The Final Conflict Is old-school back?
We can hear you saying, “No! Not another world war title, enough already!” Actually, I missed the beta and I’m glad I have my hands on the final version. It’s been one of the games many have been waiting for all year. The single-player storyline goes along the lines of how the Soviet Union tries to take over American cities and US forces try their best to hold them back and take back whatever little they can.
The controls here are completely different from those in most RTS games. You move the camera like you would move a player. Whereas WASD would be used for attacks or making units, here you use those keys to move in different directions, and the mouse scroll to move up and down. The training session has an obstacle course for you in which you move your camera view through hoops. It takes a while to get comfortable with the change, but they really get you into the action.
Single-player gameplay is simple, and has the typical primary and secondary styled missions that are pretty easy even at normal difficulty. The allied troops are there helping you from getting your ass handed over almost all the time. The game has none of that collect 10 gold and 5 wood to manufacture new shiny pony nonsense here. What you get instead is non-stop chaos in which you’re continuously either attacking or being attacked.
The cool-down time for most of the special weapons and reinforcements has been kept lower than that in other RTSes, because you won’t be creating any units as it is. Units come in the form of reinforcements that you order from time to time when you have the credits. Select two of these and three of those and point where you’d like them. Moments later, they’re home-delivered. If you aren’t careful with your spending, though, you might find yourself fending off half the Red army with two tanks.
The maps are huge but the vehicles are quick. There isn’t a variety of units to choose from; they have been kept rather basic, and you spend your time focusing on tactics. Most of the fun is to be had by doing special attacks such as carpet bombing, napalm strikes, and nukes.
These elements all add up nicely to some really intense gameplay. There’s even more fun to be had in multiplayer, where you can have as many as 16 players at once—with voice chat as well!
The graphics are some of the best I’ve seen in RTSes. The unique camera controls allow you to get really close to the action—and you’ll see dust on jeeps’ windshields and footstep trails of infantry in the sand.
The maps are filled with beautiful swaying trees, brilliant shaders for the rivers and seas, flashing clean metal structures, and perfectly-tarred city highways which all make for a well set environment to… destroy.
| Gaming PC |
| XFX GeForce 8800 GTX,Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, Windows Vista Ultimate x64, WD 250 GB |
Our GeForce 8800 GTX didn’t break a sweat at maximum settings at 1440 x 900. There aren’t any noticeable bugs, either. Animations are very well done, and you can see this especially in the in-game rendered cutscenes. The sounds are great and so are the voice actors.
World in Conflict is like Company of Heroes (COH) minus the crazy-bloodthirsty-soldier-blindly-running-across-a-minefield-screaming-kind of passion and madness. A big chunk of COH and Command & Conquer players will like this one. This is definitely one of the best RTS-like games around today, alongside Company of Heroes.