The narrative jumps back and forth between something like nine sets of protagonists and it leaps backwards and forwards in time depending on what part of the story it’s telling it’s your job to mentally weave these disparate narrative threads together. It’s heavier on the cutscenes, heavier on forcing you to play how it wants you to play, and a whole hell of a lot heavier on the difficulty, which renders some levels into a repetitive and frustrating cycle of trial and error that feel like they rely on luck as much as they do skill. Hotline Miami 2, uh… doesn’t do this so much.

The eerie, silent strolls back through completed levels are still great, simultaneously letting you glory in your skill and feel very bad about what you’ve just done. Nope: Hotline Miami was about sudden, vicious violence. There was a plot (and not a bad one, to my mind its simplicity worked for the game rather than against it, and its grubby brutality and schizophrenic feel added a lot to the atmosphere) but it largely took a backseat to the gameplay.

And if you fuck up? Press R to restart, instantly. And then you might try it again with a different mask or taking a different route, to increase your score and to try to top that feeling of being in control of the bloody chaos that erupts within five seconds of starting. You were constantly pressured to play recklessly – to charge into a room, slam a pipe into someone’s face and then throw it at a gunman to knock him down before he could take aim, and then grab a fallen pistol to finish off a third foe before he got close – and you were rewarded for doing so, not just in terms of points but mostly in terms of how goddamn amazing you felt. Everyone’s favourite rooster returns to dole out cryptic advice and warnings in pseudo-dream sequences.

Hotline miami 1 vs 2