Massive Entertainment aren’t particularly strangers to the RTS genre. Gamers may recall a certain gem called Ground Control that managed to impress a number of gamers because it’s beauty and balance in gameplay delivered an excellent experience for RTS fans. So one can only expect that the company can inject some much needed oomph into the genre with their upcoming project, and from what we saw, it seems that Massive are well on track in doing so.
World in Conflict is a very unique RTS game, taking on a completely new approach to the genre. All of the boring aspects such as resource gathering have been taken out and instead the focus is on fast, hard-hitting battles. Now that isn’t to say strategy still is no longer involved, that’s quite untrue. With World in Conflict they’ve taken a different approach with their game. Each scenario will begin with gamers having a set amount of credits (the currency), which allows them to generate units for the playing field. In this regards, Massive are focusing on making gamers pay a lot more attention to their units and the terrain, rather than focusing on gamers flooding out enemy units. With the credit system this means gamers can only have a certain amount of troops running around at any given time, which in turn eliminates any factor of overpowering or ruining games if you’ve come across a bad resource location. The only way gamers can regenerate their credits is when a unit dies. When this happens you’ll regain the amount of credits that were spent in making it, however the regeneration period for this credits has a cool down – which is there to say 'don’t be stupid next time with your decisions'. Units will also gain experience whilst fighting on the field, which will then relay into increasing their movement abilities (speed), however other attributes such as armour will not change.
This isn't just a game, this is war.
From what we saw the game’s focus at this stage seems to be the multiplayer. Massive are making a very user-friendly interface and gameplay structure so that multiplayer isn’t overlooked and is rather the main selling point of their game. World in Conflict is pretty much your Battlefield 2 of RTS games. It’s a very huge team-based focused game where gamers are split into teams to fight it out over land. Much like Battlefield, gamers can choose to play as one of four roles - infantry, support, armour, or air – which will determine what exactly gamers can build and control. Once determining your role and army, gamers can deploy their troops onto the field and begin war. Gamers will fight amongst one another for key tactical points. These tactical points can then enable a number of devastating additions for your army including air strikes, parachute drops or even a nasty nuclear warhead, which can level the terrain completely, but thankfully not end a game. The fun is surely going to be within the multiplayer modes. Players will be able to make mods for the game, and Massive will be supporting voice over IP audio chat and even advanced chat options, such as filters to address teammates. The multiplayer modes will support up to 16 players in a number of team-based battles, which seems to be the bread and butter of this title.
Of course, though, the game isn’t all about the multiplayer and Massive have gone all out in providing an even better single player mode. While we didn’t get a look at this, Massive did ensure that the single player would be just as fun. The single player campaign has been written by Larry Bond who worked with Tom Clancy on Red Storm Rising, as well as bestsellers such as Red Phoenix and Vortex. So to say the single player mode doesn’t sound promising would be an absolute lie.
There goes the neighbourhood.
The graphics are absolutely amazing. There’s really nothing else to say to explain how absolutely realistic this game looks and runs on the PC, it’s unbelievable. Everything ranging from weapon effects to the clouds, everything looked fantastic. It was a real highlight when Massive let loose an atom bomb on the field. The explosion was outstanding and looked fantastically realistic. The amount of detail that was put into recreating such things is amazing. Once an atom bomb hits everything changes. If you hover your camera into the area near the explosion the screen will get static all over like a radiation effect, if there were birds flying around in that area before crows may now occupy it and the whole surrounding area of where an atom bomb hits is completely filled with radiation effects. So if you try to move some infantry through the devastated area, those troops will eventually burn to death. And the cool thing about World in Conflict is that everything is virtually destructible. Gamers can destroy trees to open up areas and building can be destroyed into ruins. By the end of the game you’re playing on a completely destroyed field. Massive have really outdone themselves in terms of graphics, it’s unbelievable how good the game looks and the advanced lighting and physics are really something.
World in Conflict has been in development for one and half years now and is still a fair while off before completion, with it currently been scheduled for a Q2 2007 release. At this stage though, Massive Entertainment have crafted something that looks quite realistic and has transformed the sometimes boring structure of RTS games into something so much more.
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