DSX Test Shop 2

Plot

In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door containing a rooster mask. Alongside the package, there are strict instructions advising Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station using violence. Jacket continues to receive messages on his answering machine instructing him to conduct more massacres. After each massacre, Jacket visits a store or a restaurant where a man known as Beard[b] meets him and gives away free items such as pizza, films, and alcoholic beverages. During an assault on the estate of a film producer, Jacket rescues a girl and takes her to his apartment, nursing her back to good health and developing a romantic relationship with her. After this assault, Jacket is visited by three masked personas who question him for his actions, with these encounters continuing throughout the game. In another assault on a phone company, Jacket finds everybody dead except another operative known as the Biker, who is attempting to access a computer, and the two fight to the death.

As Jacket continues his massacres, his perception of reality becomes increasingly more surreal. Talking corpses begin appearing at Beard's places of work, and eventually Beard himself abruptly dies, replaced by a bald man named Richter that offers Jacket nothing. After coming home one night, Jacket discovers his girlfriend murdered and a rat-masked man on his couch, who shoots him and places him into a coma. In one final encounter with the masked persona Richard, he tells Jacket that he will "never see the full picture". It is afterwards revealed that Jacket was reliving the events of the past two months while comatose after being shot by Richter. After waking up, Jacket overhears that his attacker has been put in police custody, and escapes the hospital in search of him. He storms Miami police headquarters, killing everyone inside and finds his attacker to be Richter, who had also been receiving messages on his answering machine. After interrogating him, Jacket spares his life and steals the file on the police investigations of the killings before heading to a nightclub that the calls were tracked to. He finds the address to be that of the Russian Mafia headquarters, kills all of the guards, and confronts both leaders of the syndicate. After Jacket kills his personal bodyguard and injures his hands, one of the leaders "spares him the pleasure" and commits suicide. When Jacket confronts the other, he contemplates the things he did and allows Jacket to kill him without resistance. Afterwards, a victorious Jacket walks out onto the balcony and lights a cigarette, taking a photo out of his pocket and throwing it out.

Themes and analysis

Hotline Miami advocates an anti-violence message through making the player feel guilt for their in-game massacres. The game utilizes upbeat music and a score system to drive the player to commit the massacres, though the violence in each killing is emphasized through gruesome executions that have over exaggerated gore. Examples of these executions include disfiguring enemies with boiling water, shooting dogs with shotguns, and bashing enemy heads in with baseball bats. As the game is fast paced, the player may enter a state where they're focused exclusively on their inputs and become desensitized to the actions they are committing, assuming they weren't desensitized to begin with. At the end of each level, the upbeat music is replaced with ambience as the player exits the building as the motionless, gory remains of enemies flood the floor.