World in Conflict Review (PC)

By Zott820Zott820
1262152406|%c|agohover

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During Direct to Drive's 5 year old sale, where they were selling games for 5 dollars, I jumped on two games at discount prices. World in Conflict Gold was one of those games, and after playing through the single player on the normal difficulty I have constructed this review. I had not had the chance for playing much multiplayer for this game, so I won't reflect on it much. Instead, this review will focus on the single player aspect of both the original campaign and the interlaced Soviet expansion pack missions.

World in Conflict is a game which reminds me a lot of Command and Conquer with bits and pieces of other RTSs thrown in for a somewhat appealing and occasionally satisfying experience.


Story: The story takes place during the cold war, 1989 including additional historical pieces. During both, the allied nations are dealing with the threat of the Soviet Union, had it not fallen at the end of the cold war. In the American Campaign, the player takes control of a commander named Parker, and is joined with the help of AI Co-commanders, such as Bannon, with both of you being directed by Colonel Sawyer. While other characters come into play, those 3 are the ones of major storyline importance.

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The story is original as far as videogames are concerned, though a lot of inspiration comes from movies such as Red Dawn; an invasion of the United States by Russia. The story carries from initial landing in Seattle to Oregon and places in-between. Halfway through the game there is a flashback to initial battles between NATO forces and the Russian's European invasion, being the back-story for the major characters cited above.

As far as the characters are concerned, many are 1-trick ponies. Bannon is a whiner, and starts and ends that way. Only in his last mission does he "man-up", though I felt little empathy for one of the most annoying characters of the lot. Sawyer is more interesting, always badgering Bannon and giving orders, but he too falls to the same routine mission after mission; giving orders, yelling at Bannon and yelling at everyone else.

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Something interesting for the player's character Parker is his portrayal. He is shown in the game, but his face is not, therefore you'll find him standing listening in to Sawyer during cutscenes. It took me a while to realize why there was a soldier who's back was always facing the camera till I realized it was the character I was playing. I'm not saying this is bad, just a little interesting how a "silent" hero in a RTS was accomplished. Plot-wise it doesn't seem to harm or hurt the narration.

Some of the characters that were not major, but appeared in the cutscenes and cinematics such as Mike, Anton and Webb, seemed to have more humility and I could better connect to these characters. Unfortunately, most of the first half of the game only focuses on the big 3 mentioned before, which were probably my least favorite characters. Luckily after the half of the game, where some of their storylines were sorted out, the others could display their own superior better war commentary.

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Now, World In Conflict Gold came with a Soviet Campaign as well as the American one, but soviet missions are spliced in between the American's. This is a little disappointing, since as an expansion it forces a complete replay through the game to find all the new content, rather than having that option as well as a mission/campaign select for just those special missions. Regardless, if one is playing World in Conflict for the first time, the inclusion of the Soviet missions certainly helps explain some of the story arcs as well as scenes occurring simultaneously in the storyline.

In terms of characters there are better-quality soviet versions. Rather than go into the names, I will simply say the Colonel feels more human than the American chatterbox equivalent, and stronger emotionally. He is sort of that stereotypical hero that one sees from movies such as from "Letters from Iwo Jima" that knows the enemy and respects them. His interaction with his associates also brings up more politically charged topics: execution, guerilla tactics, patriotism; which feel more in terms with the game's story than some of the early shallow dialogue occurring between the American counterparts.

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The cut scenes are told in a similar vein as Company of Heroes' with illustrated storyboards that pan around; over these are placed the characters narration. These tell of side events in the story, not always addressing the current or upcoming missions, work to nudge in humility to the war. These scenes show such events as one soldier trying to get his army paychecks cleared, a solider phoning his father, and Soviet propaganda. I enjoyed these scenes, since just like COH, they were played off extremely well, and helped to set the tone of the war.

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The American cinematic operation overview maps are narrated by an "unknown voice" and describe the thoughts of the current attack plans and reasoning. They include story of the map you will soon be visiting, but not each objective you will have to do on it. They are similar to Call of Duty 4 in storytelling style, but a more slow and morbid version. These are different than COH, which only play off the strategy of the map at hand in-game, with the operation overviews being separate in the animated cinematics.

Overall, while the story is interesting overall, dealing with nukes, and some plot twists, it only really starts to get exciting in the latter half of the game. This isn't because the initial levels are tutorials, but just because emotionally they feel stronger, and the gameplay is superior. I will say more about this further into the review. There are 15 American/NATO missions while there are only 6 Russian missions, but of them all, there are only about 5 great American missions, and 4 great Russian missions, making the expansion pack better overall in design, even if it is shorter.

The ending on the American side is a little disappointing, not because of how it ends, but how it is handled. There is no winding down. There is simply a dialogue that informs that the player has succeeded, one short story tie-up, and then the credits roll. There isn't any aftermath footage or epilogue. Especially disappointing is how the character Parker, whom was being played the entire game, has no post story. The Soviet Campaign has it a little better, the ending doesn't have a cinematic either, but it is definitely more fulfilling at at-least giving an inkling of the post-op of the characters in an in-game cut scene.


Graphics: World in Conflict is all about the environmental details. The graphics in World in Conflict are spectacular for an RTS, on the same vein of Company of Heroes, and increasingly becoming a standard for RTS graphics in general. Much like Company of Heroes, there is much in the way of visual splendor being produced; from the cloudy ash from a newly deconstructed building, to the pits where forecasts of artillery rain were correct; details are added quite stunning. One way in which World in Conflict really stands out amongst the RTS graphical crowd is in the tiny details. Company of Heroes has details, but as I'll continue to parallel the two on their focus, COH focuses on the people, and WIC focuses on the environment.

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For this I only need to point at the towns, cities and farmlands in WIC. Each building has a very elegant, as far as explosions are concerned, destructible animation, with smokestacks falling to the ground and roofs collapsing. It is all very pleasing. Unlike COH, these destruction animations seem damage oriented, in that once the building gets to 50% health it may burst into flames, while in COH, you could destroy each side of the building individually. Overall, it seems a choice of scale. Since the camera is much farther out in WIC, they take buildings to be more terrain placeholders, rather than of maximal strategic importance with specific window placement etc. Buildings are especially easy to destroy in WIC compared to COH, removing some of their strategic usage for damage protection. Both still have canned destruction animations, and in both, not everything is destructible.

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Anyways, WIC's importance of detail really makes the believability of invasion. There are signs and graffiti on the walls of the shops, with little details such as non-repetitious names added to each building. Furthermore there are scattered props like cars, lamp poles, freeway overpasses and more that add many "big picture details". The terrain is also stellar and while still a stretched texture over a mesh, is very highly detailed. The landscape texture is likewise, with volumetric clouds and a looming parallax moon. There is even a mission with an aurora borealis in it that animates beautifully, as killer whales dance below. These random props immerse the game in realism. At times it just amazes me that the developers included so many nicks and nacks, which have no affect on gameplay at all. There are things I would have never even considered including. A testament to the keen eyes and modeling skills of the developers.

There is occasionally grass added to the scene; not only can tanks run over the grass and leave their treadmark, the grass gets removed in the path the tank navigated, leaving the rest alone. It is quite fun to draw pictures with tanks with this effect. The same applies for snow, where even infantry leave their footprints on the ground, with brown and white representing the dirt smudging beneath soldier's feet. The grass and snow will return once the camera focuses away, but this is understandable for memory conservation sakes and don't detract from the experience of the moment.

Dear to my heart was a themed level with Christmas decorations, santas, and snowmen, and lights. Themes of this nature, while few, served to match the date of the mission and while serving 0 tactical advantage the details were appreciated for their pathos.

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Trees and shrubbery are also well done. One mission is near a lighthouse in Europe. The steep bank of the cliff is mostly rocky but realistically there are some trees, and on a couple of plateaus of the cliff. There, some lone grass grows stranded from the majority. Each tree is also randomly generated using Speedtree technology. As they look over the boats in the harbor and birds fly overhead, I absorb the scene. It is details like this that I do enjoy in games.
Did I mention trees can catch on fire? No? Well they can, and it is sweet. Dropping napalm on trees and watching the leaves burn off to render a husk of bark and debris is what I call romantic. Thankfully they are virtual trees or else I might feel guilty basking in their warm glow. The developers must know how cool this effect is that they included for they have you napalm a bush of trees to flush out the enemy. Strategic use of fire. From its inclusion in Far Cry 2, many games before it, fire is quite a staple of coolness.

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While the details are crazy good, not everything is passable with the graphics. Some of the bane occurs from poor design choices rather than pure graphics, however. The biggest thing that annoyed me graphically, and not design-wise was that many of the scorch marks on the terrain look very flat and boring. Even in older Games such as Myth there was added physical depth from explosion marks. Large explosions do cause pits, but it doesn't change the zoomed-out look. In WIC, as they constantly overlay the texture making their believability much much less. With the terrain limit for these marks set extremely high, the cartoony factor begins to show up. This happens in other games, but usually the camera never lets you see more than a couple sorchmarks at once. in WIC, seeing 100+ nearly identical marks is detracting.

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Further graphical shame comes from the units. Soldiers all robotically run in the same march stride animation as they move about the world, no individual thought for the soldiers in this game. This is a big difference from COH, and certainly plays up the environment (Big Picture) vs. units (Up-Close) details I mentioned before.

Another problem arises during cinematics. During the wonderful cinematic, the last storyboard shot always seems to get cut off just before the in-game cut scenes began. I am not sure if this was purposely done, or if it happens by accident, but it happens on the majority of the missions that I am unsure what to think about it. The sounds seem to match the cinematic as they play, so I am confident that the sound is not finishing early and cutting off the final storyboard drawing. Not game-breaking, but an annoying detail.

Lastly, the textures have LOD applied to them; so higher quality versions will load as you get closer to the textured object to help with optimization. I appreciate this, since it makes the game run so smooth. Unfortunately, there is a long load delay as you wait for a while focused on an object or scene to have the high-resolution textures appear. I'm not sure if this is a hardware limitation or RAM limitation, but it was slightly annoying to "keep the camera steady" to avoid the blurry shot. On the plus side, the pop-in is not as bad as games like Mass-Effect's blurry jack-in-the-box texture mess.


Controls: World in Conflict does not have any revolutionary control features that I haven't seen anywhere else, but it does have a couple changes that I appreciate.

For one, I can select a unit with a special power, such as a healing unit and right click on a unit in my taskbar to have the healer ride over to that unit to heal it. This is a very useful time saver. It also works similarly for the enemy. In combat it is often a pain to have to select a unit to attack it amongst a cluster of units, clicking on the type indicator for that unit which floats above their head works just the same as clicking on the unit directly. Another helpful advantage.

The game makes use of the WASD keys to move around the camera. This is appreciated, since it gives my hand space to rest on my keyboard, rather than dealing with my rather cramped arrows keys. I know why most games just use the arrow keys though, the use of WASD for camera removes them as viable hotkeys. But in World in Conflict this isn't much of a problem. There is no base building, so that eliminates a lot of required hotkeys, plus the two that are needed, special weapons, are E, and R respectively, being right next to the camera controls of easy access. The camera is also well designed and I had no problem panning and orbitting about the playing field smoothly. The camera also has a built in height-pan speed adjustment. In this way, zooming in slows the camera's top speed down, versus what it is at the maximum camera height. This lets the player enjoy the many visual details without zooming past them by struggling with the spotty camera controls.

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World if Conflict gets a lot correct in controls but not all is beautiful. The icons in the bottom right that pertain to functions is a mess of highlation , meaning some are visually available and others not. Plus it is so cluttered that the reinforce button doesn't even sit in the container and floats lonely on the side. Thankfully I rarely had to use that area for anything rather than the huge special weapons icons, highlighted boldly their importance.

The game includes waypoints, by holding shift, but it didn't work for what I wanted it. Moving units around using it was fine but for some reason the game refuses to queue healing. Whether it just wants to make it harder on the player, or if I'm doing it wrong is up for debate, but all I know is I had to manually order my repair vehicle around for it to do its functions.

Another nitpick I had was that all units follows the speed of the slowest commanded unit. While I understand this is to keep units together, it proved annoying to order my troops to a spot and have them get there too late to do any good, with the jeeps being as slow as the infantry. I had to order my troops in groups to get to destinations so that they would follow their maximum movement speed for better strategic usage. Hopefully there is a setting I'm missing that disables the "guarding" mechanism, since I currently don't like it as it stands.


Gameplay: World in Conflict plays like Command and Conquer. This is not one of the early Command and Conquer(s) either, it is more in tune with Red Alert 3, or C&C3. There are controllable units, and clicking on the units gives a choice for special weapons, with most having two "unique" ones. Ground units of infantry are joined into squads; unlike COH, these squads were treated as merely another unit, and there was little in the way of individualism.

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Unlike both C&C and COH, there is no base building. WIC takes the camera far out, and makes the player a commander, not bothering with trivial stuff like base building. However, results in both bad and good consequences. It is good, since base building can sometimes be annoying, and it faces the player with a source in which to lose. Lose one's base;lose the mission. Here's where the negatives start to roll in. In terms of the single player campaign, there never felt like much of a deterrence from simply throwing units into the fray, having them die and simply dropping more in. The strategic aspect was lost of me; unlike Myth II, where you could not build more units, and strategy was involved as there would be rarely any more given. Occasionally missions will try and match this setup, preventing extra drops for a time period, usually at mission beginnings, but it rarely adds much strategy; it just prevents temporary stupidity.
In terms of units there are the predictable ones. There are air, artillery, infantry and armored divisions, with the single player being a combination with major focus on the armored and infantry divisions. Occasionally the player would be given air and artillery to use, but for the most part tanks and ground forces are the staple.

Units did not feel completely balanced, owing more to the lack of strategy required. I usually could just build a whole fleet of APCs and win a mission, or build a fleet of light tanks and win, depending on the situation. Sometimes it was wise to go completely Anti-tank infantry, as these seemed completely overpowered, their only weakness being other infantry, snipers and the chance of being run over. (I liked this touch of being able to run down infantry, another carry-over from the C&C series. Alas, it was usually confusing to hear "Unit lost", and look for a whole missing unit only to find that only half a squad had been road raged by an enemy tank.) The game may have been more balanced for multiplayer, which I did not have the luxury of playing in mass quantities, but as far single player was involved, there really was no reason to dash one's unit selection with anything except that one unit that works, and perhaps an anti-air.

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As the player destroys the enemy they are granted points to spend on off map assistance. These include the aforementioned Napalm, as well as tank busters, cluster bombs, and artillery. In essence a lot of these felt the same, differing mostly on the area of effect and damage done. Since killing the units using the special power often resulted in more points, there was seemingly an endless supply of off map death waiting to be rained down at times. I appreciated the assistance of these special powers and many missions seemed focused around their usage, sending hoards of tanks your way, which happened to cluster up, calling for use of focused artillery on their position.

These special support powers are easy to dispatch the enemy but on the other hand, they are far too easy to use and perhaps too often required, removing their uniqueness , and just making them simply another standard tool in the arsenal. This also devalued the ground units, they did their thing, usually without a lot of help, and the player focused mostly on where the bombing runs would go next. The ground units were just used to resupply the needed points if the bombing runs failed to do the same.

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As for missions, many were largely the same. Sadly, this is the game's biggest fault. Every mission felt like a repetition of the last one, with perhaps one different unit being added to your pool. This sadly did not change up the game a lot, since as I mentioned, only one real unit was needed to complete each mission regardless. The game also suffers greatly from repetition due to this structure. Often the maps had the player attack a point, or defend a point. There was rarely chances for diversion from this tactic. Certain areas had to be attacked to be captured, holding special places on the ground to build up defenses, then there would be a counter attack, and the player had to hold off the enemy. This predictability and subsequent use in almost every mission became dull beyond belief. The use of timers in later missions did not help ease the boredom.("What, you want me to attack that point within 40 minutes? OK. Next Mission: Attack it in 30 minutes? Fine. Next: 20? You got it.") What also proved irritating was that while some missions gave timelines for how long positions had to be defended, some just let you sit there for who knows how long. Yes, in real life one is clueless to reinforcement timing, but in this game, since you can call in help at all times, it truly provides no additional realism, just annoyance. I suppose it is telling if I had to focus on time spent defending rather than the action to say just how exciting the commanding was.

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Only in the later half did the game try to mix up the gameplay, but unfortunately it was too little. One Soviet Mission allowed the player only artillery to help the AI hold off an attacking force. This meant that player had to keep an eye out for enemies and make sure to try and predict enemy movement. This was challenging and appreciated. Another Soviet Mission had the player escort a convoy of trucks to a position. It was actually more like a standard Attack/Defend mission, but at least tried a different approach to it. An American mission forced the player to use only helicopters. Carefully navigating the islands as the player defended New York, avoiding the Anti-air, preventing casualties, and racing against a clock were all engaging and actually challenging. Lastly, a notable American mission forced the player to support their allies by repair, as they salvaged wrecks along the snowy peaks. All these were great improvements, but were rare in the game. Basically, any mission that either limited the amount of units to a select couple that weren't over powered, or changed up the mission structure from something other than attacking and defending were the superior ones for gameplay.

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One mission in the game in which I really enjoyed the gameplay was on the Soviet side, it dealt with the elimination of the guerilla camps. This mission got a couple things right. Firstly, it had clear objectives, eliminate the Anti-air sentries. Next, it limited the units to a couple infantry varieties. Only two were really needed, snipers and Anti-Tank crews, but even with these two, it felt as though the player had something important to do. Focusing on this select amount, and lining them up, keeping the tanks away from the snipers, and the ground troopers away from the anti-tank proved exhilarating. To leave one would doom the other. Unfortunately, the latter half of that mission proceeded down to the same trend of monotony, with tanks and the like clogging up the flow, but that initial part was beautifully designed, with a good story too. It is a shame there aren't too many missions that adopt this structure. They certainly help the game's recycling.

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Perhaps the developers knew that they didn't have that much in the way of variety for mission objectives so they added optional secondary missions. These, if accomplished, added badges to the victory screen, which just like COH, add nothing except for bragging rights and completion tracking. These secondary missions were greatly appreciated, especially in those initial missions to keep the game from getting too stale amongst the usual boredom. They also were original, having to keep certain things alive, and beating time limits actually became main objectives for me, as I kept my interest by making those main priority goals. None of these secondary objectives were very difficult on the normal difficulty setting and so it is likely any player playing the game on normal will accomplish these secondary goals with little or no extra work.

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Another disappointment in recycling comes from the 3 available armies. The 3 armies in the game, NATO, American, and Russian, play exactly the same. Therefore, when playing the expansion pack, do not expect anything extra in terms of strategizing goodies. Also, the differences between a lot of them are negligible besides their special weapons. If one can afford the best unit, there is little reason to choose the lighter variety unless they especially need that special weapon. IE, the light tank has a weapon good against heavy tanks, but the heavy tank has a special weapon good against light tanks. Therefore, it is kind of moot which one to choose. But, for the helicopters, the heavy attack helicopter has a special weapon to kill only ground units, which the light version has an air to air missile, making it the better choice for engaging enemy air or getting a couple to help support the heavy air choppers.

Units gain veterancy over 5 levels. The icons are confusing for those that don't have army insignias memorized, but it is really no matter, the veterancy didn't seem to change my tactical outlook much. This is not like Company of Heroes where a level 3 tank dominates a unvetted one. The level differences for units adds slight advantages for the unit in WIC, but considering the spammy nature of units in WIC anyways, its game-changing moments in single-player missions are slim. There is also apparently a damage based location system, but without any indicators like in COH, and hardly any noticeable difference as far as I could tell through the entire game, this feature was squandered.


AI: The artificial intelligence is good at doing its job, but that is all. The computer allies go about their own business, holding off the enemy, and the enemy does the same thing. There seems to usually be an equal amount of pushing and pulling from both sides since on most of the maps, the allied units are not often overrun by the enemy, or vice versa. They stagnate their positions just to add more diversity and scale to the battle. Sadly, this means if you assist your ally in killing the enemy force attacking them, the ally will just hold position and not move forward; same for the enemy. This makes it easy to predict where the enemy will stop to engage, and special support artillery drops make quick work of the stationary and camping, enemy.

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As for the AI navigating your own units, they seem to be apt at targeting proper units attune to their strengths. IE, the anti air seems to prioritize the attacking helicopter, while the Anti-tanks crew goes for the tanks with their recoilless rifles. Of course, like Command and Conquer, practically any unit can harm the others, it is merely efficiency to take into account. So the infantry can still harm tanks slowly, it is just better that they engage infantry instead, which they appear to do. Ground units are also proficient at path finding, so I'm happy I don't have to complain abut them getting stuck on bridges.

Don't expect to be amazed or challenged by the AI in single-player, it is good at spamming, like much of World in Conflict is based around, but is not apt at handling the strength/weakness mechanics provided.


Sound and music: The sound in this game is average. Compared to COH the unit voices are exceedingly sterile and disappointing. Once more I was reminded of the standard C&C units with their 3-6 responses for everything. Also, the notifications of "unit lost" seemed very vague, and unhelpful, not pinpointing me to any of my lost units.
As far as voices for the main characters, they were believable and fit the characters, though it only worked to fit the characters, it did not improve their faults, which I have already mentioned.

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Explosions are repetitious and while the game changes the volume and pitch a small amount depending on camera distance, it works, but does so standardly.

I was so transfixed on the visuals the majority of the time that music took a backseat. There is an orchestrated score, which must be good since I hardly recognized it, and it definitely wasn't a silent scene. Consider the music fitting, but there didn't seem to be any overarching theme, which I appreciate in games that want to be either franchises, or have memorable, hummable music. There are a couple oldie sounding songs to try and fit the era. Occasionally they worked, but sometimes them stood out too much from the war scene. I'll let them slide on the preacher moment, as that seemed to work alright, and I was amused on how it ended.


Extras & Other Notes: Firstly, one great bonus of this game is the hidden loading bar. Imagine Call of Duty 4, and how it loads as the cutscene is being played. This is exactly how World in Conflict does it, except it hides the loading bar. The loading bar only appears during the cutscene if you try and skip it; in which case the loading bar will appear to warn the player that it understood what they wanted, but isn't finished with the undercover loading. I wish more games took this approach. This is even a method that WIC has over COH, even though they both seem to use similar style cutscenes. This method does its job well because of its player influence. It makes the game appear to have absolutely no loading at all, and makes the transitions from main menu to in-game that much more fluid and uninterrupted. Hiding it is also clever, since it stops it from detracting from the scene, unless it is absolutely required from the player wishing to skip. Thankfully, as a side note, all dialogue and videos can be skipped, regardless of whether you had seen them or not before. More games need to allow this.

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Another positive note is that the game appears quite optimized for DX 9. My laptop is not the most powerful one out there, but even its 9700m GT can run the game at 1680 x 1050 with almost every setting on high. In fact, it runs very smoothly, and only a tremendous amount of explosions slows it down. This is quite impressive for the scale that the game is going for, being able to zoom way out, and then back in freely without transitions. Sort of like a more detailed version of Supreme Commander. DX 10 is unfortunately another story, and requires a more beefy rig, but as described in the graphics section, the game is quite impressive graphically regardless.

The credits include outtakes and photos from development, which make watching scrolling text more entertaining to the common man.

I had a small glitch happen to me where I was trying to choose my dropzone; a tutorial window appeared, and all the places where I could place my marker disappeared. I couldn't reproduce it, (Didn't try too) but could be annoying had it not been an early mission.

Cutscenes are done in-game which is quite cool as the craters from the current mission as well as units are portrayed as they stand in the cutscenes as they do in the mission, for the most part. However this reveals problems occasionally. The game has the tendency to spawn units where there were previously none after a cutscene triggering objective, making your previously well-off units suddenly surrounded.


Conclusion: World in conflict is a beautiful game, there is no doubt about it. There are details everywhere that are simply amazing by having being considered and implemented into a game. A highlight in graphics for RTS of 2007. A seemingly well-optimized engine brings the graphics to the user smoothly. However, while the graphics stun, even by today's standards, the game play is lacking. Units are too much cookie-cuttered and there are no unique powers or units for the different armies. Furthermore, gameplay is too much based around spamming single units, or simplistic combinations. Therefore, with unbalanced units for single-player, strategy is minimized for an RTS. Units are easily replaced and there is no emotionally connection at all for the soldiers and units lost or killed. The AI is average and only does its job; nothing more or less. Voice acting is good, but the sound department overall isn't overwhelmingly stunning. Storyline is original, and stays away from the saturated WWII market. Storyboards portray the story elegantly. However, some characters, especially on the American side, are too shallow. A fine line is not established between minor and major characters. Expansion pack adds 6 extra missions which tend to be better overall than the American Campaign. Missions are based too much around the same goals, there isn't enough originality in the objectives. Optional secondary goals add minimal, but still appreciated replayability. Controls are easy to learn and useful, but some cleanup and additions would have been preferred. Destructibility of the environment is pleasing, almost everything can be destroyed to some degree. I would recommend World in Conflict for those looking for a Command and Conquer experience without the base-building aspect.

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