Soviet Assault adds six new missions to World in Conflict's portrayal of World War III. All the new missions unfold from a Soviet point of view. We found ourselves a bit befuddled after installing Soviet Assault, with no obvious way to start up the new campaign. We eventually worked out that there is no 'new campaign' as such. Instead, the Soviet Assault mission are interfiled with the original WiC missions. This means that if you've played through World of Conflict before - and surely anyone interested in the expansion will have - then you're going to have to work your way through it again to see all the new missions. The campaign now begins with a new mission in which the Soviets kick down the Berlin Wall, but then heads back into the old campaign. A Soviet mission will then pops up after every 3 or 4 of the original missions.
It's been a few years since we played through World in Conflict so we weren't sure if the old missions we were playing had been re-tooled in some way but we're pretty certain that nothing new has been introduced. It seems truly bizarre that there's no option to just play the new missions. We spent quite a while hunting through menus, completely convinced that there must be some way to play the Soviet campaign by itself, before finally accepting that we'd just have to start at the beginning.
That's gonna sting.
Still, there are worse things to do that have another crack at WiC. It's been two years since WiC's release, which means most of us have had time for a major PC upgrade or two. Being able to run the game with every graphical option turned up to the highest levels is a real treat. WiC is still astonishingly good looking, and serves up some of the biggest, loudest fireworks around. The battlefields can get chaotically - even comically - busy at times, with buildings bursting into shrapnel at the drop of a hat and tanks fanging about the place like startled cats. We still have reservations about how much actual strategy is taking place, as simply applying maximum force to the designated capture points seems to work quite reliably, but at least it looks pretty.
The overall presentation is terrific as well. The storytelling is still right near the top of the RTS pile and the voice work is remarkably, consistently excellent. The animated cut-scenes are actually worth watching and the way the story spotlights the stresses and troubles of individual characters remains oddly affecting. It's a shame, then, that the story and character don't really feel present in the actual gameplay, where everything quickly gets overwhelmed with bombast and the constant need to hurtle from A to B to C on the battlefield.
The Soviets, it could be argued, are a new playable faction but if you turn the sound down, you'll be hard pressed to distinguish them from the pre-existing allied forces. There's the same selection of planes, tanks and infantry on offer, only now with a slightly different accent. Still, World in Conflict was never really about diversity, preferring to keep the player's attention firmly focused on all the neat fireballs instead.
All the criticisms we made in our original review of World in Conflict still stand. All the campaign missions are heavily scripted, which means that it's more a matter of reacting against events than forming and executing any kind of strategy. It's difficult to feel any kind of attachment to your units when they can be parachuted in and rarely survive more than a few minutes. There's still something deeply unsatisfying about fighting for a location for half an hour, only to have to to abandon it minutes later when a scripted event demands that all your units have to scream over to the other side of the map.
A lovely day at the beach.
Soviet Assault includes two new multiplayer maps, both of which are available for free anyway. WiC's unique take on RTS multiplayer, in which teams of players go head to head and (in theory at least) co-ordinate air, tank and infantry forces, is interesting, if still over-reliant on the anarchic internet hordes actually cooperating in a meaningful way. You can set up your own skirmish matches against the AI, which is quite good fun and a nice break from the do-what-you're-told nature of the campaign.
It's difficult to know what to do with World in Conflict: Soviet Assault. It certainly makes an entertaining game bigger and better, but it doesn't offer much to anyone who's played through the original. The six new Soviet missions are, for better or worse, more of the same. If you've never played it before, however, you could do worse than pick up the World in Conflict Complete Edition which includes both the original game and the expansion. You'll have fun, as long as you can live with the action-heavy, strategy-light style of the game.
On its own, though, Soviet Assault is overpriced, underwhelming and does nothing to freshen up the main game or address its inherent problems. Not making the new content immediately accessible will certainly keep away WiC veterans who might otherwise have shelled out a few dollars to see what was going on behind the iron curtain. As it stands, Soviet Assault is one of the most threadbare expansions we've seen.
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