Sometimes stuff just works. It doesn't happen often enough in the gaming world, but every once in a while a title comes along that puts everything together in such an appealing and enjoyable package you have to step back and say "Wow." Once that initial euphoria wears off, though, you have to get back to the controls because the Soviet Union has just invaded Seattle, Spetznatz units are holding the Statue of Liberty hostage and the President is about to drop a nuclear bomb on the small town from "Gremlins." That's the experience of playing World in Conflict, a real-time strategy masterpiece from Massive Entertainment.
The fun begins with a premise ripped straight out of the Red Dawn Cold War book of nightmares. It's 1989 and The Soviet Union is one final five-year-plan away from total economic collapse. Seeing which way the wind is blowing, the hard-line Communist leadership squashes the nascent ideas of glasnost and perestroika and starts moving troops across the Fulda Gap in a desperate gamble to conquer the free world. NATO forces engage the Russians and the Cold War goes hot all across Europe. Unfortunately for the U.S., getting bogged down in Europe means domestic defense isn't quite up to the task of pushing off one last Russian gambit -- a daring assault on the West Coast of mainland America. That not only lets players get their hands on a lot of vintage US, Soviet and NATO military hardware, but also takes them on a grand tour of World War III battlefields ranging from downtown Seattle to the New York harbor to Marseilles, France to the frozen forests of Murmansk in the Soviet Union.
The single-player campaign follows the course of the war through the story of Lieutenant Parker, the faceless soldier that serves as the alter-ego of the player. Parker's commander is Colonel Sawyer, a man pulled out of retirement to command the West Coast resistance against the Soviets. His other companions are Captain Webb in support and tank commander Captain Bannon. Each of these men is provided with an interesting character arc (particularly Bannon) that weaves its way around the different missions in a surprisingly moving and well-written story contributed by noted author Larry Bond.
The game's storyline is presented via a well-done series of cut scenes, in-mission briefings and voiceovers that play over what look like concept art for the game. Of the three different types of presentations, it's only the concept drawings that provide a false note. The cuts scenes in the game are done in-engine and the engine that runs this game is so powerful and beautiful it seems almost criminal to use anything other than it to convey information to the player. This ends up being a minor complaint, as the real stars of the game's storyline are its voiceovers. Each of them is pitch-perfect, especially Alec Baldwin's narration. His gravelly delivery of a reminiscing Lieutenant Parker grounds the game emotionally, conveying the world-weary tones of a WWIII vet as though distance in time from the events of the war has given him the wisdom and perspective to fully understand them.
In addition to providing the driving force behind the story, WiC's characters also take a variety of interesting tactical situations (fun when considered on their own) and turn them into an excellent training ground for multiplayer. Rather than having the player be responsible for the entire battle, each map has a number of AI-controlled units that are fighting their own battles separate from the player's objectives. Often these objectives are timed or need to be otherwise coordinated with what their AI teammates are doing. This serves to not only teach the player how to utilize their own units, but also trains them in working within a team environment. It's a mark of how good the single-player game is that it manages to do this without once making the player feel like he or she's trapped on a dreaded "puzzle map."
The strategic design of World in Conflict is a marvel of simplicity and elegance. The basic design is a sort of action-game version of a real-time strategy title. The game has no base-building. Instead players get a pool of reinforcement points that they can use to buy military hardware. When a unit is destroyed, the cost of that unit gradually trickles back into the reinforcement pool and can then be re-used to bring fresh troops to the battlefield. Since the reinforcement pool isn't very large, it means that players need to be very precise about which units they're bringing out because most of the time a player's force will consist of between three and twelve units.
There are also only a few different types of units in the game. They fall into a few basic categories -- air units, infantry, artillery, heavy iron and a couple of support, repair and transport vehicles. Rather than being a weakness, though, the limited number of units (and unit types) becomes a strength because each and every unit on the battlefield is purpose-built, comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses and has a clearly defined role that make them vital for victory. A players who fields a squad consisting only of heavy tanks, for example, quickly becomes tank fodder for helicopters, anti-tank infantry hiding in the woods, a zippy squad of APCs or a well-placed artillery barrage. Every RTS game pays lip service to the idea of "combined arms tactics," but few have carried off the concept as well as World in Conflict.
What's most surprising is how such a simple strategic model gives rise to such a deep and enjoyable strategic experience. Strategy in World in Conflict isn't a matter of marshalling resources or even putting together a specific type of force to counter an opponent. Victory in World in Conflict is all about coordination. Playing World in Conflict means having a deep understanding of a unit's capabilities so that every situation can be approached with an understanding of what's needed for success. Two heavy tanks coming over a ridge, for example, can be handled by five APCs with TOW missiles and smokescreens. If you don't have those or something else to deal with them, you need to get moving or call in some kind of assistance from a teammate. The game's genius is that by keeping the strategic options simple and the action fast, it fills the game with an almost constant series of interesting decisions like this. This leads to the kind of adrenaline-fueled exhilaration one gets from a first-person shooter.
This "coordination" game is at the heart of World in Conflict multiplayer and this, more than anything, is what makes the game so good. World in Conflict comes with three different multiplayer variations, Domination, Tug-of-War and Assault. Domination challenges players to control victory points for as long as possible to fill as much of a "domination meter" as possible within 20 minutes. Tug-of-War has a line of victory points in the center of the battlefield that moves toward one side when a player controls all of them. Assault has two teams take turns attacking and defending a series of command points with the team that captures more winning. Each of these variations gives rise to radically different strategic considerations but all of them are a lot of fun.
Multiplayer World in Conflict plays out more like a game of Counter-Strike than Command & Conquer. The game is designed to be supremely dependent on teamwork. At the beginning of a multiplayer match, players have the opportunity to select a "class" (Air, Armor, Infantry or Support) which makes purchasing units outside that specialty prohibitively expensive. Combined with a small pool of resource points and the large maps, this means that any one player will be unable to field a force capable of standing on its own. If an "Armor" player, for example, wants to capture a "victory point" on the map by moving heavy tanks into the area, he or she may be immediately thwarted by an "Air" player with a squad of helicopters. These can then be taken down by anti-air guns wielded by the "Support" player.
Victorious teams are those that coordinate their armies to take advantage of holes in their enemy's force composition and adjusting on the fly to changing victory conditions, and when a team is really clicking, it's the kind of exhilarating team-based experience that multiplayer gaming is all about. Of course, that does mean that a player's online experience is dependent on the quality of the players they hook up with. Lone wolves are not welcome in World in Conflict, and a random group of strangers will usually get rolled by any of the clans who play together frequently.
Massgate, the game's proprietary online matching service, sports a well-designed front end that includes friends lists, clan support, IM services, a solid voice chat system, excellent stat-tracking, tournament ladders, clan matches and a fun series of individual and clan "achievement" medals that can be earned by performing well in multiplayer games. Unfortunately the service experienced a few hiccups during our multiplayer testing. While not a frequent occurrence, there were at least a few occasions where the game unceremoniously kicked us out of a multiplayer game. Since stats don't seem to be affected by random disconnects or quitting, there wasn't any real harm done, but this is something that Massive will need to look at in the days ahead.
World in Conflict is a triumph for Massive Entertainment. The developers have managed to take a quirky "action game" take on the real-time strategy genre and wrap it in an instantly appealing, accessible and highly polished package. Everything from the game's beautiful graphics to the great story and especially the adrenaline-fueled mayhem of online multiplayer matches make this a must-have for the strategy game set and a serious purchase consideration even for those who never thought of themselves as strategy gamers.
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