We’ve all seen way too much of World War Two in the gaming market, but what about World War Three? A fictional war scenario opens up a variety of creative possibilities, which should be taken as a good thing given how many times the beaches of Omaha have been digitally recreated. With World in Conflict, latest release into the RTS genre, you get the impression that the development team stayed up all night one evening playing Red Alert 2, and then decided: “You know what? Let’s try the whole Soviet-invasion scenario without the kooky mind-control or cyber-squid shenanigans and see what happens. Oh, yeah, and let’s make it look really pretty, too.”
Taking place in an alternate reality in the year 1989, this game pretends the Cold War never ended, and instead escalated into a surprise Soviet invasion of America. Using disguised freighters to sneak up and unload their deadly cargo, the Russian army spearheads their assault by taking Seattle, and then swiftly moves outward in an attempt to deal a decisive blow to America. Naturally the job falls to you (among a number of other officers) to defend America and prepare to launch a counter-offensive.
The singleplayer campaign stretches over some 14-odd missions, and actually has quite a good storyline attached to it. You play as “Parker”, an up-and-coming promising officer in the army. Parker is essentially a voiceless persona whose face is never really shown in the cinematics, but is present nonetheless to give some form of fixed “presence.” This helps jump the game from being “just another game where you’re in charge of a bunch of tanks” to a down-and-dirty fight for survival. The campaign augments this through constant, well-voiced dialogue between your C.O. and the other officers (who are typically also in the field commanding their own units – as a nice touch, you’re rarely working alone), as well as the occasional engine-rendered cutscene to propel the storyline forward. Its one thing to watch from a distance as an artillery salvo puts holes in a friendly squad, but seeing the game present this first-hand really adds a feel of realism to the campaign.
Fortunately the campaign isn’t overly difficult either. Just like Ground Control 2, there is a heavy lean on properly micro-managing your units, but unlike the game’s technical predecessor the combat has been scaled back enough to not be overwhelming. The game offers waypoint controls for periods where multiple actions are required, although as a bit of an annoyance, only movement commands can ‘stack’; you can ‘end’ a waypoint sequence with an action such as a repair or attack order, but not stack multiple repair orders. This annoying because you have to constantly micro-manage your repair vehicles during downtime rather than just stacking up repair orders, Supreme Commander-style. As an additional annoyance, your artillery tanks break ranks and charge after a target you had told to attack if the target drops out of visual range, which is both bizarre and idiotic (as well as expensive). While the AI and control elements handle well for the most part, you can expect to encounter a few eyebrow-furrowing moments.
Just like previous titles from Massive, there is no actual resource collection or base-building in World in Conflict-- everything is instead based around requisition points. Initially, a landing zone must be selected (typically limited to an area behind friendly lines), then resource points can be spent to purchase a unit and have it air-dropped in. Similarly, there’s a “support” system in place which is also dependent on points, though these are only accumulated either through scripted events in the campaign, or getting kills. Support can be anything from dropping a set of light tanks or infantry behind enemy lines, to the more glorious Fuel-Air-Explosives, carpet bombings, or even a tactical nuclear strike – along with a few other mixed artillery / airstrike options for when you need something comparatively precise, and don’t want to waste extra points transforming the entire area around a single infantry squadron into a charred wasteland.
Thankfully the system is carefully balanced, as each support option takes a fixed amount of time to arrive, and it can be challenging to ‘lead’ a formation of tanks sufficiently to ensure a kill when trying to land a cheap shot (or you can simply saturate the area with ridiculous amounts of explosives, assuming you have the points to spare of course). The benefit to this balancing applies mostly to multiplayer, but keeps things challenging in the singleplayer campaign too.
Speaking of multiplayer, it’s nice to see that Massive Entertainment put such effort into developing it. The online matchmaking service incorporates a functional friends list, clan system, rankings, and a whole slew of other features to make online gaming easy and compatible. Getting into the matches, the developers have cleverly split up the gameplay between four classes: Infantry, Armor, Airborne, and Support. During the average match, both teams (USSR and either America or NATO) must work together to capture objective points and hold them. You can’t just randomly pick a team and drop in however; choosing anti-air may become the key to victory for your team, but more than likely it will lead to instant embarrassment unless you have somebody else to suppress the enemy anti-air defenses for you. Likewise, tanks and armored vehicles can become mincemeat for enemy choppers unless backed up by a strong support player providing AA coverage.
