20 Best Video Games Of The Generation (So Far)

11. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami is one of the purest executions on the fun of what controlling a game feels like. It's like plugging a series of impulses directly into your brain, comprising pulse-pounding synthwave music, top-down twin-stick shooter controls, buckets of blood and combo meters, the resultant mesh being an in-the-moment euphoria it's hard to describe with words.

For the sequel, developers Dennaton expanded on the original's difficulty curve from the get-go, forcing you to hit the ground sprinting. Firearms are now more plentiful, the levels larger and the room for error far smaller. Rather than knowing that taking a human hostage will give you a second to breathe, you need to chart a needlepoint-thin line through each area, the resulting wave of devastation being piles of bodies, popped craniums and expended cartridges.

Not since 2011's Bastion has a game had such an intrinsic fusion of sound design and lightning-fast mechanics, and Wrong Number manages to use it to spectacular effect, outshining the original in almost every regard.