The1Qwerty

I was lucky enough to spend some enjoyable time playing World in Conflict (pre alpha edition) at the recent GO3 Electronic Entertainment Expo. All I can say is wow, it’s an awesome game. World in Conflict I think will redefine the whole RTS genre with its very different attack on game play.

Nice nuke there.

First off what is World in Conflict all about? World in Conflict (WiC) is set during 1989, in West Germany where the Soviet Union are advancing into Europe, NATO responds to the attack only to be under fire from a second front. By this stage the Soviet Union, have made a diversion attack on the American homeland. In the single player campaign you are a field commander fighting to reclaim American cities and suburbs.

The graphics in WiC are absolutely amazing, words cannot describe how awesome they really are, and its only in pre-alpha so who knows how far they will go. One of the things I did notice was lacking in the pre-alpha is that when the tanks go over the bridge you will see in my video, they are not reflected on the water. Thats about the only criticism I have to give on the game though. The nukes are just awesome and when you move in and out of the nuked area your vision goes all black and white with lines moving around.

Go Go Go

WiC is underdevelopment by Massive Entertainment, and will be published by Sierra.

I feel that WiC will redefine the RTS genre with it’s new and original attack on game play (I certainly haven’t seen anything like it). Think of a hybrid between Battlefield and Command & Conquer, the RTS side of things in C&C and the holding of checkpoint game play style of Battlefield, effectively combines to create one fast intense game.

The controls in WiC are very different from what you would expect of an RTS, it took me a few minutes to work out what was going on, but once you have it worked out you can control your units easily and effectively.

In WiC you don’t use the mouse to change the part of the map you see but rather wasd, which is a very interesting new way of controlling an RTS game, I found this rather confusing at first seeing as traditional RTS games use the mouse to move the view screen around. Luckily Andy from Sierra was there and helped me out on getting things underway. Once the basics of the game have been grasped it’s very intuitive to play.
The menu that appears is also very helpful in terms of working out how to play the game.

One of the really cool things about WiC is the wide range of camera angles you can play the game from. Almost any angle you want. This is thanks to the MassTech Engine, which is propriety software of Massive it gives you full 360 range of camera movement, and lets you get right into the midst of battle almost like an FPS. Scrolling the middle button zooms you in and whilst holding down the middle button and using a combination of wasd you can move around the map like being a spectator in a FPS game, it’s fantastic!

WiC is not like your ordinary RTS in more ways than just the controls, for instance there is no need to sit around and build a base, your straight into the game starting off with resources that let you buy units straight off and start fighting.
You don’t even have to collect resources, you get a constant flow of resources that is controlled by the amount of territory you control. The more territory you have the more resources that come in.
Controlling territory is very much like taking checkpoints in Battlefield, you sit a unit on it and you take control, that simple. To get units onto the battlefield, you simply select your dropzone (where you want to deploy your units) select which units you would like, then click deploy. The units will then be air dropped onto the battlefield ready to fight!

WiC has four different battlefield roles, Air, Armour, Infantry and Support. Each role has its advantages. I only played as Armour since using tanks to destroy opponents really interested me, in light of things now I wish that I had tried out different roles. I did however, see the other roles in action though and the infantry units are very highly detailed. (Really good for a pre-alpha)

Destructible scenery, everything within WiC can be destroyed, even forests can be burnt down, giving a tactical advantage for getting units across a map. In the video footage I have you can see how my tanks actually push burnt out tanks out of the way when moving around.

Burnt out trees

WiC has got some great super weapons, that are not only extremely powerful, the damage that they cause is amazing from a graphics point of view. Nothing like seeing a nuke go off in WiC the graphics are far superior to C&C3, and any other RTS currently on the market.

In most RTS games you can’t join the game once it’s started, this however, is not the case with WiC as you can join a multiplay game at anytime. You can just jump into battle and immediately start assisting your team, to help take control of the map.

Whilst I was playing WiC at GO3 I had a nice little chat with Andy from Sierra, and the general gist of what I herd was that, there will be an open beta. Andy also said that there will be some new information about the game (something big I think) coming out within the next few weeks.

 

I know that I have missed something about this awesome game, there is so much to tell. Well worth getting at the end of this year, along with a new PC upgrade that will most likely be needed to play the game to it’s fullest.

WiC will be a new extremely tactical, fast and furious multiplayer game, that will diversify the RTS genre and start something new.
I am going to give the pre-alpha 8/10.

Note

I am having trouble converting the video footage I have check back in a few days and I will have it all sorted.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 3:25 pm and is filed under RTS, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.