Just had to share this with the Ambrosia Readers.
A recent review seems to stand out amongst the rest of those who have written about DEFCON. Who better to test out the strategic online multiplayer game of militaristic thermonuclear war than the military themselves. Captain Gerrit Dalman of the United States Air Force decided to write a review of DEFCON for the Military Members Apple User Group website. He has awarded DEFCON with 3 Chevrons out of a possible 5.
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DEFCON 1.4.2
Ambrosia Software
Price: $25 (demo available)
Pros: Immersive visuals and sound, active online community, and that feeling like you're working in Cheyenne Mountain.
Cons: Long games, multiplayer focus makes it hard to take breaks, limited expansion.
by Gerrit Dalman, Capt, USAF
"Would you like to play a game?"
The cold war may be over, but a new game is renewing iconic cold war themes with it's war room approach to strategy and an environment that is pulled straight from the 1983 classic War Games.
No, you don't get to play the role of the witty teen hacker - but the surly general. From the safety of your home office/bunker you gaze upon a strategic overview of the globe inspired by the wall displays from the film. Though the ray-traced graphics are nostalgic in style, the overall experience is surreally modern thanks to subtle glowing lines, smooth scrolling and zooming, and eerie context-sensitive sound effects.
The gameplay isn't like most big-budget strategy games you've seen before. It's not turn-based, but it also isn't a finger-twitching action RTS. Rather than a complex tech tree and an emphasis on building or upgrading quickly, players are each given a geographic region with evenly matched forces (air, sea, and land). The challenge comes from strategic placement, maneuver, and employment of those limited assets.
Though there are a variety of game types to play with, the basic objective is neatly summed up by the game's tag line, "everybody dies." Your goal as commander of your faction's diplomatic and military efforts is to preserve the populations of your largest cities (using fighters, battleships, and surface-to-air missiles) while decimating your enemies' using the nuclear triad (ICBMs, bombers, and SLBMs).
You can play a game against the computer for training, but it is really a multiplayer game. Setting up a game of DEFCON is pretty simple, but you'll have to block out some time. Getting through the dedicated ramp-up time from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 and then all the way to the last shots can easily take a couple of hours.
That demand is abated a bit with scalable time compression, but everyone plays at the slowest requested speed. That means that a newby or an opponent taking extra time to tailor a response to a critical attack slows down the game for everyone.
As long as you've got the time, though, DEFCON is a immersive and satisfying game of strategy. DEFCON may not have expensive 3D action or hollywood-caliber cinematic cut scenes, but with rewarding challenges, an active online community, and solid strategic gameplay, it does deliver a top-notch gaming experience for all aspiring flag officers.
So if you want to do what WOPR was unable to do and unleash global thermonuclear war on your neighbors, this is the way to go! At the very least, download the demo and give it a spin. Even if you don't like this unique spin on strategy, you'll probably still be a fan of the graphics and you can enjoy some of those free of charge thanks to the DEFCON screensaver.