UK-based developer Introversion Software is no stranger to wickedly cool and visually quirky game ideas. Their two previous games (Uplink and Darwinia) had simple, striking visuals backed up by addictive gameplay - and their newest game, Defcon, is even more impressive. The game is part Risk, part Missile Command, part WarGames and all outrageous, controversial fun, with a focus on online multiplayer mass destruction in six game modes.

For those of you more used to the bumpy-shiny visuals that modern games bash you in the head with, don't let the vector graphics fool you one bit - Defcon makes excellent use of its retro art style, with the single scrolling map allowing players to get into the game without jumping back and forth to menu screens. Stylized visuals aside, it's hard to ignore the grim fact that the reality of all-out nuclear war is a fool's goal even when you're wiping out millions of virtual lives at the click of a mouse. Nevertheless, it's the end of the world as we know it… and you'll feel fine - provided you win the match that you're playing! As the manual ingeniously states, "In an all-out nuclear Armageddon, everybody dies, everybody loses, you just have to lose the least!"

The idea of the game is simple and the execution is brilliant. Pick a country and defend it at all costs from your enemies while you send your forces to decimate their weapons and population. Since you're securely ensconced in your well-buried bunker, you're only getting a representation of the locales you're protecting or wiping out, without those pesky screams of the dying to deal with. The seven-stage tutorial is absolutely recommended, as it walks you through the six gameplay basics before allowing you to take on a CPU opponent in the final stage. You'll also want to watch the rolling demo at least once in order to see the how the game flows from start to finish. Things go from slow and steady as forces spread out to enemy territory, to tensely terrifying as bombs fall, wiping out whole cities. If you're recoiling in horror at this, just turn your sense of humor on and point that browser to the official website to soothe your nerves somewhat. You'll need all of them intact in order to make it through the game.

The gameplay is quite unlike your standard RTS, as you're not concerned with building units, gathering resources or earning funds at all - you're going to be placing radar dishes on your coastlines (or as close to where your enemy is located as you can), then dropping air defense/ICBM silos and airfields onto choice real estate. You also need to send out fleets of carriers, battleships and subs to take on enemy fleets and eventually launch missiles against your enemy's cities. During each Defcon stage, you've a limited time to place and/or use objects, so being able to think as well as move quickly is key in these sections. If you get tied up figuring out how many carriers and battleships to send out and in which configuration before you've placed your subs and time runs out, you'll be going into battle short handed. Neither you nor your opponents will have an idea of where anything has been placed until radar detects them or they reveal themselves.

Subs, for example, stay invisible unless they use sonar or get detected by enemy fleets, which can drop depth charges on them before they launch their payloads. Radar placements are completely defenseless, so a bomber can take them out, but the bombers are slow and easily shot down by air defenses. Once you launch missiles, your silos are revealed and the gameplay changes over to a deliberately paced doom watch as you swap your air defenses out and try to blow enemy nukes out of the sky. While missiles arc slowly enough to be shot down, if you time your launches cleverly and launch from different sites, it's possible to hit targets multiple times. Scoring can be set to Default, which gives you two points per kill while taking away one when you lose a unit, Survivor, which gives everyone 100 points, deducting one per unit loss until a winner is decided, or Genocide, where you're given one point per kill no matter what the opposition does. Watching the casualty figures tally up as the bombs fall on major cities is a bit unsettling, but satisfying in an "I got you first" sort of way. However, that feeling wears off quickly as your own cities get blasted, that's for sure.

In single player mode the AI is fairly good, but you may find a few exploitable holes as you play. To get a true thrill (or is that a nuclear winter chill?) though you need to get a few live friends in on the action. Multiplayer is a blast as up to six players can go it alone or form alliances against one or more of the other armchair generals online. You can play in Diplomacy mode, which has players starting teamed up as allies with the intent to double-cross coming somewhere during the game. The thing about alliances is that they're tenuous at best, since the goal of the game is for one player to win. The game amps up the nerves by only allowing you a brief time to decide when you're invited to form an alliance. Do you join up with a well-placed force and hope you can switch alliances before you get nuked, or do you offer your services to a struggling player, only to turn around a few minutes later and use nukes against them to seal a quick win? If this is too much for you to deal with (can't we all just get along?) you can disable alliances entirely and just play every man or woman for himself or herself.

If you're playing the game with other people at work, try Office Mode, which extends a single game to six hours, allowing each player the leisure of making tactical moves when they can. There's also panic button (available in all modes) that drops the game down to an icon in your system tray. If important events occur while you're chatting it up with your supervisor, you need to hope he or she goes back to bugging someone else while you see what's transpired on the map! Consider this an added layer of tension, particularly if you've just launched some nukes… or had some launched against you. Matches take between thirty and forty minutes in real-time, but the game speed can be adjusted up to twenty times normal. I'd suggest real-time combat simply because it makes for a much more nail-biting experience. If you haven't that much time you can choose Speed Defcon, which takes fifteen minutes or less and disables the pause feature. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Big World mode, which increases the size of the world map and doubles the available unit types while halving their radar range. Playing this mode at normal speed with friends or against the CPU is almost like a board game, albeit one with time limits to keep you on the edge of your seat. There's also Custom mode, a no-holds barred game that's best with more than two or three players.

As I've mentioned, the presentation is outstanding, making excellent use of vector graphics and a world map that can be scaled in or out anytime during play. The level of detail, onscreen text and even displayed territory colors can be adjusted, allowing each player to tailor the game according to their computer's specs. Resolutions from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 786 are supported, with windowed mode available if needed. Just watching the title screen reveals a wealth of factually depressing information presented as scrolling computer text. Want to know the locations of significant nuclear explosions since 1945, symptoms of radiation sickness or even the half-life of assorted isotopes? Well, just sit down and watch the facts appear as a lovely green vector globe spins round with subtly eerie ambient background sounds. There's also a bit of humor sprinkled in, as you'll see "How About a Nice Game of Chess?" pop up at some point or a listing of "Available Simulations" that includes Gin, Black Jack, Rummy and Global Thermonuclear War. There's a gloomy, minimalist score that's outstanding in conveying an overall sense of gloom and doom and the sound design is equally solid in that regard.

The only real issue I have with Defcon is that there's no way to do a quick rematch; you need to head back to the lobby and set up the same match if you want to get payback against the folks who out-nuked you. On the other hand, this is a good way to check out the other gameplay modes, provided the other folks agree on the rules chosen. Nevertheless, the unbearable tension of warships or nuke-laden subs drifting into radar range on or recon planes uncovering key launch sites right before being shot down makes for some compelling gameplay.

As much fun as Defcon is, I'm thinking that Introversion also has a not so subtle message here that goes beyond mainstream gamers. They should probably ship off copies of the game to world leaders, military installations and annoying TV 'news' pundits who still think that "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" is a reliable strategy in this day and age. It might not turn swords into plowshares, but it'll certainly make you think a bit more if you're not a total nuclear Neanderthal. Who says you can't learn from video games these days?

Reviewed by Greg Wilcox for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).