When Whitesnake starts playing during World in Conflict's single player campaign, you'll realize that it is love that you're feeling. The love of a perfectly placed artillery barrage; of a city once whole turned to rubble; of maneuvering tanks through debris to attack an important strategic location; of our most favorite nemesis, the USSR. The warmth in our hearts today isn't from family or friends, it's from the tactical nuke that wiped out a group of enemy veteran heavy tanks, mobile anti-air, and infantry that allowed our team to sweep in and claim victory in a multiplayer match of World in Conflict, one of this year's finest real-time war-games. Massive has created an excellently destructive entertainment experience that we think nearly any action junky will enjoy mightily.
Epic destruction is everywhere in Massive's latest. It's a game that's among the prettiest RTSs we've seen offering up detailed units, large well-rendered environments, and some truly spectacular special effects. The visuals in World in Conflict are brilliant on all fronts and provide an easy entry point for all comers to immediately sink in and enjoy some fast-action strategy though the price of entry may be expensive if you're only in it for the big effects. Running everything on very-high at 1900x1200 can cause some serious frame rate dips on even a computer with an 8800GTX, 2GB of RAM and a Quad Core processor when the effects really start flying. Thankfully, the game still looks pretty at medium detail, which most medium range PCs should have no problem with.
Massive has also made entry easier for the average Joe by keeping the army size down to a minimum, keeping base and economy management out of the picture, keeping game times shorter, and the gameplay more immediately aggressive. It's something Massive originally tried in their Ground Control series that they've updated and improved mightily here. It's a completely tactical approach that allows players to focus on unit positioning and the use of unit special abilities. The result is a game that's accessible to all, including that more casual demographic that's used to snorting the instant thrills provided by shooters.
This doesn't mean that the game is simple. In fact, it's not. World in Conflict focuses heavily on team-play in multiplayer (the single-player reinforces through certain mechanics) much in the way that a first-person shooter like Team Fortress or Enemy Territory does with their class balancing. While you can choose to spend your requisition points (the game's easy version of resources) on units outside of your specialty, they're encouraged to spend those points in their domain as the few units for purchase outside of the specialty are expensive. This need to balance units and function within the team, not just within the individual, is what really makes World in Conflict tick so perfectly as a multiplayer game. Players dropping in during the middle of a match, something also unusual for a multiplayer strategy game, will be able to see where help is needed and fill any void.
The paradox inherent in wanting to allow accessibility to inexperienced strategy players and the need to work smartly as a team in a strategic environment may be the multiplayer's one slight weakness. It can be frustrating to be on a team that can't work together at all if the other team is even moderately organized (if you've got a bevy of heavy tanks and no one helping with anti-air support, you're in trouble). It may not be too different from a comparable type of FPS, but those games still have the fun of being able to use your twitch skills to better others. The lack of twitch means more reliance on teammates to make the victory come. Of course, this isn't to say you can't have fun just getting in a game to roll tanks around, fire some rockets, and drop some nukes, but the truly epic gaming experiences come via teams that at least vaguely know what they're doing.
This can be especially important given the massive nature of some of the game's tactical aid devices. As you deal damage, heal units, or capture strategic locations (think Battlefield 1942), you'll gain tactical aid points that can be used on everything from radar scans to the game's delicious tactical nukes. Dropping such ordinances on friendly units is bad for business.
Thankfully, World in Conflict also comes with a crystal clear VOIP system that should help players warn of their impending destruction. It should also be a boon for new players seeking to get in touch with their teammates, learn from veterans, and participate quickly and easily in coordinated attacks and defenses. When it's clicking on all cylinders and everyone on your team is involved, World in Conflict is one of the best multiplayer games of any genre out on the market.
It's good that Massive has spent time trying to make sure their Massgate multiplayer service is clean and feature-filled. Everything from clan support to tournaments is being provided for the hardcore while the more casual player should be able to find others of their ilk quickly via player matching. Add to that the ability to broadcast games via the nifty system of cameras and telestrating tools and you've got a game built for a competitive community.
While the game was designed primarily as a multiplayer game, single-player hasn't been thrown to the dogs. The campaign provides a well presented and explosive spectacle right from the moment that the Russians invade US soil and artillery begins to pummel Seattle. It's a non-stop ride from there with very little down time to gather your wits, which fits the tactical nature of the game quite nicely and provides us adrenaline junkies a constant fix.
The story is consistently well presented from several angles. Massive not only tells the strategic and tactical nature of the Soviet aggression via terrific load-screen briefings voiced by Alec Baldwin and constant radio chatter by the main characters and leaders in the Allied forces, but also the more personal side of war via several well developed characters. Each is quite different in their motivations and the chance to learn more through the art slideshow cutscenes of phone calls home helps you invest that much more. Both the personalities of the characters and tactical information mix together in the well directed in-engine cutscenes in each mission. Finally, there are a couple of FMV cutscenes, both of which you've probably seen by now (check out one of them below) if you've followed the game at all and they mix the music and action very well together. Overall, the story presentation of the single player package is excellent.
The campaign moves smoothly from location to location documenting the war across the American Northwest, New York City, and various parts of Europe. Each of the missions offers something different and encourages players to become more familiar with each of the army types by providing only certain kinds of reinforcements. It's not as rigid as the multiplayer (you'll often have helicopters and tanks under your command simultaneously) but is great for introducing the power of each unit type by offering up opportunities to take advantage of special abilities against the enemy.
It's also impressive how the campaign teaches ideas of teamwork. It's common for your commander to give you an objective only to turn it over to an AI teammate in order to present a new objective. While that AI is guarding a strongpoint, you'll have to press forward to take another strategic objective. It's something that'll become like second nature in the multiplayer game and is offered up smoothly in the single player game. In fact, the campaign is full of the pleasant trickery that makes you feel like part of something huge when you're only commanding a modicum of units. There's so much action and destruction happening all around that you're not directly participating in that it's hard not to feel the intense heat of the explosions when in fact, you're quite focused on a small section of the battle. There were only a few objectives that will push you to split your forces farther than a few hundred meters apart.
Single player also happily provided liberal amounts of tactical aid points on several occasions allowing a huge array of explosives to be dropped near constantly on the enemy. You just don't know how satisfying it is to call in three carpet bombing raids, fuel air bombs, and massive artillery strikes all at the same time. Bliss.
RTS veterans and action fans alike should find this to be an action junky's dream, but those of you who pride yourselves on high mouse click-per-second capabilities and are OCD micromanagers may find it a bit on the easy side. I can't say I was particularly hard-pressed to complete any of the primary objectives (some secondary were more challenging), even on hard, though I've also played a ton of real-time games over the years. I'd recommend any RTS vets to pump the difficulty up to hard for sure. Part of the issue likely has to do with the enemy AI that occasionally showed potential, but mostly ran straight into the line of fire instead of taking advantage of their surroundings and special abilities. It's a little difficult to say what exactly makes the game more difficult on hard as the AI tactics seemed unchanged and didn't make use of unit special abilities like I thought it would.
Closing Comments
It’s not very often that a real-time strategy title comes along and changes the way you think about the genre. World in Conflict is one of those, not because all of the ideas are totally new, but because they’re all put together in such a successful way. This game is unlike most real-time war-games for its tactical nature and reliance on teamwork. Because of this, the multiplayer is one of the best experiences on the market. While the single player plays second fiddle to the multiplayer (at least in my mind), it also provides explosive and well-conceived missions that build up the ideas of team-play through the various objectives given and an exceptionally well-presented story. When all is said and done, 2007 is going to be an amazing year for strategy titles and World in Conflict will be there among the best of them.
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