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DEFCON


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ESRB rating: Teen ESRB:
Publisher: Introversion Software
Genre(s): Strategy
Home Page: http://www.everybody-dies.com/
 






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By: Martin Finbow Jul 10, 2007

Let's play Global Thermonuclear War

The wonderful thing about Defcon, is that no two game is the same. Attack first and it could result in you dying first; alternatively if you decide to make the opening gambit, your enemy may not be as fast at reacting to attacks and you may wipe them out sooner than expected. With the sides matched on firepower and technologies, it can be a see-saw of who is winning the game - never give up till the last casualty as it really is anyone's game through the entire experience.

Attacking first, without enough recon info, lead to the enemy sneaking in a last few missiles here. Remember your Ps - Prior Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance!
The aftermath. The green glow of radiation not only reminds you what you're dealing with here but it amply shows just which sides took a sound beating.

What makes or breaks a game is how intense the gameplay is, as well as how it looks, but the third part to the equation is the sound. If you do not feel immersed into what you are playing, you don't feel connected with the game and lose that joy you should be experiencing (doesn't sound quite right, "experiencing joy", with such a dark game type, does it?). The soundtrack for DEFCON works very well, with the music of women singing with a chilling effect, reflecting what is happening on screen, linking with the DEFCON countdown perfectly. To add to your guilt, a eerily chime of nursery rhymes are heard in the wilderness and the sounds of people dying remind you of what carnage you are actually causing in this game.

No need for SkyNet

So you want some of the action, but are worried that you may have to miss out because your system is not the latest and greatest? Let's have a look at the system recommendations and hopefully pleasantly surprise you! Introversion state the following minimum requirements:

CPU AMD Athlon, Pentium III 800 MHz
RAM 128 MB
Gfx Card DX7-compatible 64MB

These are so low, that any system should be able to play this game. The lowest operating system reported as a minimum requirement is Windows 98, and if you've purchased a system in the last 5+ years, then you should be safe to say that you can run this! You will probably find that your system is a lot faster than this, as these are not that far off from Windows XP's minimum requirements (only the processor is higher!)

Set to the lowest possible detail values and medium resolution, DEFCON looks perfectly fine.

Of course, with everything all "on" and shiny, the chaos looks fantastic!

For the first time ever for me (and YouGamers in general I think - Ed), the YG minimum and recommended specifications are virtually the same as above. Some of you may seem confused over this, but it really is quite simple. The game is not that demanding on computer hardware at all. There are no massively demanding 3D graphical elements that require you to have a top of the range 3D accelerator. You can apply some AA to the wireframe models to give it a better all round look, but even the lower end graphics cards are capable of supplying this.

If you are running on an older version of Windows (98-2000), you can probably get away with just having 128MB of ram; but for faster loading times and less disk swapping (thanks to XP), we recommended that you double it to at least 256MB (as a minimum) for a better all round experience.




 

Related Stuff

 Games: DEFCON
 Reviews: Multiwinia   Nov 04, 2008
 News: DEFCON v1.43 Released   Aug 11, 2007

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