DefCon [PC]

As if real-time strategy games weren't doing well enough, along comes Introversion, riding high on the acclaim they received for Darwinia, their quirky life sim/RTS. Now they've created the fiendishly clever Defcon, which is every bit as polished, innovative, and exciting as the latest AAA title from Blizzard, Relic, or Ensemble. It is, however, anything but conventional. This weird little RTS, that doesn't play quite like anything else, is all about nuclear warfare.

There's no building or economy in Defcon. Instead, you get a set number of units which you place in your territory. These units include missile silos, radar emplacements, and airbases. There are also navies, which are built from a mix of battleships, aircraft carriers, and submarines. These are the only units in the game. The battlefield consists of a world map peppered with cities that serve as targets. The winner of a game is the player who manages to inflict the most casualties without losing too much of his own population. A default kill/death scoring ratio of 2:1 encourages aggressive play and tacitly endorses acceptable losses.

A match is divided into five defcon levels, each gradually folding in new dynamics. Place units in Defcon Five, reveal the enemy in Defcon Four, fight conventional naval and air battles in Defcon Three, and unleash nukes in Defcon One. Yeah, okay, so Defcon Two gets shortchanged. When it's the end of the world as we know it, who's counting?

As the game "defcons up", there's a lot of jockeying for position and sussing out the other guy's defenses. You'll send out fighters for recon and scour the seas with your fleets, looking for his nuclear subs while trying to sneak yours into a favorable launch position. Maybe your air defenses will take a few potshots at his planes, or maybe navies will get fouled up and sink each other. As the timer inevitably counts down, the stakes are raised. Then you hit Defcon One -- nuclear weapons free -- and all hell breaks loose. Or worse: all hell continues to wait until someone blinks first.

Once the nukes start flying, Defcon turns into a struggle to balance your defenses with your offenses. The challenge is making the most of your limited arsenal. A game is in perpetual Defcon One until the world's stockpile of nukes falls below 20% of its original total, at which point the endgame countdown starts. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Because when the mushroom clouds clear, whoever's inflicted the most casualties is the winner.

It feels hardly fair against the computer, which seems to have a much easier time with the nuances of how many missiles to send against which targets, how to manage aircraft, and coordinating strikes from multiple sources. The AI isn't scaleable and feels more ruthless and optimized than human.