There is something incredibly eerie about playing DEFCON. Your fingers sit poised upon your keyboard while the Wargames inspired graphics float over your monitor. In the background a haunting melody plays; just on the verge of consciousness. The game doesn't seek to immerse itself in the viscera of war; it pushes in the opposite direction. It seeks to detach you from the ramifications of your actions. There's no blood, no detached limbs flying in every direction as a result of your nuclear assault… it is all very clinical.

Normally this approach works against creating emotion in games but when the stark figures TOKYO: 4.5 MILLION DEAD flash up on the screen as your first ICBM makes contact this detachment actually works in the game's favour. The obscenity of the number contrasted against the matter of fact way it is presented is nothing less than chilling. By being so flippant about human life DEFCON creates a nuclear horror so much more frightening than anything I've personally encountered in other media.

If you've not experienced DEFCON, it has just become available over Steam. If you aren't in to the RTS genre, but appreciate what I can only call 'artistic' games then you owe it to yourself to at the very least download the demo. It's cold-war-arific.