Entry posted by Cybergoth
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Hi there!
Nuking it out once again with Ronnie Raygun and Gorbachef:
Now that was one game that I totally loved back in the day. I really can't think of many other games operating on such an insane level of black humor 
In its core Nuclear War is a dead simple, board game like strategy game. You choose four computer opponents out of a selection of strangely familiar looking faces and then you fight against them to the death on a simple map that is divided into 5 continents, one for each player.
Each players mission is to protect the 5 cities on his continent, while destroying all other cities on the map. Basically everyone fights everyone, until only one is left.
The players are taking turns and on each turn, one of only six possible actions can be executed: The player can produce weapons, try propaganda, do a defensive action, deploy a bomber, launch a missile, or, which is the most fun, drop a nuclear warhead.
The main task is finding working strategies against the current set of enemies. They are all having quite clever AIs and their own distinct playing styles, so depending on the selection of opponents no two games are the same. They also comment on their situation between turns, which is usually very funny, e.g. when losing a city they say stuff like "Just a scratch" or "I didn't like that city anyway" 
The game is very fast, one complete round lasts about 15 minutes, so this game will provide some quick fun in small doses. It takes a while until you figure out how to win, but then it happens quite regularly. There is no real ending when the player wins, but there's a funny animation when the computer does:
(If none of the players survives, which happens surprisingly often, then there's another ending scene shown where earth is exploding.)
Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another strategy game from New World Computing in the form of "Kings Bounty", but first it'll continue with something else.
Greetings,
Manuel
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