
DEFCON: Everybody Dies
Introversion Software · Sep 29, 2006
About
Inspired by the 1983 cult classic film, Wargames, DEFCON superbly evokes the tension, paranoia and suspicion of the Cold War era, playing on the fascinating aspects of psychological gameplay that occur during strategic nuclear warfare.
You play a General hidden deep within an underground bunker. Your mission is to successfully exterminate your enemy's civilian population whilst saving your own. Points are awarded or lost depending on both the efficacy and thoroughness of your nuclear vendetta and the number of your own civilian deaths. In order to win you must wipe out the enemy population and simultaneously disable the enemy's ability to retaliate against you. This is an extremely difficult task since launching an attack on the enemy exposes the positions of your own Ground Silos, Subs and Bombers the moment they launch nuclear weapons, making you extremely vulnerable and exposed to a crushing counter-attack.
Desperate attempts must be made to form fast, tactical alliances, alliances that may at any moment break-down to become the treacherous and most deadly of betrayals. Everyone looks to each other in a state of nervous suspense and paranoid accusation. In all-out nuclear Armageddon, everybody dies, everybody loses, you just have to make sure you lose the least!
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Critic reviews
- 8.5DEFCON's a great example of how a few simple concepts can be combined to make something that's incredibly interesting and pleasantly complicated. The nostalgic echoes of WarGames definitely helps give the title a familiar flavor for older gamers, but even folks who haven't seen the movie will appreciate the way this game can seem detached and utterly intense all at the same time.
- 9.0So, simply put, it's an amazing game. It could be argued that the appeal is limited, as after all, there is only one map to play on. But due to shifting alliances and perceived threats, the game never fails to feel anything but completely fresh. And even if DEFCON may seem limited to some, it's only £10, which is peanuts for a game of this quality.
- 8.1Even though the main source of inspiration for Defcon is more than 20 years old, and Cold War paranoia is a thing of the past, the game feels disturbingly relevant, and much like developer Introversion's past work, Uplink: Hacker Elite and Darwinia, there's truly nothing else quite like it today. It doesn't do any heavy-handed sermonizing about the price of war or the blurry lines between games and reality, but the game's matter-of-fact presentation of nuclear holocaust makes it hard not to ponder these topics anyway.
- 9.0The pruned unit selection, simple relationships and fixed playing field give DEFCON more in common with chess than most RTS games. It's not a game to get lost in for hours on end, but it is one you'll get the urge to play again and again for months to come. The fact that it's only 15 bucks seals the deal.
- 8.0Defcon is as pure and direct a game as its inspiration, and its limitations are ones of the game's basic scope. There's a single world-map, of the real locations, which, while it offers more strategic variability than you may expect at first, is still a hard limitation.
- Avec son concept amoral mais jouissif, Defcon nous permet de nous glisser un instant dans les bottes des quelques fous qui tiennent tous nos destins entre leurs mains. Doté d'un gameplay solide et d'une atmosphère réussie, le nouveau jeu d'Introversion s'impose une nouvelle fois comme une curiosité à essayer et même à adopter.
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