Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: vallor Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: Defcon: Most horrifying game ever? Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2025 11:12:43 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 62 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2025 12:12:44 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="3c087558f0faaf2f5840e829c517fda1"; logging-data="1009572"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19o77Gy5kdvXefKK3O43rqM" User-Agent: Pan/0.161 (Hmm2; c45f6052; Linux-6.12.8) Cancel-Lock: sha1:yud0cCanpamXGpipwGnHbi6SJ2c= X-Face: +McU)#<-H?9lTb(Th!zR`EpVrp<0)1p5CmPu.kOscy8LRp_\u`:tW;dxPo./(fCl CaKku`)]}.V/"6rISCIDP` Bytes: 3997 On Thu, 02 Jan 2025 14:35:40 -0600, Zaghadka wrote: > On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 19:11:52 +0000, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB > wrote: > >>Well something popped up on my feed about this recently and I thought >>yeh it's horrific. So the basic game, almost twenty years old now, is >>all out nuclear war but what takes it above that, at least for me, is >>the way it's presented. It is a strategy game but everything is quite >>abstract and minimalist from its Wargames (the film) graphics, to its >>haunting sounds and basic units of fighters, bombers, aircraft carriers, >>destroyers, battleships, radar units, SAM sites, airfields and of course >>ICBM silos which can also serve to shot down incoming nukes. No >>research, no resource gathering just you all get the same units to >>deploy as you wish. >> >>You start at Defcon five and as the timer ticks down that level is >>raised meaning you get to place more units and eventually start actual >>conventional combat. Once it reaches Defcon one all hell breaks lose and >>it's a question of who is going to launch nukes first with an >>accompanying siren noise. See a city hit and all that's shown is a white >>flash and in big letters the death toll in millions. This happens over >>and over again until the world is filled with the glow of nuclear >>strikes and the timer reaches zero. The winner is then announced based >>on casualties for and against. >> >>The part I found really horrific is that it's only after you've played >>several games that it dawns on you that you're detached from what you're >>doing (you cannot die) and are taking enjoyment in counting the death >>toll you're causing while not overly caring of the death toll in your >>continent. The finally part is when the results are shown as raw >>figures. >> >>As the game says everybody dies. You don't win, instead you just don't >>do as badly as everyone else. > > At the risk of being conceited, and long-winded, this is the preamble to > a game I wrote in the early 90s called "Friendly Fire." It was a game of > bluffing, double-bluffing, strategy, and dumb luck. > >>Welcome to 2624 A.D. [interesting game prologue snipped] > For some reason, your story about Defcon reminded me of it. Both also remind me of _Plague Inc.: Evolved_, which my Steam library says I played in March of 2015. I "won" the game, which was to wipe out humanity with a plague. Very bleak when you actually do it, and I tell myself "it's only a game. It's only a game..." The feeling of doom as the human population counts down to zero is profound. It looks like they released a DLC called "The Cure" in 2021, where you save the world. I might have to give that a try. -- -Scott System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti OS: Linux 6.12.8 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G "The buck doesn't even slow down here!"