Although it may look simple, there's no mistaking how awesome this game is.
Gameplay is arguably the most important part of a game, and DEFCON has heaping amounts of awesome strategic action. First off, there are no loading times at all (Thank you God, and by God I mean Introversion). You can play online or alone, although you may want to stick to MP, as the SP AI is a bit on the hard side for some people. Players can set up alliances, and break them. This creates some tense Cold-War moments, when you really fear whether or not your ally is going to turn on you, but you know they are thinking the same thing about you. Of course, you're always afraid of the enemy launching an attack on you at any time. There are only a few distinct units in DEFCON, but there is so much depth that games can last from a few minutes to a few hours. Games start with players placing their radar stations, airbases, silos, and naval fleets. Once the countdown reaches Defcon 1 status, nukes are usable. The winner is determined by whoever causes the most collateral damage. However, to get to the cities, you usually have to take out some AA units, which actually reduces your score, which is an interesting tactical desicion by the developers.
The game takes place from a 2D top-down perspective, but the presentation and slick look of the game compensate for this. You're given a Tron-style map of the world at the beginning of each game, which shows your territorry, and the territory of your opponents in a different glowing color for each player. Watching the tiny fleets, aircraft, nukes/AA battle it out is actually really amusing to watch. I was surprised how sleek this game looked once I played it for myself.
The game features a mellow but apocalyptic soundtrack, which gets more intense when the fighting starts. And, of course, there are the sounds of nukes exploding, and, as a nice touch to make you feel guilty, you'll hear coughing, screams and crying after nuking a city. However, there aren't any sounds when fleets or aircraft are fighting, which kind of makes sense, because it's like you're watching a radar screen.
DEFCON may have only a few units, but games can have a great amount of depth if you know how to use them properly. It's satisfying once you master each unit's strengths and weaknesses and learn to use them against your opponents to nuke them back to the stone age. Multiplayer games are always interesting, because everyone plays a little differently, and its cool to see people make alliances and set up assaults, on a constantly evolving battlefield.
Overall, DEFCON is a blast to play, if you don't care about uber-graphics. It's definitely one of my favorite games of the year so far, and it's a must play for those wanting to play a game for the gameplay, because in the end, it's all about great gameplay.