Hotline Miami
=== Plot ===
Hotline Miami, taking place in Miami in 1989, employs an unreliable narrator and events are sometimes presented out of chronological order. The player takes the role of an unnamed man dubbed "Jacket" by fans for his distinctive letterman jacket. One day, Jacket receives a voicemail about a supposed delivery of 'cookies' to his home. He finds a package outside which contains a rooster mask and instructions to perform a hit on a group of criminals and steal a briefcase in their possession, threatening that he is being watched and that "failure is not an option." After Jacket completes this mission, he receives further messages on his answering machine, each asking him to take care of an innocuous "problem" at a specific address; these locations invariably contain a criminal operation, usually run by the Russian mob, that he must eliminate. Throughout the game Jacket has visions where he is confronted over his actions by three masked figures; the cryptic rooster-masked Richard, the hostile owl-masked Rasmus, and the sympathetic horse-masked Don Juan.
During a raid on the estate of a movie producer, Jacket rescues a woman who was being sexually abused and brings her home. In another mission Jacket is called to a phone company where he finds everyone dead except for a lone biker, whom Jacket then kills. Jacket can find other animal-masked killers dead or dying during his missions, and after each mission he visits a store or restaurant where the same bearded clerk greets him. "Beard" gives him encouragement and free samples of merchandise.
Jacket's perception of reality becomes increasingly surreal. He begins to see the talking corpses of his victims during his everyday life. Beard abruptly dies, his bloody corpse remaining at his places of work, and he is replaced by an abrasive bald man, Richter, who offers Jacket nothing. One day Jacket arrives home to find his girlfriend murdered and a man in a rat mask on his couch, who shoots him in the head. The attack puts Jacket in a coma; he wakes up in a hospital and overhears that his attacker is in police custody, whereupon he escapes and storms Miami police headquarters.
Jacket discovers his attacker was Richter, who had also been following the orders of threatening voicemails, and steals the file on the police's investigation of the killings. With this he raids the mob-owned nightclub the calls were tracked to, finding the address of the headquarters of Miami's Russian Mafia. Jacket then goes to this address and kills the syndicate's leaders.
The game's main story ends with Jacket killing off the Russian Mafia's leaders, but afterwards the player can play bonus levels as the Biker from the telephone company. Another recipient of the mysterious phonecalls, the Biker has gotten fed up of carrying out their assignments and is trying to track the callers down. From raiding the phone company the Biker traces the calls to the mob-owned nightclub, and when Jacket arrives the Biker kills him. At the nightclub the Biker finds a hidden basement, where two janitors have been sending out the mysterious phonecalls. If the player has found secret letters hidden in Jacket's levels, the Biker will crack their computer's password and learn the janitors work for 50 Blessings, an ostensibly-peaceful patriotic organization, and have been using its membership to carry out killings to derail an alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Janitors boast their "experiment" is only the "tip of the iceberg" of a larger conspiracy. Without the password, the janitors claim they were acting out of boredom and mock the Biker's attempt to rationalize his actions.
=== Characters ===
Most of these names are unofficial because they were not named in-game.
Jacket - He is the main protagonist of the game. He wears various masks and performs a number of brutal assassinations in response to cryptic messages left on his answering machine. He is later attacked by another masked assassin, who kills his girlfriend. Because of this, he pursues those he feels are responsible. While he is given no name, various pieces of merchandise and cross-promotion have adopted "Jacket" as his official moniker.
Biker - The protagonist in the chapters that occur after the main storyline is finished. He receives the same phone calls as Jacket, but is less willing to follow their instructions, eventually trying to end his affiliation with the group. This eventually leads him to a confrontation with Jacket. He is playable in the later chapters, but uses a different play-style than Jacket: he is unable to use stray weapons and can only use a cleaver as well as three throwing knives.
Richter - Another person receiving the same phone calls. He is the one who attacked Jacket and killed his girlfriend.
Richard, Rasmus, and Don Juan - Three masked personas that Jacket sees within his distorted reality.
Girlfriend - A woman the protagonist rescues early in the game. While nursing her back to health, it is implied the two begin a relationship. She is later murdered by Richter.
Beard - The only apparent friend of Jacket's, who works at every shop Jacket visits.
The Janitors - A couple of sneering green-attired "janitors", blonde and brown-haired, belonging to the militant American nationalist group 50 Blessings. They turn out to be behind the campaign of brutal terrorist violence in which Jacket, Biker, and Richter are involved as participants. They are modeled after the creators of the game, Wedin and Söderström.
psychedelic, neo noir, violence