There’s something weirdly addictive about games to do with the end of the world, or maybe that’s just me. From the indie PC classic Defcon to Plague Inc. on mobile, I find these types of games incredibly hard to put down once I’ve started playing. That’s exactly been the case with First Strike, Feinheit kreativ studio’s first game, which involves the amassing of nuclear weapons in a race to destroy other global superpowers before they destroy you. Rather ironically, and probably a good thing for people who find it hard to play a game about Mutually Assured Destruction, is that a quarter of all revenue from the game will be contributed to help reduce nuclear weapons around the world through ICAN and Green Cross Switzerland; who said being bad couldn’t be good too?
To start playing, you will pick a nation to play (which will have an associated difficulty), and pick the number of enemies you’ll be playing against. Naturally, increasing the number will increase the chance that you will succumb to a nuclear end, but that’s all part of the fun. After this, you will be given control of a small number of regions where you will have bases at; each base can perform several tasks like build nuclear warheads, research new technologies, or expand to adjacent regions. All of these actions require time and as your actions become more powerful and more lucrative, their creation time will also increase.
Depending on what warheads are stored at each regional base, you will also be able to perform offensive and defensive actions. If for instance a nuke is launched towards you, a cruise missile can be launched to intercept it, nullifying it. Offensively, you can choose to launch a single rocket, or once you’ve stockpiled enough missiles, you can perform a ‘First Strike’ which launches all missiles that you possess that are within range of your target. Obviously at first your range will be quite limited, but research some key technologies and the whole world opens up.
The game effectively becomes a game of cat and mouse at this point, with missiles flying everywhere and trying to figure out when is best to attack and when is best to sit back and defend. So far in my experience, the AI is quite ruthless, regardless of the difficulty, and you’ll need to stay on your toes not to get bombed off the face of the planet.
The game plays incredibly simply; the globe is easily explored by swiping around, zooming in and out is as easy as pinching and controlling your regions is extremely easy with a series of touches. The interface is often a series of interconnected circles, which not only looks great, but makes for a really simple interface. On a smaller screen, like that of my Moto G, the buttons can get a little small, but I never had any issues with pressing the wrong buttons at any time. The one thing that is a little annoying on smaller screens is the text in-game can be positively tiny. There’s probably not much that can be done seeing as how crowded some menu’s can get, like the technology web, but be prepared to have to read the on-screen text very closely.
And that’s First Strike. There’s no convoluted story or needless things to collect; you just fire missiles, win or lose, then rinse and repeat. I had a ball playing First Strike, though it pains me a little that there’s no multiplayer in the game as it would have been fantastic. All the same, it’s a fantastic, beautiful, well-made game, and though it does cost $3.99, it’s sure to keep you addicted and coming back for more. If you’re interested, you can pick up First Strike at the Play Store links below.
Game: First Strike
Price: $3.99
