World in Conflict

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 19th September 2007
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An Orgy of Awesomeness

There’s one final thing to talk about in World in Conflict before we round up our thoughts and settle on a score for this gorgeous-looking war-fest and that’s the multiplayer side of things.

Now, we’ve had a look at the World in Conflict multiplayer system before, but for those of you who were unlucky enough to miss out on the beta we’ll give you a brief recap.

You see, multiplayer WiC isn’t as simple as multiplayer Command and Conquer is, for example. You think it’s always just a case of one man playing the Russians, one playing the US and a whole host of other player playing the colours green, purple and red because the developers ran out of factions? Think again.

In World in Conflict, multiplayer is all about collaboration and communication and, in a way which brings a touch more tactical realism to the game, multiple players are forced to team up to form one side. Each player takes over the role of a military general with one branch of the forces – infantry, armour, artillery or airforce – and then takes responsibility for that area.

World in Conflict Multiplayer and Conclusions World in Conflict Multiplayer and Conclusions
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So, because it’s pretty hard for just one general to win a war, players have to work together. It’s a system which works perfectly, ensuring that each and every player comes away with an interesting story every time.

Whether or not your story is “OMG! My airforce guy was such a smacktard – he just would not cover Bindi’s Tanks!” or something more along the lines of “It was great, Hiren bought his gunships along the left flank, I guided some tanks up the middle and Tim kept Brett pinned with artillery fire!” is all to do with who you play with though.

Players can still buy from other branches of the army of course, but at a higher-than-normal price, so stupid tank commanders can be compensated for. It’s also possible to give your TPs away to other players, with teams working together to equip a single man with the ability to drop three nukes at once. That man is usually Tim admittedly – it’s moments like that which he lives for.

There’s plenty of stuff to keep you going on the multiplayer side of things too. There are three gamemodes in World in Conflict, though none of them are especially noteworthy and consist of the usual Domination, Assault and Tug of War modes, and a total of 21 available levels.

Conclusions

Unfortunately, this is when it gets a little bit tricky. How do you score a game like World in Conflict? It’s an awesome game, that much is assured and I wouldn’t dare give it less than a 9/10 under any circumstances, but can it do better?

World in Conflict Multiplayer and Conclusions World in Conflict Multiplayer and Conclusions
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How to score World in Conflict that caused me such a brain-ache that I had to discuss the matter with Tim directly – IDF be damned! We both agreed that World in Conflict is an awesome game and more than worthy of a 9/10 score. I even came flat out and said that it’s the best strategy game I’ve played since I first picked up Dune II on the Amiga A500+.

But there was still a nagging doubt in the back of our minds.

My main problem was that no matter how fun the game is to play and how jaw-shatteringly awesome it looks, it still doesn’t break the mould in any real way. It’s got a powerful storyline, a stunning engine and gameplay which is both fun and inventive – but there’s no single feature which is bowl-us-over brilliant.

Instead, all the elements pull together to form a single, unified whole that is a refreshing take on the old tried and tested format of RTS games. Its flaw however is that it still lacks the level of emergence we might of hoped for and winning a level is still often a matter of superior firepower or rock-paper-scissors.

I love World in Conflict, love it to bits, but something about it makes me hold back from giving it the golden seal of praise which is 10/10. To use Tim’s words, “if we marked out of 20, I’d give it 19/20” – a statement which belies the fact that although World in Conflict comes close to RTS perfection, it still falls short by the smallest of slithers. It’s an awesome game and you should definitely go out and buy it right now, but the sad fact is that here at bit-tech we mark out of 10, so we have to give it...

World in Conflict Multiplayer and Conclusions

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