DEFCON: Global Nuclear Domination Game

The Good
Gameplay wise, the strategy aspect is mostly a game of macro-scale tactics (given there is no way to replace ships one loses). I don't often play multiplayer and so, of the time I remember playing it, the only noticeable difference the game made was asking all participants whether to agree to an increase in speed (almost necessary if you are playing alone with no friends you hate) and the chat function (which I care little for; I play with strangers and I don't want them to hurl crap at me when I am hurling missiles at them). Despite the seemingly simple game design, the game does becomes uncharacteristically fast-paced at the slowest phase, when missiles launched at your cities move slowly and you feel powerless as missile defence takes it own sweet time to put it out and the increased time the game gives feels like an illusion to base your thoughts of victory on. Its best moments are when it fools the player into believing that he has the time and control over factors he really does not.

But it is the humour that makes this game important- evil, black and scary. The main screen is a vector graphics representation of the world, reminiscent of the computer systems used by the US in the 1980s. This suits the game perfectly, because this gives the player a glimpse into the mindset of people who literally had an entire world full of living, feeling, caring creatures they needed to ignore when the decision one needed to make was whether, in a war where a button may seal their own fate and that of their opponents, they could be content with simply winning the war or ensure that their enemy loses utterly. If it weren't obvious for the simple "2 million dead" that hovers over Tokyo after being hit a third time, the decision the developers wanted you to make was the latter. You attack first or you lose.

The Bad
Story- possibilities. No, I don't mean the game does not have a story but that this game can't provide the player with an individual story to tell. How different a game experience are you going to have when, other than a shift in positioning of your Defence systems, there is no separation in the power blocs' capacities? Having leveled the playing field, the game makes its biggest mistake by going too far with detaching itself from humanity. Your memories of any game, whether you won it or lost it, will not matter to you, because the vessel, the aircraft, the cities do not have a trace of humanity in them and you just can't tell a good story where the protagonists are toys.

The Bottom Line
Defcon is important in the same way that Lord of the Flies is- to illustrate man's inherent capacity to use violence as a motivator. In Lord of the Flies, the violence heralds the loss of childhood innocence; in Defcon, the violence clarifies that there was no innocence to be lost in the first place.