Most critics like WarGames, and the praise gathers in two places: the premise and Matthew Broderick. The idea of a teenager dialling into a military computer and mistaking it for a game is called irresistible more than once, and Broderick’s hacker, reasoning with adults and machines alike, is singled out throughout. John Badham gets credit for keeping a patchy script moving, and several reviews find the film holds up as a story about computer security and growing up.
The reservations cluster around the ending and the adults. Empire finds the late chases and sentimental finish weaker than what precedes them; Variety thinks the grown-up characters are thin. The two coolest notices are among the oldest: The New York Times finds the climax more comic than frightening and the film unwilling to think seriously about nuclear war, and The New Yorker, enjoying the early comedy, objects to the cautionary message and to generals played as buffoons. The spread runs from warm to lukewarm, with no outright dislike.