World in Conflict

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Lord_Mountbatten
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World in Conflict

Post by Lord_Mountbatten » 11 Dec 2011, 17:48

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Might as well try doing this.

I don't know how many people have ever played World in Conflict, but if you haven't, it's an RTS game that takes influence from the film Red Dawn, in which the Soviet Union invades the United States. The same happens here, although unlike in Red Dawn, the action centres around the state of Washington and the city of Seattle. Instead of the USSR deciding America is evil and has to die, wasting countless troops for no real reason, the game takes place in 1989, just when the Soviet Union is falling apart internally. They ask for foreign aid, and when diplomatic negotiations fall through, the superpower, in desperation, launches an attack on West Berlin, starting WWIII.

You play as 1st Lt (later Captain) Parker, a faceless, voiceless commander throughout the conflict. The version of the game I have includes the expansion pack, Soviet Assault, which allows you to play as one Lt Romanov, and sees the beginning of the war as well as what the battle is like from the other point of view. You start the Soviet side of the game launching the assault on West Berlin, and the US side of the game just at the moment unmarked cargo ships unexpectedly launch an invasion of the city of Seattle.

Contrary to most RTS games, you do not control all allied forces on the battlefield. You are given command of your own forces, but your fellow commanders, such as for example (for the US side) the incompetent Captain Bannon or the more professional Captain Webb, will pursue their own objectives as you carry out your orders. This allows for tighter operational control, rather than with you having to race around the battlefield making sure your various detachments are still alive, distracting you from your objectives.

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Heavy fighting in southern France. The likelihood of leaving a settlement in the game in nothing less than ruins is slim.

The game allows for a nice amount of mix and match when it comes to troop deployments. You have a drop zone which you can change to suit your progress during the mission (the area of choice updates as you complete objectives), and from there reinforcements are airlifted. On the harder difficulties you will have to choose your troops carefully, so for instance I might, in a specific loadout, deploy some heavy tanks for the bulk of fighting, a repair vehicle to keep those tanks going, some anti-armour infantry (which can encamp in buildings for maximum destructive purpose), troop transports so that the infantry can reach locations on time, and maybe some mobile artillery pieces if I want to target a specific location.

The game uses a reinforcement point system, so when you lose a unit the reinforcement point counter goes up, draining slowly into a counter of points you can use for deploying reinforcements. You may think killing enemies would be what increases this, but that is reserved for the tactical aid menu. The more enemies you kill, the more access to powerful support weaponry is granted. For instance, I may destroy enough enemy units to be granted 10 tactical aid points. I can now direct an artillery barrage of varying strengths, or an airstrike. The best way to complete objectives, for me, is to commence a joint strike on a location with heavy barrages followed by a tank assault.

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Nuclear weaponry is a final resort.This makes a much bigger appearance in the multiplayer modes.

The usual way you will be completing objectives will be to seize strategic locations. These are marked by a few small circles. Having units in all of the circles will turn them green and commence fortification bars - as these bars rise you will set up machine gun defences, anti-tank defences and anti-air defences respectively. There are generally secondary objectives which, whilst aren't necessary to complete, grant you extra troops, tactical aid, or even less enemy resistance as a result. Completing these secondary objectives also grants you extra medals at the end of each mission, and the practical results were helpful enough for me to try as hard as possible to complete any I was given, especially in the harder difficulties where every objective requires all the advantages you can get just to complete them.

Now whilst this sounds fun, the game wouldn't be nearly as good without its storyline and characters. After the Washington campaign ends on a fairly momentous cliffhanger, you are taken back to Europe where WWIII is in full swing, as a fresh-faced officer under the command of Colonel Sawyer (a ferocious, Patten-like figure). During the campaign in Washington state there are allusions to history between you, Sawyer and Captain Bannon, which the European campaign fleshes out. Between the missions there are backstory cutscenes for most of the main characters in the game, and altogether this produces a cast of characters that make the battles and campaign feel that much more interesting. The US campaign sees development and redemption from the initially useless, foolhardy Bannon, the strain of command and the orders Sawyer must give, and the cautious professionalism of Webb, previously invalidated out of action and raring to fight.

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The main characters for the US campaign.

Conversely, the Soviet side of the campaign shows that the Russians are not soulless communists. Indeed, the sympathetic character of Colonel Orlovsky, who makes his distaste for the war clear and is furious when his nephew, the deluded fanatic Captain Malashenko (who can still be seen as a sad victim of the lies fed to him by the Soviet propaganda machine), tries to execute civilians, shows a much more human side to the Soviet war machine than most media products do. Major Lebedjev, Orlovsky's friend and a KGB liaison, again shows more humanity than is to be expected, despite his attempts at aloof impersonality.

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Major Lebedjev interviews Captain Malashenko during the American campaign. His resigned mockery of the Soviet system is often made clear throughout the game.

I haven't even touched the multiplayer, which is simply my way. However, with the success of the singleplayer campaign, I can't imagine multiplayer being less enjoyable because of it. The only problem would be the sad lack of the cast and storyline, which really make the game for me. I would highly recommend this game to anyone with a decent enough PC to play it (I had to turn down a few settings to get the smoothness of play I wanted).

This is probably one of the best, and more realistic, portrayals of an explosive end to the Cold War in game form, and is available from Steam and other online retailers.
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Aenir_bEPU
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Re: World in Conflict

Post by Aenir_bEPU » 11 Dec 2011, 18:22

A good review, but the multiplayer is where the bulk of the actual gameplay is at. There is a great deal of destruction and mayhem, and often nukes, with 8v8 matches.

But I did really enjoy the singleplayer (although I haven't played the Soviet expansion).

I very much enjoyed how realistic it aimed to be story-wise, the idea of the USSR trying to invade Europe to avoid collapse isn't all that absurd. Just a slight nudge in history and see where it goes.
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Sti_Jo_Lew
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Re: World in Conflict

Post by Sti_Jo_Lew » 11 Dec 2011, 20:44

Sounds like a fun game. I'm a fan of the RTS genre, so I might pick it up sometime.
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Byroe
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Re: World in Conflict

Post by Byroe » 12 Dec 2011, 01:17

This looks like a great game, I love RTSs I may consider picking this up.
*edit* downloading the steam demo now.
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