![]() The game starts at Defcon 5, which is when you build. ![]() ![]() The pace of the game is dictated by the five different Defcon levels. The world is divided up into six territories-North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the U.S.S.R.-and in a typical game, you'll take control of one of these territories as you attempt to dish out as much radioactive damage as you can while minimizing collateral damage. As a minor note, the game also features a pretty good manual, which comes off like a Cold War survival guide with explanations of what fallout is and some half-serious suggestions on building a shelter and fabricating your own fallout suit.Īs a real-time strategy game, Defcon strips away all of the economic systems that arguably make many modern RTS games impenetrable to nonveterans, so it becomes purely a matter of military might. Or is it crying? The ambient sounds end up looping after a while, but that doesn't lessen their effect of making you feel like you're holed up in a bunker, helping dictate how the world ends through a remote computer terminal. There's not so much music as there is a drifting, ominous instrumentation, and mingled with these dark sounds are the light hum of computers, the hollow wash of recycled air, some indistinguishable radio chatter, and the faint sound of someone coughing. The sounds that accompany the action are appropriately blippy, and there's definitely something sinister about the Klaxons that sound when you reach a new Defcon level, but it's the ambient sounds that really set the mood. One of the most chilling aspects of Defcon is the subtle ways it suggests that it's more than a simulation, something it does almost entirely through sound design. It has the look and feel of a pure military simulation, and touches like the dotted lines that trail a missile's trajectory and the white blots and kill-count numbers that accompany a successful nuclear strike lend a certain sense of authenticity. Vector-based visuals and a purposeful lack of geographical detail on the map give the game a very clean look, and the simple icons used to identify radar arrays, missile silos, airbases, and naval fleets further the game's abstract feel. ![]() The game's interface consists almost entirely of a flat, horizontally scrolling map of the world and how it looked around 1983, which means that if you look closely at borders, you'll see that East and West Germany are still divided, countries like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia are still in one piece, and most importantly, the U.S.S.R. Defcon's biggest weakness is that beyond the queasy thrill of simulating full-scale nuclear war, there's not much structure.Ī big part of what makes Defcon so intriguing is its presentation. The game's abstract visual style is absolutely striking, presenting Armageddon with a certain cool detachment, and the simple, clear-cut objective makes it an easy game to pick up. The game stays true to the message of its source material, which is that there are no winners in nuclear war, though it does posit that perhaps with the right strategy, you can lose less when it finally does happen. In a sincere act of tribute, developer Introversion has taken the deadly global thermonuclear warfare simulation from the classic 1983 Cold War film WarGames and fleshed it out into a full game called Defcon: Everybody Dies.
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