Cold War Games: Hotline Miami

As someone who is a fan of the Cold war, it is nice to see video games that take place in that era. One of those games is a very enjoyable indie darling that I consider one of my favorite games of all time: Hotline Miami. The game was created by company named Devolver Digital using the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine. It was released in 2012 on Steam and GOG while a sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released in 2015.

The plot revolves around a group of protagonists who live in an alternate reality Earth in an alternate reality version of Miami. These characters received mysterious phone calls from a quiet and powerful organization that tells them to attack members of the Russian mob, criminals, or sometimes ultra-nationalist organizations. They are expected to go on borderline suicidal missions to attack whoever the people on the other end want them to attack. The goal of the player is to complete the tasks given by the answering machine and survive long enough to try to figure out who is sending these messages.

Spoiler Alert for Hotline Miami: In the alternate timeline of Hotline Miami, the Cold War grows into a conflict called the Soviet-American War. It happens during the 1980s and includes the Hawaiian Conflict - a series of battles where the Soviet Union occupied multiple islands in the Pacific including the state of Hawaii. Members of the United States military, including a group of protagonists you play as called the Ghost Wolves, fight to try an retake Hawaii. By April 3rd of 1986, the war escalates and leads to Marxist socialist forces firing a nuclear weapon on San Francisco, resulting in many deaths.

After this nuclear attack, there is a truce created called the Russo-American Coalition. While there is peace between Soviet Russia and the United States on paper, tensions grow and eventually lead to the rise of nationalism in the U.S. Eventually, a ultranationalist group forms called 50 Blessings: a terrorist organization that wishes to weaken the Russo-American Coalition and start a nuclear war between the USSR and the United States with the hope that the members of their organization and members of the U.S. government will survive global nuclear annihilation. 50 Blessings is the main antagonist of Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2 with many of the protagonists of the games who know about the organization working to prevent the group and its members from starting World War Three.