ICBM

We’ve all seen at least one of those action movies where a guy takes out a small key, puts it in a big console thingy, turns it, then presses a big red button and just like that, a nuclear missile is launched. Well, ICBM is a game that’s built to showcase a different reality of such an event or rather what happens before it actually occurs.

A waiting game, a really well designed waiting game

You are 1st Lt. Evans and you’ve just started this job. After going through a considerable pile of paperwork that describes a fragment of current events and vaguely what your job consists of, you’re on your own. From the first mission you’re left alone to observe and learn as much as you can about the equipment. There’s a lot to look at.
The game aims to recreate the Minuteman III Launch Control with all its knobs, buttons, dials and gauges but to offer it some cooless, it’s slightly modified.The animations, design and everything that went into creating is just wonderful. If you like games with a retro vibe, you’ll love this one.

Nothing really happens but it’s still a nice experience

Each mission is represented by an 8 hour shift during which you will have to closely analyze everything that’s in front of you. If something happens, you need to take immediate action. The first missions pass by without anything going on, you have all the time in the world to click every little thing and see what it does.
However, further along the game, things get real. Your clock stops functioning. That’s about the most stressful thing that happens in the game, not knowing how much you have until your shift ends. ICBM is kind of anticlimactic, nothing really goes down, you just hear some strange sounds now and again which get you a bit tense but that’s about it.

It’s something really interesting but it could have been much more

All in all, ICBM is in all fairness a realistic depiction of what it means to be a deputy missile combat crew commander. You stand there all the time and actually pray that nothing happens because if it did, it would be tragic.
In the end, ICBM is worth playing for the excellently crafted experience which it is.