World in Conflict Demo Impressions

Okay so it’s a little late to be of use, the sale price on GamersGate was stopped yesterday (the reason why I played the demo), but I didn’t have enough time to have played and then written this up, hopefully there’ll be another good price at some point in the future and this will be of some use.

RTS’ were one of my favourite genres when I started gaming, the Age of Empires expansion had just been released and I had played the demo from a PC Gamer demo disc.  I was so enthralled by it that we went down to Argos and I bought it there and then, unfortunately I was still pretty young (not to mention a little slow, but that’s still an issue…) and didn’t know what ‘Expansion Pack’ meant.  It was only after leaving the shop that I realised you need the original game as well, so I despondently took it back (not that I’d have known what the word meant) and we carried on visiting the various shops.  At the time there was a Dixons right next door, the kind of place I wouldn’t bother looking for games at now, but there it was sitting on the shelf, ‘Age of Empires:  Gold Edition’.  I never made it through most of the missions, I was just interested in the random skirmishes, and I had a lot of fun.  Over the next few years I played several different RTS’, mostly demos but I did also buy quite a few; Homeworld, Star Trek Armada, Shogun Total War.  I also branched out into city-building games like Caesar 3.  Then the phase ended and I moved onto a brief dalliance with FPS’ before moving on again to RPGs.  Since then I’ve never gone back to RTS’, there were one or two but never for very long.  Then a few years ago I played the demo of Supreme Commander, and found myself well out of depth, I just couldn’t seem to get my head around the large-scale tactics.

I’ve gone on a little more than I’d planned but I should hopefully have convey my feelings towards the RTS genre, as I played this latest demo.  I had heard about World in Conflict, my impressions were that it was the best RTS in recent years, but I had always skipped over any in-depth detail.

My first stop was the graphics menu, I had read that there were some quite high quality visuals (one of the early games that included DX10 support) so I thought it best to make sure they weren’t set to high.  When I entered the menu I found the resolution was set a little low, and as I’ve got an LCD monitor you really should stick to the native resolution.  Then, at the bottom I noticed a button ‘Run Benchmark’.  Not many games allow benchmarks runs and most of those that do only enable it through a special command, I decided to give it a run.  I was very impressed, the game loaded and it ran through a preset sequence that showed off some of the great smoke and explosion effects in the game, there was also a lot of terrain destruction.  This test really put my system through its paces, along the side was an FPS bar which moved up and down throughout, I also had FRAPS running and the scores tallied the whole way.  Then after the test was completed a little graph came up showing the FPS throughout the entire test.  I should mention that this test really does aim for the upper limit of your system, and in most of my play after the FPS rarely got that low, nevertheless I thought this was a great feature as tailoring the graphics options in games can be really difficult, more developers should include a simple to use benchmark for players to use.

My next stop was the tutorial, whilst you never forget basic RTS skills once you have learnt them, some games have a lot of minor complexities to get used to.  The training is run by a training instructor, even though they are often quite annoying this was a well done and the instructor managed to convey a reasonable amount of personality.  More games should make a quick tutorial for those who know the basics, and just need to learn the intricacies of the particular game.  The tutorials are split up into five sections, firstly was the always present camera controls, I didn’t like the scroll wheel controlling up and down much (I prefer zoom) but otherwise everything was present and responsive.  The remaining tutorials covered movement, attacking, special attacks etc.  This was the first time I had seen the game in real action, the last tutorial was particularly good as it allowed you to try out various out-of-map support you could call in, there were a group of vehicles parked near some residential housing.  As the tactical support mainly covers explosives there was a lot of ‘collateral damage’, buildings explode to great effect and craters are left in the ground.

After the tutorials were concluded I started the campaign, after watching an introductory video that covers the main plot of the game (America is under attack by ‘commies’) and also gives a little background into the lives of those involved.  Then the game moves into the first mission, having been beaten back by the surprisingly well coordinated invaders, the battle-group you are a part of must take back a small town in order to allow reinforcements in.  I liked this setup, you are often the one in control of an entire area, and yet you don’t have access to the options you need to coordinate a large scale party, this way the logistics are taken care of and all you have to do is concentrate on your small group.

The first job was to place a deploy marker, this is where all of the units you call in will be deployed.  At the start you are limited to a tiny corner of the map, then as the game progresses and you take more territory you can move the marker closer to the front lines.  Rather than given a select group of units you are given command points to distribute between the equipment and men (and women) you need.  If you lose any of these units, you gain back the points they cost so you never run out of units.  You are also given a select number of extra units that are assigned to you, you cannot choose what these are.

As in all RTS’ you are given Main and Secondary Objectives, the secondary ones are not required but do give you bonus’.  I won’t spoil the surprise of the secondary mission as it’s fairly interesting, the main objective was to take this area, I loaded up as many men as I could fit in the transports and moved them in.  Soldiers can enter and hold buildings, these can be quite difficult to dislodge but fortunately most of these buildings were empty so I could make use of them.

Capture points are one or more circles that you need to occupy, if they are close together then that usually means you need to be holding both at the same time to capture the point.  There wasn’t any in this mission but I could see this being great for defending your territory, beaten back from the one point you could concentrate your forces to hold the second.  It’s hard to tell whether it was just the way I was playing, but I found the vehicles (bar the small transport) to be crucial in this game.  Most vehicles have a special ability, the armoured transport for example can fire an anti-vehicle missile which makes it useful against more difficult targets.  Plus it looks great in flight.

Once I had captured the two points a little icon with progress bar appeared nearby, if you can hold onto a point for long enough you automatically setup gun nests to help defend the area.  After a small counter attack the area was clear and I got my next objective, like the small group in a larger force aspect I liked the fact that you keep getting objectives.  It has been done in games before, but there was something about this implementation that felt more real, it made the whole area feel like it was part of the battle, it wasn’t just a matter of capturing the map and moving on.

My next objective was to move down the road and help take the front line, this part showed off the detail very well.  I don’t know whether it’s just because I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but I found the attention to detail staggering, billboards, complicated roofs and streets, and all of it was destructible.  We moved down the road, I placed my men in buildings once we got close to a point then sent my vehicles in to take the main brunt.  Throughout this you hear radio chatter regarding the other commanders and their struggle.

From up here the town looks so small, and yet I can remember all the points I’ve been fighting in.  After securing the front line all that remained was a small artillery group holding the local TV station, whilst the other commanders took the beach it was my job to go up round the back, and onto the hill then move in to take the station.  I had also been given another extra unit (the first being several demolition teams I never used), a tank.

Through the game the terrain is changed due to explosions and gun fire, not to any huge extent but it does add to the atmosphere.  Tracks are particularly nice, stretching back for quite a distance.

A group of enemy soldiers were particularly entrenched in a building, so I just had to destroy it completely.  Buildings take damage over time until they finally explode in a huge cloud of debris.  Now that we had secured the town we needed to defend it long enough for the reinforcements to arrive, unfortunately there was already an enemy force on it’s way and we’d have to setup defences.  I was given the task of defending a supermarket.  Sadly this is when the game crashed for me, I didn’t mind that much though, I had already made up my mind.

I’ve done several Demo Impressions over the last few months, going right back to my first proper article which was about Hinterland.  I haven’t gone on to buy any of the games however, except Hinterland which was in a sale a few days later.  I already had a price setup for this game though, £9.99 for the Complete Edition, I wasn’t sure so I played the demo and now this is the second game I have bought following a write-up.  (Or rather preceding in this case.)  I haven’t downloaded the game yet, the GamersGate site has been running a little slowly over the last few days and I’ve already got things on the go.  But I shall enjoy this game once I get to playing it.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, I would.  The current cheapest price for the Complete Edition is a little over £12 at retail,  I would probably have bought it at that price as well, but since I managed to buy it cheaper I’m not certain how I would have felt.  It’s also likely to be on sale from one of the other digital distribution sites as well at some point in the future, and if it is I strongly recommend you get it, unless you really don’t like RTS’.  For fans of the genre I would say this is a must buy, for everyone else I’d still probably recommend it although as always I suggest you try the demo first.  You can download it from most of the usual sites, as well as through Steam.

Below are a few more screenshots to show off the cinematic visuals, as usual, clicky for bigger piccy:

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