Missile Command

I recently purchased one of those retro flashback style systems that feature 50 classic Atari games and, low and behold, Missile Command was amongst the games offered. Needless to say, after spending the last handful of years playing the classics as well as a host of newer console games, I felt as though my skills were considerably honed and that I wold romp this classic... nope.

Upon selecting the game and witnessing the construction of six cities on the bottom of the screen it didn't take too much time for the mass annihilation of said cities to begin. You might think that my skills and reflexes which have been meticulously honed over the last twenty or so years would be enough to stave off the 2-bit nuclear doomsday that was about to occur... nope.

The truth is, it doesn't matter just how good you think you are. This game doesn't care if you beat twenty levels in a row, because it is just going to try harder on level 21. Playing this game is similar to those battles in an RPG where your character and their party are forced into combat that cannot be won. You just know that you have to take the beating to further the plot so you do. You know that later on you will be on an equal footing where you actually can win. Well, Missile Command empties its bowels on that premise. Sure you can take the first few levels easily enough, but then the warm-up is over and the real s@#t begins to fly. 

There was a point in the fifth or sixth stage where not only missiles are flying about, but bombs are dropping and your gun cannot fire fast enough to take out even half of the s@#t on the screen. That is when you can selective target your way to victory. What I usually do at this point is sacrifice a few cities and try to protect one side of the screen. To hell with L.A., Phoenix and Dallas! I have to protect Chicago, NYC and Boston! And yeah, you can protect them for a few stages then you have to choose which one you will let get nuked because there is just way too much s@#t raining down on you. 

It's like the 2-Bit version of the ending of Terminator 3

If you can survive long enough you might "win" a city back on points, but that city is almost 100% guaranteed to be on the opposite side of the screen from the one or two cities you were protecting. Honestly, this far into the game you cannot even move your curser to that side of the screen to even attempt to protect that city. Once you give up on that s@#t, it is only a matter of time before your city or gun get taken down. As far as I can tell there is no winning in this game. In fact, you can't even survive because the missiles never stop coming.

I honestly thought that this game would get easier over time, but it didn't. In fact, I think that this one actually got more difficult. So before you come all up in here and talk about how difficult Gears of War or Fallout 3 is, strap Missile Command on your sorry ass.