Customer Rating:      Summary: Wargames for your own PC. Comment: If you have ever seen the seminal 80's film Wargames then you now know what you are buying- a vector graphic style real time strategy game of World War 3.
So there are much prettier games out there, faster paced games out there and games with more variety. But what makes this game unique is the minimalist graphics combined with the staggeringly subtle sound track leads to the first anti-war computer war game.
What I mean by this is where there are lots of sober war games, they still fundamentally work on the adrenaline rush of the kill or the victory. This game (purely by suggestion) gets you wondering why you are playing the game in the first place and ultimately you may realise that while you have "won" the sheer human cost of nuclear war clearly means you really just haven't lost as badly as other countries.
Other games can have easy comparisons "it's a bit like X but with the look of Y" but this game is genuinely unique. The sound is what makes it, just by using a stripped down haunting score with the whoosh of background aircon, the gentle rumble of a nuke hitting (like it's a distant earthquake) and the occasional noise of another person coughing (or is that sobbing?) means you feel you are in a bunker waging a terrible war above ground.
You can speed up the building stage or moving stage or even firing stage of the game or you can slow it down to a crawl so the whole game can be played against a friend at work over a whole work day (I am not condoning this) so there is variety to how it can be played, but the best experience is at home with sound turned up at night.
Play it and be moved!
Customer Rating:      Summary: One of the best games i have ever played Comment: Ignore the two bad reviews for this game, one of them goes on and on about how good the game is but gives it 1 star because it is a bit to sadistic (IT IS ONLY A GAME BUDDY). the other guy clearly does not have a clue what he is on about, because you can play this game offline because i have done it hundreds of times.
DEFCON is a brilliant strategy based game, where you have to use initiative to knock out your opponent. It is like chess, strategically position your pieces in order to "checkmate" your opponent(s). if you are good at chess you will be good at this game.
however the crowning glory of this game is its ability to deliver a unbearably tense atmosphere as you count down the defcons. you will find yourself shaking with tension. i strongly recommend that you don't stray into the online aspect of this game until you are a seasoned veteran.
Customer Rating:      Summary: An excellent strategy game! Comment: I think many people, particularly in the on-line press, have vilified this game specifically due to it's theme and content. To be sure, the idea of a global thermonuclear war is truly terrifying. Much has been made by certain individuals of the fact that the player's score is based on what proportion of the enemy's civilian population is annihilated. However, in relation to this charge two points should be remembered. Firstly, the player obtains twice as many points for saving their own population as they do for killing the enemy population. Secondly, when playing against a competent opponent it's impossible to crush the enemy without suffering devastating losses in return. This game is an exemplary illustration of the fact that "winning" a nuclear war is impossible. Despite the fact that cities are destroyed amidst popup descriptions of how many megadeaths have just occurred, this game is on a deeper level a commentary on the folly of nuclear warfare.
Refering purely to the mechanics of the game, it is in fact an engaging and entertaining strategy game. Elegant in it's simplicity, great strategic depth is to be found in the disposition and deployment of one's forces. Timing, strategy and sheer luck all play a part in determining whether the player merely suffers terrible damage or utter annihilation. The range of units available is, whilst narrow, enough to offer a brad range of strategies to employ and also work very well together, for example fighters and bombers can be launched from land bases or aircraft carriers, and long range bombing missions can bencarefully carried out by the strategic emplacement of a carrier or two.
Graphically, the game displays an elegant simplicity. The graphics are somewhat eery but are nevertheless engaging. A large number of options means that the game is playable (and looks good) on anything from your latest game-eating monster PC to your dad's 5 year old computer. The game also has a small installation and offers a large number of scalability options.
The sound should also be mentioned. The sound effects play a definite secondary role to the music which is haunting, diconcerting and beutiful all at the same time. A ytuly superb audioscape.
All in all this game is an excellent and engaging strategy game that offers loads of scalability, graphical and sound options. Meaning, you can play this on a maching well below the advertised minimum requirements. It's fun to play, against an opponent or the computer and hours can go by while you carefully plan your strategy for armageddon. Very highly recommended.
Customer Rating:      Summary: very poor game Comment: you can only play this game online and the servers make no attempt to regulate the players therby making it unplayable unless you enjoy witnessing homophobic and racist comments from other players they just keep hurling abuse at each other and that seems to be the whole point of the game...a complete waste of time and money
Customer Rating:      Summary: Cold war classic Comment: Uplink, bundled free here, was the very coolest of indie breakthrough titles back in the day and Introversion have kept those indie principles close to their hearts ever since. The small team take crap from no corporate suits and, well, do whatever the hell they want to in the pursuit of delivering the best game experiences they can. I like that a lot, I also love DEFCON and its genuinely chilly cold war annihilation ascetic - DEFCON is supremely absorbing, and very much the ultimate work-day time waster.
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