Defcon: Everybody dies

Defcon is the newest release from developer, Introversion Software. Introversion takes great pride in developing original games, which vary a lot from the mainstream FPS and RTS games you see on the game scene today. They started out in 2001 with Uplink; a highly original hacking game, and after a 4 year wait released Darwinia; an RTS game which combined “tron” graphics with little green men. Both these games have been revived recently, as Introversion got a deal with Valve to publish their games over their content delivery service, Steam.

Story

In Defcon, you play a general in a bunker. It's really that simple. You pick a territory and get access to strategic assets which you can place around your territory. Why are you placing assets around your territory? There is no real story in this game, except for the simple fact that diplomacy is more or less out of the question. You can initiate alliances, but cannot win the game peacefully. As mentioned: you have tactical command over several types of units; battleships, submarines, aircraft carriers, bombers and fighters. These units serve only as appetizers for the main course, which is a high yield nuclear warhead cooked with love.

Sound

While there really isn't a lot of sound in this game, I can hardly blame it. You get the resounding “boom” when you detonate a nuke, some background music, and that's really it. The background music is nice and mellow, and fits the profile of the game nicely. At certain intervals, a woman starts sobbing in the background, which I think is a nice touch. But it would be nice if there was a certain trigger for this, because it happens apparently at random, most likely illustrating the fear of impending doom.

Gameplay

Defcon is played in a world map view. Defcon has five stages, going from five to one. When you initially start a round of Defcon, you start in Defcon 5, which is the unit placement phase. Defcon 5 lasts for several minutes to make sure everyone has their units in place. The admin of the game can choose to speed things up if need be.

You place your units in the best positions to defend against enemy nukes and units, and place your radars to give you as much coverage as possible, and you're off.

Defcon 4 allows you to see enemy unit movements on radar (if you can detect them, that is) and Defcon 3 marks the first phase where you can actually initiate combat. This involves only naval units though, which I think is a nice touch, since naval combat is hectic enough as it is, believe me. Defcon 2 is just additional combat time before Defcon 1. When at Defcon 1, you can launch nukes as much as you damn well please. This isn’t always the best approach. See, in Defcon, most units have two modes. Nuclear launch silos shoot down enemy nukes when they're not in their firing mode, and it takes a while to switch from one to the other, so you're better off launching from perhaps just one nuke silo and having the rest run defense.

The first time I played this game, I did what any normal person would do if he had access to 140 fictional nukes and a huge red button. I fired them all, at once, at the enemy. While I managed to destroy and irradiate the better part of France and large quantities of Russia, my opponent remained undeterred. I remember quite clearly thinking, “Why hasn't he launched any yet?” before screaming bloody murder when I realized that his entire submarine fleet was in New York harbor, and I was defenseless.

The game features a handy tutorial that I wholeheartedly recommend, otherwise you won't be quite sure what exactly you're doing, and you'll find yourself on the business end of a nuclear warhead much too soon. One small complaint I have about the tutorial though is that it was slightly too easy, even for a tutorial. I went out of the tutorial thinking “Wow, this was easy” and then left the first game screaming for mommy. The CPU controlled bots are either really smart or really cheating (as far as a CPU player can cheat anyway) because no matter what I've tried, it always comes out on top.