This mafia has taken from a lot of people. But my rule was all I had. Gandhi once said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." But he's full of shit. I'm going to take everything from Gino. I'm gonna come at them with red hot vengeance.
— The Hitman
Red Hot Vengeance is a third-person isometric shooter game by indie game dev group Bros Before Giraffes, about a hitman out for vengeance after getting double-crossed by his employers. It follows our protagonist through ten levels of blasting the living hell out of every bad guy standing as he takes his ex-boss's syndicate apart and seeks to track him down.
This game provides examples of:
- Assassins Are Always Betrayed: Hoo boy. Gino not only tries to get the protagonist to kill a little girl (despite the protagonist expressly reminding him that he doesn't do that shit) but firebombs his apartment when he takes her home and won't go through with it.
- Batter Up!: You can pick up a baseball bat as one of the weapons, and aside from your fists, it is the only melee weapon in the game. There is even a Challenge based on its use.
- Big Bad: Gino, the protagonist's ex-boss, who is behind the betrayal that sends him on his rampage.
- Car Cushion: When the protagonist throws Gino off the police station roof at the end of the game, Gino lands right on a squad car.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The game's basic color scheme is all in black, grey, white and red, which is very fitting for its violent crime noir story.
- Dirty Cop: Just about all the police you face here are in Gino's pocket, and will blow you away just like the other bad guys will if given a chance. The final mission has you storming a police station full of these guys in order to get to Gino and end him once and for all.
- Disney Villain Death: How Gino finally bites it after a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from the protagonist.The Hitman: You like killing little girls? I like throwing fuckers off rooftops!
- Down in the Dumps: At some point in the story, our protagonist blasts through a junkyard being used by Gino's mafia for chop shop work.
- Guns Akimbo: The protagonist can wield two Sidearms together on the Weapon Wheel, and use both buttons on the mouse to blast off. You cannot do this with shotguns, assault rifles, or other Primary weapons, however.
- Hitman with a Heart: The protagonist, with his rule of "no women, no kids." He is forced to break this rule when Gino has his apartment firebombed and leaves the poor girl that he was sent to kill but took in instead in horrible pain and suffering, necessitating a Mercy Kill.
- Mercy Kill: How the protagonist ends up breaking his one rule, in order to spare the girl he had taken in from any more suffering.
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Nintendo Hard: The game can be quite unforgiving in terms of difficulty, much like Hotline Miami. - No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The protagonist gets to deliver one of these to Gino near the end of the game.
- Professional Killer: The protagonist and many of the bad guys he faces.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Pretty much the name of the game here. After the horrible events of Chapter 3, the protagonist seeks to take apart Gino's syndicate piece by piece before taking him down for good.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: The slowest but most powerful sidearm you can wield, and much like other sidearms, they can be dual wielded.
- Slaughterhouse Fight: Gino's mafia owns a meat packing plant that they use to dispose of bodies. True to form, the boss of the joint is called The Butcher, and you have to kill him when you blast through the place.
- The Mafia: Who the protagonist worked for.
- The Mafiya: The first mission has the protagonist killing an accountant for these guys. They show up again at the very end of the game to try to fill the void Gino left, and the protagonist realizes that his job is not yet done.
- Title Drop: The page quote at the end of Chapter 3, where the protagonist vows vengeance against Gino.
- Would Not Hurt A Child: The protagonist. The only time he breaks this rule is to spare the poor girl he took in from any more suffering after the firebombing of his apartment.
