Part 1 - World in Conflict
Where do I begin talking about this game? It's hard to call something under appreciated when it has an 89% average on gamerankings and topped sales charts upon release, yet it is the only way I could possibly describe World in Conflict as simply put there has not been a game this significant to a genre in years.
Continues after the jump..
I'm going to start by dissecting the games graphics quality, this is going to become a common theme with this rant but really there is no other way to say it: This games graphics defy any stereotypes about its genre. It is incredibly beautiful and runs on a remarkably solid engine that yields great performance even in hectic battles with large unit counts. When the camera is zoomed in it can almost look like a top end first person shooter as buildings and landscapes are intricately modeled and textured, vehicles have drivers who animate appropriately and even projectiles have great particle effects such as detailed smoke on rockets fired from a helicopter. And I was only running it on medium with my not so new PC, I can't even imagine this game running on a directx10 PC with a top end video card.
Not content with just being a pretty face World in Conflict has defied another RTS stereotype: The game has no resource management! Yes you read that correctly the game has no resource management of any kind, instead the game gives the player a set amount of resources and forces them to think carefully about which units to pick and what strategies they can do with them. As the player loses units on the battlefield his resource pool will slowly fill back like an hourglass allowing him to begin purchasing new units after his units have been dead for a short time, this way the player never has to worry about mining gold or tiberium and only has to focus on maintaining his units and purchasing new ones as they die.
Of course not every aspect of this game is reinventing the wheel but those aspects that have been done properly before such as unit special abilities and units gaining experience are executed very well in this game. Unit special abilities for example have been purposefully simplified so the player will never feel like they are not in control, press E and you will activate the units offensive ability such as spiral missiles on a Russian attack chopper or grenades from an infantry squad and all units use this key for any offensive ability they have, R on the other hand activates the units defensive ability which can be anything from flares on a helicopter to smoke clouds from a tank for protection. The experience system has been kept quite simple with the benefits being shorter time waiting between the units attacks and shorter time waiting to use its special abilities, this way you actively want to keep your units alive with repair trucks for tanks/choppers and reinforcements for infantry. Ofcourse the game does have a variety of new gameplay mechanics and one of these is that true 'special abilities' in this game are handled not by panicking and trying to find 20 different units that all have unique spells but by a simple sidebar with multiple tabs costing tactical aid points which you earn as you play the game and achieve objectives or blow up the enemy. This system is actualy rather genius as it puts the most devastating and usefull abilities you have in the game all in the one convenient place that you can access anywhere on the map and regardless of which unit you have selected! This clears up tons of room on the UI and reduces the need to constantly micro manage your troops, allowing you to focus on strategy and proper use of these special powers such as carpet bombs paratroopers and radar sweeps.
Another gameplay mechanic new to the RTS genre is 'Roles', this is a system often seen in team based first person shooters but rarely heard of when you mention the words Strategy Game, in World in Conflict the player can select from four different roles: Air, Armour, Infantry, Support. While the you can select from most of the units regardless of which role you choose the highest level units such as attack helicopters and heavy anti air are only available to people of that role and units of your chosen role will cost less resources allowing you to have more of them on the field before you hit your resource cap. This role system makes multiplayer for World in Conflict one of the most interesting experience you will see as it promotes an incredible amount of teamwork which is often lacking from multiplayer in strategy games, the amount of in game communication is far higher than I was used to before I got this game but thankfully the developer has made a conscious effort to help out with that which brings me to my next point...
Multiplayer! Who would have thought it would be possible to invent a new way to play an RTS with more than one player, not me that's for sure. But this game once again defies the stereotype of RTS games and brings us the first (to my knowledge) drop in drop out multiplayer real time strategy game, yes that's right you can join a World in Conflict multiplayer game AT ANY TIME and be in the battle with units in less than a minute after clicking the join button. The game supports up to sixteen players and has dedicated servers all over the world so no matter where you are in the world you can boot up the game and be in a lag free sixteen player match with just a few clicks. Or if that's not your thing the game also features a clan battle system where you can sit there with your friends like xbox live matchmaking waiting for an equal number of other people to want to play a game and the game will match you up on a dedicated server of your own for a nice private match. Oh and of course its clan system is quite comprehensive with every option you could possibly imagine.
The games multiplayer features beyond the groundbreaking drop in/out mechanics are also worth talking about, for starters the developers have seen the need for fast and easy communication and implemented a quick message system similar to the system found in the Battlefield games, holding down a button lets you pick from a few pre defined messages and slap them down on the map with a nice 3D marker for all of your team mates to see which is incredibly helpful. It also features built in VOIP for easy team communication without the need of any third party applications which I believe is another first for the RTS genre.
I could go on for a while about the various game types for multiplayer or after release support by the developer such as balance patches extra maps and tools for making in game movies etc etc which are all free but when it comes right down to it I'm not sure anyone would care - This game is so under appreciated it's almost criminal.
