World in Conflict

September 25,2007 - Hype for Massive Entertainment's World in Conflict has been relatively minimal compared to many other games this year. Despite this, World in Conflict manages to be one of the biggest surprises this year, but it’s one of the best games to be released this year to date. Fans of Ground Control I and II, the previous two projects from Massive Entertainment, could have told you to keep your eyes on World in Conflict far sooner, considering how good those games were; however, even among fans, few could really anticipate just how good World in Conflict would be. World in Conflict is an excellent real-time strategy game that excels not only technically, but in every other aspect that matters; it's simply one of the best games to come out in a long time.

Real-time strategy gaming is a market that is so saturated on the PC that it really seems as though half-decent real-time strategy games are a dime a dozen. Last year’s Company of Heroes was an excellent change of pace, and this year we had a good rendition of the standard style of RTS in Command and Conquer 3, but not much else has really stood out. World in Conflict once again breaks the pace, kicking resource management to the curb, and instead playing strictly with missiles and bullets. This game is only about the combat, and that’s exactly why it excels.

The single player of World in Conflict is amazing. Really, the last time there was a narrative so effective and so engaging in a game of this type it was WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos in 2002. Basically the premise is that the Cold War didn’t end when it was supposed to and World War III erupted as a result. Though there’s really nothing new to this story, it’s a rather unexplored scenario in gaming, strangely enough, and it’s a very welcome change from the typical futuristic or WWII war settings.

Each of the 14 single player missions starts with a cutscene of some sort. Some are told through graphic novel-like pictures with narrative over them, and some are told in pre-rendered CGI scenes. These CGI scenes are so magnificent that it’s really a shame there aren’t more of them. Alec Baldwin of The Departed and Glengarry Glenn Ross fame also narrates the game in each of the main loading screens. He does an excellent job and his acting follows suit with the superb voice-overs.

Though the story itself is really nothing fundamentally new, it has a strange power over you as you play through the campaign. You’ll find yourself being drawn in by the story early on. It’s cool to play in areas of America that you may know yourself, and it’s absolutely breathtaking to see them getting blown to bits by bombs and the like.

World in Conflict plays simply; you merely manage your troops around the battlefield, fulfilling primary and secondary objectives. The game doesn’t make it hard on you by forcing you to manage resources in order to build more units; instead, the objective is to kill more hostiles in order to call in more support via drop zones. Actually, calling in troops is fairly unique in itself. You get to decide what units you want and then pick a specific drop point on the map. The areas are cleared defined by which zones are friendly and these friendly zones are specifically where you can call in your troops.

Each unit’s strengths and weaknesses must be taken into consideration in combat, obviously. As with many RTS, many situations come down to a rock-paper-scissors situation, where certain units are more effective against others. But what’s really interesting here is the use of terrain as an effective resource in fighting off your enemies. You can use any of the defensive or offensive skills each unit possesses to help you, too. Alternatively, you can use both the skills and terrain together. As an example, you could use a smoke grenade to cover your tanks while charging down through the forest and destroying your opponents. It’s really fun to play around with the different types of offensive attacks you can do. World in Conflict urges you to be very liberal with exactly how you play the game. There are very few instances where you feel cheated out of your resources and have a hard time catching back up. If you lose a mission it’s usually your own fault and you’ll understand how to fix it if you just try it again. Besides the reinforcement points you are given, there are also tactical aid points which are received the same way: by eliminating hostiles. These points allow you use specific types of offensive attacks. A few examples of these attacks are calling in air strikes, or even launching nuclear weapons (which comes much later in the game). Actually when you finally get a nuclear weapon attack, it is the pinnacle of the game; it is incredible seeing the screen flash white and the massive damage that ensues.

The single player, while excellent, is not the only star of World in Conflict. The multiplayer portion of the game is also marvelous and will surely garner a big community as specs begin to catch up to the game and more people can check it out. The way the game plays is so different from every other RTS game out there. You start the game with your initial batch of troops, and are assigned to a team. You then attempt to destroy your enemy. Since there’s no resource management in the game you basically just drop in and start fighting. It’s unlike anything else that’s come out recently whatsoever. The best part about it is that you really don’t need to play for long at all to get a satisfying bout of multiplayer action. You can jump in there for a half hour or find yourself playing for hours on end without even really feeling a difference. Being a good tactician is certainly a good skill to have in this game, as it’s all about the combat.

There’s really not a lot to say about the multiplayer setup other than that it’s simply a lot of fun. You know a game succeeds completely when its strongest aspect isn’t one of its technical feats, but that it’s just a ton of fun to play. This is what what makes World in Conflict so excellent.

It is in technical matters, however, that World in Conflict has a few faults. Though it can be graphically outstanding, it will take a beast of a computer to run it efficiently. The graphics are detailed and rich, filled with lots of explosions, units, and nice landscapes. The only problem is that when attacks begin, and if your computer isn’t literally top of the line, there is going to be a serious hit in the framerate. On our Core 2 Duo system with a strong 256 MB graphics card there were times when the game would drop well below 30 frames per second, especially during nuclear attacks or bomb strikes. It’s rather unfortunate that this is the case. If you’ve got one of the new HD ATI cards or the GeForce 8800 card, however, you should be able to run things decently provided the rest of your machine is up to snuff. The DX10 capabilities are put to good use in this beautiful game. The voice acting is also excellent. Leading the lineup is Alec Baldwin, as previously mentioned, and he does a stellar job along with the rest of the main cast. The sound effects are also brilliant and depending on where you are on the map it will have a direct effect on how things sound. Really the only thing about the sound that could be considered a notable flaw is that there are some annoying unit responses whenever you try to move them.

Ultimately, where World in Conflict succeeds is in every aspect that truly matters in the final judgment of a game’s quality. It’s a fun, addictive, fast paced, and fresh take on a very stale genre. This is not only one of the PC’s best this year, it’s one of the best games in the genre, period; and we’re talking in the infinite sense. This will go down as an all-time classic among the likes of StarCraft, Total Annihilation, WarCraft, and Age of Empires. It’s simply an amazing game that shouldn’t be missed.

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