Review

It would be a safe bet that someone at Introversion Software is a fan of the 80’s techo-thriller, War Games. Anyone who remembers that film will recall it was about a schoolboy who inadvertently hacks into the US defence mainframe and almost starts World War 3 by playing a game called “Global Thermonuclear War”. DefCon is that game, or at least what we imagined that game to be!

The aim of the game is simply to wipe out your opponent (or opponents) before they do the same to you. If you play the “quick” version then you simply have to kill as many people as possible within a set time limit! You’re given a small territory to occupy and access to radar defences, missile silos, airfields and fleets of battleships. How you use these is entirely up to you but you have to remember that an all out assault will leave you horribly exposed to attack but at the same time if you opt to be too defensive you’ll probably lose that way instead.

Basically, it’s a game of two halves. The first part sees you setting up your defences as the clock slowly counts down to Defcon 1 and when you reach this alert status you can unleash your warheads on your opponents. It really is that simple, in theory and in practice. Don’t go expecting it to be a breeze to play though, this is really quite fiendishly tough at times and will punish the slow and weak.

Anyone familiar with Introversion’s last game, the visually unique Darwinia, will already know that they have a knack for creating incredibly deep and complex games and make them completely accessible to everyone. I’m not that big a strategy game fan, mainly because I find most entries into the genre to be overly complex or difficult, but thanks to a hugely in depth (and optional) tutorial I was able to grasp the basics of Defcon almost instantly.

The best thing about this game though is that it’s playable online and very easy to set up matches against your friends. A maximum of six players can take part with any number of these controlled by CPU or human players and it can be immensely pleasurable to forge alliances against other opponents. However, you should always keep one eye on your allies, as it’s just as easy to dissolve the alliance without warning!

There are two main reasons why Defcon comes very highly recommended: first off is that it only costs a tenner to buy it (you can download it either through Steam or direct from Introversion themselves) and the second is that it doesn’t require a beast of a PC to run it - my PC is a mere 1Gb processor, GeForce 2 and 768Mb and it runs like a dream!

It’s not everyday that you get to play a game where the final body count numbers in the millions!

About the Review

Platform

PC

Developer

Introversion Software

Publisher

Introversion Software

Released

29th June 2006