ICBM: Escalation Reviews

Much like the older Defcon, but better. This is their second ICBM game, and adds quite a bit over the first.

Easy to learn, fun to play, cancel the apocalypse if you can.

Devs use the best possible approach to made sequel of their game: grabbed all cool staff modders do, enhanced graphics, added campaign mode and polished all this with amazing soundtrack. On top of it, game actually still have grim scent of DEFCON - whatever you do, you will be hit, and millions of your people would die. I, personally, really enjoyed the "tips" on the loading screen. In the end we have the best RTS ever. But there are two BIG problems, that make any singleplayer outside of the campaign uplayeble. Bugs and AI. First problem, despite 5 patches already still present, but the devs are working on it, so I think they will eventually get rid of most of them, but the second... The AI is... weird. Odd. Crazy. Lunatic, if you like. In the campaign it behaves normally, but in free game it goes insane. It repeats the same attack over and over again. It never changes its tactics. It cannot use a wide variety of units. It cannot estimate risks so even when it is exhausted it will break the ceasfire with the more powerful faction. The WORST of all, it is random in the worst way possible - it does some random, nonsencial shit every goddamn game. "Conquer mode" is supposed to last about 5 hours of play, but in reality it ends in 2 hours because the AI starts nuking each other from the bloody start - yep, escalation in free game mode is non-existent. It makes it hard for me to want to return to the game after all its "quirks", I`m unironically tired. And devs are really dont see any problem here. I have been waiting for this game since it was announced. I bought it in the first hours of relize. I was delighted with campaing mode. And it was worth every cent. But overall, I`m disappointed. Maybe Slitherin will do with their creation something in the future.

i love it this is the 1st strategy game that i have invested a time on it. but it keep crashing when im playing conquest.

Very detailed and fun cold war simulator.... not quite anything I've seen before in this much detail. Pretty dark however.....

If you enjoyed the previous ICBM and its modding community, you will love this game infinitely more, while the game definitely still has bugs and issues it builds upon the previous game and fleshes it out further 10 fold, expanding multiplayer, containing multiple multiplayer game modes with differing expansive tech trees, with each having a wider and more balanced play compared to the previous in which only like 2 strategies are fully viable.

This game (for me) is a good mix of RTS with some smaller political elements and a world domination/escalation style gameplay. I enjoy the concept of starting a very long game that i can come back to over the course of days or weeks or even finish playing in one night. I also love the research and progression in this game, starting out in late 50's-early 60's era tech and moving all the way up the chain is very fun. The icons and "pieces" are pretty well detailed and cute when you zoom up close, and all the explosion effects hit home for me. This game is what i've wanted out of an RTS for a very long time. Love this game!

Very nice gameplay, but no Swiss cities......unplayable

A really quite good strategy game. There are not many games that adequately capture that feeling of high level Cold-War decision making but this is one of them. I like the variety of different units and ways to solve problems - none of the units are particularly deep but the fact you have so many options to begin with is nice. I love the multiple different methods of information gathering as you piece together what your enemy is up to and where his important installations are. The operation planner is really nice, and just in general planning an invasion in this game is almost if not more fun than actually executing it - it's a really cool feeling. There's more I could gush about but the bottom line is this is a solid and pretty unique RTS game, with only it's predecessors - that it is objectively superior to - being anything like it. I'm gonna harp a little longer on the negatives than the positives in the hopes the devs see this and take it into account for the future. And...well this is very obviously a primarily multiplayer focused game and hinges on the nuances of interacting other players to fully appreciate the depth. Put more simply, as many other reviews complain, the AI is garbage and the game is fundamentally balanced around multiplayer which makes single player a bit hollow. 1. The diplomacy system is useless with AI because they just kind of do things seemingly at random and don't engage much in anything that feels like genuine diplomacy. 2. Even with the new aggressive AI options they tend to be very passive and slow, they'll declare war on each other but then never actually take steps to conquer more than one or two territories, after which they just sort of ineffectually swat each other with aircraft and eventually nukes. And I've never had one of them declare war on me. You rarely feel any danger from the AI or like they are able to really stop you, nor do you feel like it's particularly difficult to penetrate their defenses and conquer them. 3. The actual "escalation" part of the game is non-existent against the AI. The second they have nukes they use them and go for the throat with no hesitation. Ditto with chemical weapons. This also makes the pollution mechanic feel a little less fair since in a skirmish game they start using nukes everywhere very early and rocket up pollution regardless of what you do. 4. All factions regardless of historical accuracy or size are set up to be equivalent in every way, same amount of resources/income, same starting militaries, same starting tech and research speed. This great for a fair multiplayer match but outside of multiplayer this harshly limits replayability since the AI is so bad that every single player skirmish will inevitably feel identical to the last. If you can play this game with a group of friends then most of my negative things above are no longer an issue, get this game and you'll have a blast playing it. If you *don't* have a group of friends to play this with...I'd be more cautious, maybe get it on sale? The campaign mode is still really fun, and while replayability and difficulty are lacking, the first skirmish or two are still fun before it gets repetitive and predictable - and those will keep you busy for a good number of hours. A hypothetical 3rd ICBM game, one where they continue to improve and expand upon the basic concept and take into account the feedback given, could become one of the greatest strategy games out there. Even this one could be made much better with a handful of good updates and additions.

We need to be honest about the quality of this game. I love the concept, however the execution is absolutely poor. The game crashes regularly, multiplayer lobbies de-sync regularly. The User Interface feels like it was a complete after-thought. There is no way to effectively control your units. You can build tons of air bases and place assets on the map. But they are useless as the aircraft will only respond after the fact as you cannot designate a patrol area for fighters or bombers or attack aircraft. Only early warning aircraft can be placed on constant designated patrols. Meanwhile, your at war and your enemy is launching wave attacks while your waiting for your aircraft to take off, by then your whole base and all your assets are destroyed. It doesn't make any sense that you cannot assign all aircraft to a designated patrol route just like in the real world. Strategic bombers are more effective at destroying army units instead of attack aircraft. Attack aircraft can launch hundreds of rocket runs against an army unit and it will barely scratch the paint. Yet a strategic bomber dropping dumb bombs will knock out 10% of the army unit's health. And that's before inventing GBU's. This makes absolutely no sense. There is ZERO point in wasting the energy to produce attack aircraft when a strategic bomber is better at ground attack. Meanwhile, strategically bombing cities with dumb bombs is completely useless and doesn't kill hardly any population. Making conventional bombing pointless. Aircraft can blatantly violate your air space and will fight your aircraft but it never triggers a war. That's not realistic at all. Ships can also violate your territorial waters and again, this doesn't trigger a war. You cannot assign submarines or other ships to simply follow your enemies ships or neutral/allied ships. How the f*ck am I supposed to track down all my enemies SSBN's if I can't tail them with attack submarines like in the real world? Stupid naval concept. Ships should only be able to spawn at a dedicated naval dockyard to prevent ship spamming. Ships are almost completely immune to Surface to Sea missile launchers. Making the missile launchers completely worthless. Meanwhile, in the real world ships try to stay as far from the shore to avoid these incredible threats as they possibly can. A single missile hit can mission kill a ship. Yet destroyers and cruisers will absolutely just camp out next to an enemy nations shore and bombard them with impunity until you nuke them or use a navy of your own to fight them. Surface to Sea launchers should be more expensive, but they absolutely should provide a credible deterrence to ships adding real value to the SSGN. I'll keep this next part simple. The AI is trash. End of story, it just plain sucks. I'm tired of pretending this game is great because it's the only one in it's class. It should be better. This game has so much potential. But it's completely lack luster at this point.