Reagan Gorbachev is Cold War Hotline Miami

Violent and disconnected

What if presidents in world-leading nations, the ones that get to decide who’s a “bad guy” and who’s a “good guy,” more directly embraced the deaths they cause? Reagan Gorbachev isn’t asking that question.

The Hotline Miami-styled “top-down action stealth game” just came to PC and Xbox One and despite starring two historical figures is, “is not a political game,” just “historical.”

The duo was used as an obvious metaphor for teamwork across fraught relations (it’s a one- to two-player game and I imagine the latter is the better way to play). “We wanted to make a game that required two unique and disparate characters to work together towards a common goal. In doing so, we’re hoping to subtly reinforce a message that is absolutely critical in life: shared goals require teamwork.”

But while this clinical analog might work for those with the appropriate distance, the idea of wandering around as senile, murderous Reagan is pretty dang off-putting for me given how badly he affected the lives of millions of people do this day. His administration illegally sold guns to Iran to illegally fund Nicaraguan terrorists trying to overthrow the government. To say nothing for the continued vigor he put into the “War on Drugs” in the US that has led to an insanely huge prison population and destroyed countless lives or the financial sector deregulation he kicked off that’s led to 30 years of stagnant wages. So, I don’t know, “ooh a former president is killing people with a sword!” just ain’t enough for me.