. Even worse, these fights are brutal and awkward. One has an enemy throwing Molotov cocktails that start fires that never go away. Yet, you need to fight against numerous enemies in a tiny office space. Yeah, good luck with that.

The game’s AI is dumb as rocks but it suits the pacing and style of combat. Yet, one has to wonder why enemies can’t hear their comrade’s shotgun fire or why they continue to sit on a couch after you blew their friend’s head off. Maybe it’s best to not think about these things, as they are the least of Hotline’s problems and contribute to the bizarre world the game creates. You'll be grateful of the AI's quirks once the difficulty ramps up. You'll savor every cheap kill you can get, even if it means repeatedly swinging a door to knock down 5+ guys.

Hotline is a confident and addictive shooter that stands out among releases in 2012, even though its flaws bog it down. It can be sickening at times and brutal at others, but it all builds up toward a commentary on games and pointless violence. The narrative's downward spiral of violence, insanity, and crime will not light up your day but it's very engaging in its own way. Hotline contains a surprisingly good plot full of mysteries and dark twists that players won't see coming. The morbid nature of the game won't be to everyone's taste, but it's a refreshing story for a videogame.

In a medium where taking a life means so little, Hotline Miami has a way of making each death feel significant. Each step toward a higher score is one further away from your character's sanity. Picking up the gun comes naturally, and Hotline Miami wants to explore why. The game may tease you, exhaust you, and possibly destroy you with its boss encounters and awful forced stealth level, but it all builds toward a focused, dark vision unlike much else in the medium.
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SUPER_Lonely_Panda 2016-04-05T00:17:32Z
2016-04-05T00:17:32Z
4.5
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Why was Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive such an influential cultural force across all forms of art and entertainment last decade? The film was released in the early period of the decade in 2011, so there was plenty of time for its 1980s-reminiscent aesthetic to seep into the zeitgeist of the 2010s. However, what I’m wondering is why so many artists gravitated towards emulating Drive’s style. Admittedly, the elements that constitute its style are endearingly kitsch, and the way that the retro-chic artistic direction is layered over gritty, darkened overtones presents a unique contrast that surprisingly melds together superbly. Normally, highlighting the purplish pink neon hue of the 1980s is a signifier of the decade’s elated decadence, but Drive’s direction rather exposes the drug-addled dirt and sleaze underneath the surface. Its modus operandi wasn’t an homage to the next-to-last decade of the 20th century, but a scathing depiction of what was hidden in plain sight across the ten years. Drive resonated with the influx of vaporwave and hypnagogic pop artists whose music reckoned back to the antiquated production of 1980s synthpop, as well as films like Baby Driver and the long-awaited sequel Blade Runner 2049 that shared Drive’s signature aesthetic and brooding, yet high-octane action pacing. In the realm of video games, the closest another work of fiction ever came to truly capturing Drive’s aura to its full extent is Hotline Miami, an indie darling that effectively translated all of the components of Refn’s most notable film to an interactive medium. However, while Hotline Miami may seem like an interactive Drive homage on the surface, the game achieves something much more interesting.

To start, Hotline Miami is fucking putrid. Drive, of course, had its fair share of scenes that didn’t shy away from depicting graphic, stylized violence on the celluloid, but every waking moment of Hotline Miami is a torrent of blood splatter. The entirety of Hotline Miami is that elevator scene from Drive and plenty of fans of the film state they find that scene hard to stomach due to its unflinching brutality. I realize that Hotline Miami is not a literal video game adaptation of Drive but if anyone were to make the argument that the violence of any adapted work is heightened in the video game medium to gamify the content, Hotline Miami would be a testament to this claim. “Jacket,” the anonymous protagonist whose nickname stems from the same snazzy clothing item signifier that Ryan Gosling’s character from Drive possesses, paints the interior walls of Miami’s corporate buildings with the gushing, red bodily plasma of the Russian mafia. However, the game never romanticizes the carnage, depicting the frequent massacres that occur throughout the game with a dread-filled, dark tone that becomes apparent once the flies start buzzing around the fresh, stinking corpses in Jacket’s wake once he climbs back up to his vehicle. The vibrant 1980s backdrop and aesthetic choices are practically what save Hotline Miami from plunging into severely horrific territory because what is being presented is truly grim and vile. I’m astonished how Hotline Miami didn’t draw in a flood of lashback from the typical crowd of concerned parents and scapegoating politicians considering the breadth of its depravity. Really, it’s probably because the pixel art that renders the viscera looks so quaint that Hotline Miami’s graphic content doesn’t bat an eye in an era with gaming visuals that could be mistaken for cinematics. Still, IF Hotline Miami weren’t an indie title where the developers were working with the bare essentials of gaming presentation, the game would make Max Payne look like Kirby. Hell, it could maybe even surpass Manhunt’s level of nihilistic gore.

Even though I’ve already compared Hotline Miami to Drive ad Nauseam at this point, the general objective across each of the game’s levels is reminiscent of the climactic sequence of Taxi Driver. For each of Hotline Miami’s chapters, Jacket enters one of the southern tip of Florida’s various commercial buildings, whose location is given through a dossier transferred to him via a phone call. Like Travis Bickle in Sport’s New York brothel, his objective is to clear the building of everyone in it, and I don’t mean by executing a devious prank like pulling the fire alarm. Jacket must take no prisoners and murder everyone on sight. The player witnesses this mission from a top-down perspective, a view of the scene from an impersonal angle as if they are an accomplice to the carnage as opposed to acting as the prime perpetrator (or an homage to when the screen pans out at the end of Taxi Driver?) More than likely, the top-down mechanics are to complement the twin-stick shooter gameplay. The player will control Jacket’s movement with a close combination of keyboard keys while performing most of the actions by alternating the left and right buttons on the mousepad. For anyone playing the console ports of Hotline Miami, both analog sticks need to be used simultaneously for both Jacket’s movement and aiming controls. Jacket enters every building unarmed, but this surprisingly isn’t a horribly miscalculated judgment call on his part as the area is littered with guns and other blunt objects galore. Simply knock out a goon situated at the front of the building and steal his weapon and he’s good to go. Of course, Jacket will dispose of his first victim a little more thoroughly, so the game allows him to perform an “execution” move on the ground with whichever weapon he has or his bare hands to slip the unconscious foe into a state of eternal oblivion. Once Jacket makes a meticulous effort to search every corner, closet, and behind every potted plant to dispatch all of his targets, he retraces his steps back up to the Delorean-esque limousine back to his safe house.

The rinse-and-repeat kind of gameplay that Hotline Miami bestows should tire the player through the stacked number of levels the game provides. However, Hotline Miami’s strict, constant difficulty curve is what staves off the repetition from becoming grating. Hotline Miami’s main gimmick is that the player must mow down the army of Russian mobsters without sustaining even a smidge of damage. If Jacket so much as trips on a cockroach that is sure to scurry by in these scuzzy hallways, he’s completely done for. Not to mention, all of the enemies inside are acutely alert (probably due to copious cocaine consumption), and they’ll spring at the opportunity to beat Jacket down or shoot him on sight before he can register what just happened. Hotline Miami’s core idiosyncrasy is absolutely brilliant, as the swift penalty for one’s mistakes adds a plethora of rich layers to the gameplay. While the overarching goal is to expunge the area of any Russian mafia activity, succeeding is not a simple matter of readying, aiming, and firing at will. Hotline Miami is a quasi-stealth game in that the player must refrain from acting rashly and plan each step accordingly. The jig won’t be up if an enemy catches Jacket, but the player should ideally be treating the overwhelming odds at hand with patience and tact if they want to make a clean getaway. However, for as proficient as some players might be in the vein of traditional stealth games like Metal Gear Solid, Hotline Miami practically guarantees that they’ll never achieve victory on their first attempt. Hotline Miami is a game whose progression is marked by trial and error, memorizing every little increment of the field and the relative rotation of where the enemies are stationed or the trajectory of their pacing. Later levels also add vicious rottweiler dogs that pin down Jacket and tear his trachea right out of his throat as well as burly black bouncers who are immune to melee weapons to thwart any accumulative familiarity. However, the cardinal rules to abide by in Hotline Miami, such as that the abrasively loud gunshots will always attract attention and that not taking advantage of every abrupt door swing to subdue enemies, will always be in place to ensure a quicker victory. As the game progresses, Jacket will unlock a wide variety of crude animal masks with special attributes that could compensate for whichever blindspot keeps befalling them. A checkpoint will be placed once the player reaches another floor as well, so the game is more than accommodating to its regulations. Still, some may feel dejected constantly respawning at the entrance upon subsequent failures, but the eventual triumph over the league of bald, eastern European Don Johnson wannabes will invigorate the player with a sense of gratification. Plus, all of the failed attempts behind the success will fuel one impressively smooth go-around. Jacket will execute every last living, breathing being in the vicinity unscathed like Travis Bickle, but if Travis Bickle had the killing acuity of a ninja.

Hotline Miami’s substance is interwoven into the gameplay and presentation, but there is a subtly told story that is still being told between the levels. Since his girlfriend left him, Jacket’s life has plummeted into a downward spiral of personal atrophy. The negligent, destitute state of his apartment is emblematic of Jacket’s metaphorical inner soul and mental state. Jacket’s evident apathy for his life and the world around him has made him a prime candidate for a radical group referred to as the “Fifty Blessings,” whose mission to fracture America’s relationship with Russia by exterminating their mafia is a very Cold War-centric pursuit of nationalism. Only a reprobate with nothing to lose would sign themselves up for a dangerously self-destructive act, and Jacket undoubtedly fits the description. As he accustomed himself to the daily grind of mass murder, Jacket’s mental state deteriorates even further. Three men often visit him in a hazy, darkened stupor of crawling insects that are wearing the animal masks he uses on the job, his “three witches” who judge him on his actions instead of offering premonitions. Jacket’s mental fortitude seems like it could bounce back after igniting a new relationship with a new girl he saved from a sleazy executive producer during a mission and interacting with a friendly and seemingly omnipresent store clerk that charitably gives him a bevy of free shit for his troubles. Unfortunately, the clerk winds up dead and so does his prospective new love, and the killer of the latter minor character shoots Jacket. He survives and is taken to the hospital, which is where we discover that the events in the game leading up to Jacket’s recovery have been a comatose recollection of his life’s recent events. Once he escapes the hospital and infiltrates the Miami police station, he confronts the man who reduced him to a vegetable and decides to let him live (in the canonical timeline) to procure instead information on where to locate the Russian mafia’s district leader. He confronts the local don, plus his female and canine bodyguards to shield him during his boss encounter, and then kills himself because he’s a man of outstanding pride. Jacket has rid late 1980s Miami of the Russian scourge, and treats himself to a long toke off of a Marlboro red as he tosses a picture from his pocket off the balcony.

Sure, this is technically the current of events that occurs throughout Hotline Miami’s runtime. However, how the game presents its story is akin to a photo collage where the pictures are aligned in a row. The player still has to piece together the context and correlative bearings between scenes and even then, the glue holding these hazy frames together isn’t sticking and making the pictures slip. In fact, we aren’t even privy to who is behind the phone messages until “Biker,” a boss battle whose death was only a fabrication in Jacket’s fleeting consciousness, confronts the two men responsible in the game’s epilogue. This is why Hotline Miami’s greatest theme is dissociation, a prevalent topic among the morally questionable protagonists from the films that comprise the game’s major influences. While Jacket is yet another unhinged renegade bound to enact (several) killing sprees, how Hotline Miami takes advantage of the video game medium to present Jacket’s dissociation from reality is utterly genius. You see, video games can get away with having a fractured, surreal narrative because at least it’s supported by the gameplay elements to hold the foundation. In most character-driven films, the entire plot arc has to be linear and cogent to prevent it from collapsing. All the player has to understand from the gameplay is that Jacket is climbing up the proverbial ladder to reach the tip of the Russian mafia tower, and the ascent is going to become more hectic the higher they reach. The lack of context and frazzled construction of the plot makes the player as dissociated with reality as Jacket, a deeper, symbiotic connection with the character than simply engaging with them from afar as a viewer. Jacket’s motives for assigning himself the onus of assassinating the entire Russian mafia are unclear but then again, what is the player’s motives for directing him through all the blood he spills in the first place? Dissociation isn’t a one-way street for the protagonist for the cogent viewer to assess from a clearer perspective; they are as confused and mentally incongruous as Jacket is, equally dissociating from the damnable ethics of the heinous sprawl of bloodshed.


If Drive was the first stepping stone in establishing the “synthwave” aesthetic that was popular in the 2010s, Hotline Miami most likely launched it into primetime. It’s no wonder as to why it resonated with so many gamers considering the extent of how inspired the game feels. Hotline Miami’s influences are conspicuous, but it is anything but pastiche. Hotline Miami borrows the similar themes, characters, and grizzly tone found in films like Drive and Taxi Driver and re-blends them into the realm of gaming like a fine cocktail on ice. It understood that it could accomplish what those films feasibly couldn’t in another medium, with exceptionally engaging and unique mechanics that future indie developers will be emulating from now until the end of time. If Hotline Miami’s goal was to create an interactive Drive, the developers managed to supersede its initial source. If one doesn’t mind reaching down into the depths of depravity and enacting ambiguous acts of ultraviolence, Hotline Miami is a landmark for gameplay and narrative innovation for gaming.
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Erockthestrange 2024-02-10T05:43:42Z
2024-02-10T05:43:42Z
8.5
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I like hurting other people
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yoitu 2023-10-04T15:48:53Z
2023-10-04T15:48:53Z
›80%
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hotline miami review
hands down some of the most fun I've had with a single-player game. i used to be so stuck on level 2 or 3 and never got past there. when I came back to it 5 or so years later I was reasonably reluctant cuz I thought that it'd just be a repeat of the last time I played. to my surprise, I beat the whole game in like 4 hours lmao. thank you supermega for rekindling my enjoyment for this game lmao
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whiteradios 2023-05-03T19:13:09Z
2023-05-03T19:13:09Z
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"Why are we having this conversation?"
A game that really pushes you to think about yourself instead of giving you the answers.

If nothing matters, if it's just pixels, if video games are a reality completely separated from ours, then why does guilt arrive when you realize how many people you kill and, worst of all, how much you enjoy it. Why does it take a game about killing people to figure out that killing people might not be the best form of entertainment? Or does it not count as violence does it not count as murder? Does any of this just not matter?

Why are we having this conversation?

Like, violence is really fucked up, isn't it?
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JuanJoker12 2023-04-14T01:58:34Z
2023-04-14T01:58:34Z
4.5
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Title
Engaging storyline, satisfying and unique combat, what's not to love?
One of those games you beat yourself up for not playing or discovering sooner.
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headway8553 2022-11-05T15:07:01Z
2022-11-05T15:07:01Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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Catalog

zakduece Hotline Miami 2024-03-27T07:50:13Z
Windows / Mac / Linux/Unix
2024-03-27T07:50:13Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Backlog
atticus_ Hotline Miami 2024-03-26T18:55:10Z
XSX
2024-03-26T18:55:10Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Lilith_01 Hotline Miami 2024-03-26T02:01:30Z
2024-03-26T02:01:30Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Maksym_Svyda Hotline Miami 2024-03-25T15:37:59Z
2024-03-25T15:37:59Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Diertz Hotline Miami 2024-03-25T10:52:32Z
2024-03-25T10:52:32Z
3.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Ali5ia Hotline Miami 2024-03-25T05:53:23Z
Windows / Mac / Linux/Unix
2024-03-25T05:53:23Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
chiefmozza Hotline Miami 2024-03-25T01:43:47Z
Windows / Mac / Linux/Unix
2024-03-25T01:43:47Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
INoLuv Hotline Miami 2024-03-24T19:40:22Z
2024-03-24T19:40:22Z
4.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
finguray Hotline Miami 2024-03-23T12:30:30Z
2024-03-23T12:30:30Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
JPEGNICO Hotline Miami 2024-03-20T22:08:54Z
2024-03-20T22:08:54Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
vidyaculte Hotline Miami 2024-03-20T17:51:57Z
2024-03-20T17:51:57Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ArpeggiDivision Hotline Miami 2024-03-20T16:59:06Z
2024-03-20T16:59:06Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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  • Previous comments (49) Loading...
  • Kittyhat 2023-11-30 23:21:03.996757+00
    visionary shit
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  • Klavor 2023-12-25 19:02:41.712596+00
    what a fcking great game
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  • BitterAndThenSome 2024-01-08 10:50:31.059836+00
    this game is so incredibly buggy and inconsistent with its combat, with the such lazy, repetitive, and downright frustrating level design, that it killed any enthusiasm I had about playing it
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  • BitterAndThenSome 2024-01-08 10:52:18.715731+00
    I was intrigued by the start, and thought the game's aesthetic was cool, but then it did fuck all and just assumed I'd be okay playing through the exact same thing 50 times over with random lines of dialogue so cryptic and nonsensical I can't even begin to understand what its trying to make me feel
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  • BitterAndThenSome 2024-01-18 19:35:50.888732+00
    Coming back later to say I was just pissed off when I wrote those comments, the game is fine lol
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  • otonhm 2024-02-08 15:44:19.322828+00
    I like the ending without the password better. the fourth wall break with the janitors representing the developers questioning your actions and telling you there was no purpose to all the violence beyond having fun is amazing and really puts the game in a special place among others that try to do something similar. it's very powerful in making you, the player, question the purpose of violence in games. there is absolutely no questioning of the postmodern tag for me. I get that they needed the other ending (the one with the 50 blessings reveal) to leave open the possibility of a sequel, which is what in fact happened and is hopefully explored in an interesting way in wrong number (still playing through that one). but the first one, which is what most people will get, considering how painful it is to collect all the letters for the password, is the ending that has the bigger impact and truly elevates the game for me. . Basically perfect game, and hasn't aged a day.
    reply
    • henryvines 2024-02-20 10:31:20.508674+00
      Couldn't agree more
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  • jpmouz 2024-02-13 22:06:22.781591+00
    game is so fucking cool man
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  • ncrocs 2024-02-15 05:02:48.199571+00
    maybe shouldnt give you the most busted mask from the get go but still insanely fun
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