September 22nd, 2007 by Falconer
Earn ‘m, to spend ‘m (cntd.)
Then again, you have other resources available to you that can truly tip the balance when you are in a tight spot, and this is where the real fun begins. You see, next to calling in reinforcements, you also get to call in ‘tactical aid’. Tactical aid varies from artillery bombardment to dropping a laser guided missile on a building or tank. Not every type of aid is available in every mission and, similar to reinforcements, you will need to earn points before you can use it. The ‘point pools’ are independent of one another and sometimes being short on reinforcement points can be remedied by throwing some heavy artillery at a large contingent of your foes, keeping your small force out of harms way.
Tip of your chair
Mixing and matching tactical aid with on the ground maneuvers is paramount to being victorious and will keep you busy and entertained throughout the games’ fourteen missions at all time. And when I say busy, I -mean- busy. The game will rarely give you a breather, throwing -and keeping- you right into the action, making sure your behind stays on the tip of your chair.
But of all the fantastic fun above, there is one thing that makes World in Conflict stand out of the crowd and that is its storyline and how it has been integrated into the game. Right from the get-go the game manages to grip your attention and refuses to let go of its hold over you. In between missions, gritty stills and movies, narrated by the compelling voice of a depressed (but not depressive) sounding Alec Baldwin, tell a story of both hope and desperation. The storyline continues to unfold during the actual gameplay with your fellow officers discussing tactics and repercussions of certain actions. There is also a profound dynamic between some of them which truly helps pull you into the game. More than once I found myself trying to help out another commander, even while knowing full well that his success was scripted and would not affect the outcome of the battle.
More equal
You may have noticed that the customary section discussing the graphics is missing. This is entirely deliberate; it is not that they aren’t good, quite the opposite in fact. But too many reviews focus almost exclusively on the graphics, and doing so with World in Conflict would be an injustice. Its strengths lie elsewhere. It has been a long time since a real-time strategy game managed to captivate me so completely as World in Conflict has, if ever. The storyline – and in particular how it is told – is exceptional, and takes the game far beyond anything I have seen in the RTS genre. Not to mention that playing around with the destructive forces of heavy artillery is devilishly fun.
It is unlikely that my fondness of base-building strategy games will diminish or disappear any time soon, but this game does force me to revise my opinion of reward-based RTSs. With the return of Command & Conquer and several other high-quality strategy titles, 2007 is turning out to be a very good year for strategy enthusiasts. But even amid this crowd of truly excellent games, World in Conflict proves that ‘some strategy games are more equal than others’.
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