GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Following the smash success of iconic top-down shooters Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2, publisher Devolver Digital teased a brand new spin-off installment, taking players on a blood-splattered rampage of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“Miami isn’t a city for everyone, so we wanted to give a more toned-down alternative for the more sensible homicidal maniac,” said lead developer Jonatan Söderström. “Hotline Miami’s oppressive electronic soundtrack obviously didn’t fit, so we opted for a high energy folk soundtrack to reflect the more rural Oklahoma lifestyle. We even worked with the Tulsa Tourism Bureau to show off some of the city’s features, including a gory mini-boss at Tulsa’s Golden Driller statue and making the player bash in the brains of everyone in the Greenwood Historical District.”
Hotline Tulsa players seem unimpressed by the new installment in the series.
“I’m starting to see why they based the first two in a fun city,” said early-access tester Brian Cromwell. “Even the tutorial of the game takes forever, because instead of a brief, cryptic phone message from a creepy caller, your neighbor from the house half a mile down the road calls you and talks you through their day for forty minutes and asks you to water their plants when they go out of town. Sure, some cosmetics and unlockables are cheaper because the cost of living is lower, but that’s not worth having to walk two miles to find the next enemy held up in their wheat farm.”
Despite some players’ reservations about the spin-off title, others appreciated the change of pace.
“Miami is such a dense, cluttered city, it’s nice to take it easy with a controlled, more personal slaughtering of Tulsa,” said player Jack Manaheim. “In such a massive place like Miami, you never really got to know any of the mysterious masked characters, but now in this game I get to butcher familiar faces of close neighbors and mom-and-pop store owners. I like that I can slow down and mosey through the town killing everyone in my path instead of having to sprint around neon nightclubs.”
At press time, Devolver Digital had reportedly scrapped their additional spin-off Hotline: St. Louis, as the game would be too challenging due to the city’s impossibly high crime rate.
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