Overview
Want to try clearing hard mode, but curious/frustrated about the differences from Normal? This guide aims to bridge the knowledge gap and hopefully give you some tips and tricks to succeed.
Hardmode Miami 2: Wrong Difficulty
Hotline Miami 2 is already a fairly difficult game; players must rely on both quick reflexes and strategic thinking to get through each unforgiving enemy. Just one mistake is enough to hurtle a player back to their last checkpoint, forced to recover lost ground.
This can be frustrating if you dont go into levels and areas with a plan, and in the post-clear difficulty Hard Mode the game is made even less tolerant of error, with crueler enemy set-ups, a smarter AI, and reduced ammunition for all guns.
Fortunately, the situation for you, the player, is far from hopeless: The enemies retain mostly the same position they were in on Normal Mode (albiet mirrored) and all unlocks are carried over from Normal too, so really it’s only a small, yet bloody step up from the standard difficulty.
So, without further ado, I’d like to share the knowledge that I’ve learned after clearing Hard Mode with you, as well as specific tricks that can help you survive. This isn’t a ranking guide by any means, so if you are looking for A+s I’d suggest finding someone with much more ability and patience than myself.
The Nitty Gritty: Differences from Normal Mode
Hard Mode isn’t as big of a jump in presentation as you might expect from other games’ nomal vs. hard comparisons, there’s just a large amount of small changes to make things even more malicious for the player. In no paticular order:
1. All stages are noticably ‘mirrored’
This is similar to in the Mario Kart series (of all things) where the stage has been flipped. This doesnt really make a terribly large difference, but it’s a neat change nonetheless.
However, there are a small handful of stages (Most noticably Dead Ahead’s fourth area) where your entrance point to some areas will be different, and its not in your favor when they do so.
2.All guns with ammo counts have half their usual ammo reserve.
Exceptions are the guns in enemy hands until you have picked them up at least once, the weapon you chose as Soldier/Beard, Jake’s Nailgun from his Irvin mask, Ash’s pistol plus any other weapon he picks up, and the dual submachine guns Mark and The Son start with.
A short table of how much ammuniton you can expect to find in that gun you just picked up now: (assuming it wasnt fired)
Shotguns: 3 shells
Assault Rifles: ~16 rounds
Silenced Pistol: 7 rounds (The bodyguard at the start of No Mercy still gets 14 rounds for the starting pistol only)
Pistol: 9 rounds
Revolver: 3 rounds
‘Silenced’ Tec-9: 13 rounds (note that while it has a silencer on it, enemies will hear it)
Double Barrel shotgun: 1 shell (enough for you to use as mouthwash for picking it up!)
Submachine gun: 19 rounds
2b. Throwing away then picking up a weapon a second time will reduce its ammunition by half.
This is sort of in tandem with 2, actually, as the guns dont START with half ammo, rather, your hands were cursed by the National Rifle Administration gods to immedieatly make half of a gun’s held ammunition disappear upon touching it. Kinda like a reverse Midas touch. What this means is that you should choose the order of guns you pick up wisely, especially once you reach the later levels that have enemies only able to be killed by melee/executions. You don’t want to toss a shotgun with 3 shells in it away haphazardly, only to pick it back up and be down to one measly shell.
3. More enemies, and existing enemies are altered.
The change that will be benign at first, but bite you in the ass on later levels. Enemies that previously may have only been equipped with melee weapons are now toting assault rifles, there are more Fatties and Swordsmen/Psychos in some areas, and you might run into a dog or two where before there were none! This means you need to ensure you aggro enemies wisely so that you dont accidently pull that Fatty that wasnt there before, who will just laugh at the knife you have equipped.
4. Enemies are slightly smarter.
This isnt exaclty a huge step up in intelligence, as you can still ‘bait’ them just as well as in normal, but now they have slightly expanded sight ranges and can hear your gunshots from a liiiitle bit further away. Dogs will become your worst nightmare if you aren’t prepared.
5. The target lock-on ability is removed. Thanks, xxevildoctorxx!
This is thankfully an easy change to adapt to, as most weapons are fairly reliable on shooting where your cursor is, but it can make tricky melee weapon throws much more trial-and-error based.
The Hotliner’s Cookbook: Tips and tricks to make your life easier.
Even if you are quite skilled at the game, it can (and will) still take you by suprise if you let it. I’ve made a list here of tips and tricks that I wish i knew upon starting hard mode.
In no paticular order:
1. If you aren’t satisfied with the guns enemies are carrying, restarting the level will change their equipped weapons. Obviously, this isn’t as advisable if you are well through the level, but sometimes it can make a difference if you can pick up a Silenced Pistol from an enemy’s corpse over a regular one.
2. Always lure the enemies to you from safety whenever possible. One might view it as ‘cowardly’ or ‘cheap’, but it’s neccesary to survive unless you are absolutely insane at this game, and even then it’s a strategy you still need to use for some levels to keep yourself alive and still rack up your combo.
3.Shotguns. Silenced Pistols. Knives.
These are the holy trinity of Hotline Miami weapons. Shotguns will demolish anything you point them at with very little aiming needed and have the ability to instantly kill fatties, but are castrated in hard mode by the ammunition nerf. This makes them worth their weight in gold even more, so make sure not to waste them.
Silenced Pistols allow you to get away with mid range murder without alerting the group of enemies next to you who are behind the wall. This is crucial for some areas, where you’ll find that using any other weapon will alarm an unbearable swarm of enemies. Their biggest drawback is their incredibly unreliable accuracy at anything longer than a pissing contest, so aim carefuly if trying to take out someone across a screen.
Knives are the fastest melee weapon in the game, allowing you to kill everyone in front of you by holding down the left mouse button without worry of counterattack.
4. Before entering a new area, keep in mind it’s layout/enemies, and arm yourself accordingly. If you know you are about to encounter a bunch of fatties that are too close for comfort, bring a Shotgun. About to enter an area with a swarm of enemies immediately going for blood? Have a knife for melee only or an assault rifle/submachine gun. Going into an area with all of the above? Bring something silenced and pray.
5. Shotgun. Sniper Rifle. Flamethrower.
This is the holy trinity of Soldier/Beard weapons. Shotgun’s perks previously explained require no additonal worship. The Sniper Rifle has the perk of not only also being able to one shot Fatties, but also doubles your shift view range similarly to the George Mask from HM1. It also comes with 4 extra bullets compared to the shotgun, but does not have a spread like the shotgun. The Flamethrower has a small learning curve but if used properly has more ammo than the shotgun and sniper combined (tap lightly to use only ~2 fuel units) while still instantly killing anything it hits. Plus, ITS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FLAMETHROWER. How cool is that?
6. The first level you play as Soldier/Beard has a bug in Hard Mode that causes ammo crates to not open once you are out of ammo. This only affects the first level, and just means that you need to bring one of the Trinity mentioned above and ensure you keep enough ammo on hand for fatties. It’s thankfully a short level, and the rest of Soldier/Beard’s levels contain working ammunition boxes.
7. Fatties are terrible, terrible people and should always be dealt with a shotgun or enough room to run while they bleed out. It isnt always possible for either of the above to be present, so if so trying to snipe them with a silenced pistol without letting them see you or unloading ~6 normal bullets are your absolute last resort. Since they are usually in patrols with normal enemies, it would behoove you to target the fatty first. If you have a non-shotgun weapon, just shoot them once and let them bleed out so you can save your ammo.
8. Dogs are cancer. They’re fast, can maul you with near-zero time to react, and cannot be beaten with either door slams or your fists (Obvious exceptions are Tony and Brass Knuckle Son). Sometimes your best course of option is to know how they patrol a room, and wait for them to come to you before killing them.
A noteworthy dog-related hint regarding the last Pardo/Detective level: The first room has an added dog right in front of the door at the very start when you are certainly unarmed. You have to wait for his patrol to leave aggro range, and lure a different enemy to you without luring the dog. Once you kill that guard, take his weapon and deal with the dog as usual.
9. Swordsmen and Psychos will pull some Neo stunt from the Matrix and dodge all of your bullets. They MUST be killed with melee, and Swordsmen will require you to have a Melee weapon while Psychos can be knocked down with fists, leaving them open for executions. When you start seeing these enemies grouped with Fatties, try to lure either one or the other, but not both, depending on your equiped weapon.
10. On levels with The Fans, pick either The Twins or Mark, depending on preference or level layout. NO EXECPTIONS. <3
11. When playing as The Twins, you can scum out corners by having Ash (the one with the gun who is invincible) be out in the open and you behind cover, and open fire with no chance of counterattack.
12. When playing as The Son and using his ‘Bloodlines’ dual submachineguns, you can exploit an odd glitch to be able to drop his guns without emptying them by holding the right mouse button and shift, then releasing RMB once your arms are completely spread out and hitting the R key as soon as you do so (while still holding shift). Doing this can let you switch to a melee weapon if you need to take out a Swordsmen, but it will also remove the dual submachineguns, so you can’t pick them back up if you do this.
This bug doesn’t work for Mark, but thankfully, none of his levels have enemies that require you to use melee attacks, so there’s no reason to ditch them early. Thanks, Triforce Collector!
13. While a basic tip, remember that enemies hearing your gunshots can sometimes work in your favor. Fire off a round and let those bastards around the corner with shotguns come to YOU.
14. When playing as The Reporter, in the interest of clearing Hardmode over scoring well, go into ‘Blood Rage’ as soon as possible to make the level easier. This can easily be accomplished by knocking opponents down with a bare-handed punch and hitting them more than once for the execution. Two caveats:
One: You cannot do this on opponents that are floored in a pose where they are sitting against the wall. The Reporter will not get the opportunity to keep hitting them in this position.
Two: You only need to kill two opponents to toss the jacket off and go into blood rage. Additionally, when performing the ‘overkill’ execution, you dont need to do every punch the game will let you, just enough until you see blood will count as a kill. However, if you enjoy hurting other people and are safe to do so, feel free to turn their heads into a pulp 🙂
15. Finally, be patient and willing to try a strategy more than once. Sometimes an enemy may do something unpredictable or things wont go your way, but generally speaking you can get through every scenario just fine as long as you have a sound strategy and the tools around you to pull it off. If you make a mistake or are caught by suprise by a threat you did not know was present, sometimes it really is just as easy as making a small change to your play to accomadate for that one new element.
Conclusion
With this knowledge under your belt, hopefully your trek through Hard Mode will be just that much easier enough for you to win.
If you start getting discouraged, take a break. Come back to the level giving you trouble later with a fresh start. Sometimes you just get frazzled and need time to get your mind back into it.
Above all, since there is absolutely no incentive to beating Hard Mode outside of the shiny achievement and bragging rights, make sure you are trying to clear Hard Mode because you enjoy the game enough to want to, not because you feel obligated. There’s no extra scenes, no good ending, no happy reason to trudge through it again outside of enjoying the ride a second time but with more challenge.
I apologize for the slightly disorganized presentation of content, and hope that this will help those who needed it. Any constructive suggestions or corrections to grammar and errors of fact are appreciated in the comments and will be replied to and cause updates if valid.
I hope you all enjoyed the conclusion to one of the greatest indie series as much as I did. Thanks for reading!
Changelog:
4/10: Added something pointed out by a commentor, fixed a small handful of spelling/grammar errors and changed some small things to make it nicer to read.