8 Times The Video Game Killer Was Hiding In Plain Sight

7. Manny Pardo - Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami arrived in a wave of indie titles like Papers Please, Gone Home and Firewatch all helping elevate gaming as a medium across the early 2010s.

Its synthwave-backed soundtrack mixed with brutally violent gameplay and a suitably disgusting sound design made it a must-play, and it's one of my all-time favourites.

For the sequel then, developers Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin blew out every last part of the game's tonality and purpose. If Hotline 1's core takeaway was how much fun video game violence can be to indulge in, Wrong Number stretches that out across many different characters, with many different thoughts on the one-man killing spree that just went down.

One person you inhabit is Manny Pardo, a detective who slowly reveals himself to be the "Miami Mutilator". Clues are peppered throughout the game such as a body hidden in the back of his car if you know when to look, or how he comments to writer Evan Wright about the Mutilator deserving to be written about instead.

All speak to Pardo's own need for attention, and by game's end, Manny confronts a manifestation of his own deadly persona, only to be killed by police while trying to say he's a detective, then realising it was just a dream.