Cortex Command
Skip · Action · 2012
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $19.99.
- Length
- 1.7h
- Value
- $11.76/hr
- Reviews
- 72% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, 640x480 (VGA) resolution monitor, 154 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Choose between different factions, with their own set of expendable soldiers, mechas, and weapons. Protect your brain, mine gold, and destroy the enemy cortex in his bunker complex!
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
June 2017 is where it bottomed out, at $1.99. Its cuts run 80 percent off as a rule. There have been 49 in the 14 years tracked, about 10 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 27 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 10 weeks.
It is pricier than 94 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 63 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Satellite Reign ($29.99, scores 29) beats it on value, while it beats SpyParty ($24.99, scores 24).
44 from critics against 72 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
2 of the 382 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 43 percent of the 285 reviews written there were positive, against 72 percent overall, and those are 14 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 1.7 hours; clearing it takes 13, which is 7.6 times the campaign.
The drop-off
56% start to 3% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
4 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Childhood game frozen in time unparalleled permanently replayable amazing and unique experience to date
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Cortex Command scores 28/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/209670/cortex-commandThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.