Everybody has days when it would seem as though even the smallest pebble on the road is dead set on ruining their day by adhering themselves to the butterfly effect's to the unwary invisible but to some people very much noticable presence, that finally revealed itself when the time came to do that. When it happens it should come as no surprise that one would very much like to flipping tables ??? ??(`Д?)??? ??? but sadly the opportunity to for such activity is far and few between, leaving them with nowhere to get rid of their anguish. This is where a minimalistic but nonetheless entertaining game comes into the picture, providing a fairly safe tool to release the energy about to explode with the power of the sun as a small grin emerges before pushing the button.
DEFCON is a simple in design but still surprisingly challenging strategy game originating from the famous movie Wargames where a bored high schooler started a simulation of global thermonuclear war by hacking into NORAD and very nearly turning it real, only preventing it in the last minutes before nukes started flying. Here, the goal is the same which is deploying a structures and military units, then once hostilities begin to heat up, fire everything you have at whoever you want while trying to prevent the other players from dropping some on your region while you're giddily shooting like there's no tomorrow. The winner is then declared once the countdown that was triggered from meeting the victory conditions ends, and the points acquired until then decide who shall be declared the winner which will vary in accordance to the chosen gamemode of the host.
Several of them exists which mostly differes in how it starts and how long it will last but the real fun is in the scoring method which subtly influences the plans of those trying to initiate their large scale physics experiments. One of them being the classic that is balanced between offense and defense, then we have survivor focused mostly on keeping the cities alive and another one where all one has to do is nuke 'em all. In custom sessions it is also possible to set a number of additional rules to make it more interesting, so there's certainly no shortage of possibilities to playing in any way one may wish to.
Surprisingly to many therefore the most unusual feature of this game is not its very nature but the simple graphics it has not unlike what many of us has seen when DOS was still a thing, which can also be changed by installing mods to suit one's preferences. That is not to say however, it will bring about any major differences in how it looks, so those who like their visuals in full HD will have to look somewhere else even if there's no real reason it needs to be like that. Functionality was put forth in the design which can be seen on any of the screenshots, serving the purpose this fine piece of history was created well.
Those who are interested in these briefings will also find it delightful that DEFCON randomly displays various bits of information, like listing the symptoms of radiation sickness, though the descriptions are somewhat lacking and can only be seen from the main menu.
It should also be noted that the playerbase around is very limited so it's often very difficult to even set up a match much less actually letting it go, so most of the time playing against AI is the only remaning gamemode because waiting could easily lead to a significant waste of time.
One could say that getting to know how it should be played can be discouragingly hard too since the tutorial isn't much to get decent start on, and seeing the size of the nonexistant community many would say, it's not worth to waste time on something they wouldn't play much anyway.
Ironically, WOPR's conclusion about the only way to win being not playing isn't off as a result though it certainly can still be an entertaining indie release that slips under the radar of most people who don't specifically look for it. I only don't recommend this game because of that, but so long as one doesn't expect too much this game has everything for a good gaming session when Postal 2 simply isn't enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_d7wa0cxDU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcW_Ygs6hm0