World in Conflict [PC]

Our Aussie counterparts already had a crack at the single-player portion of World in Conflict but we had our own chance to check out a bit more of the single player campaign. We suited up and shipped out to Europe to help our allies drive the USSR back to the East as well as rush back to our own soil to defend New York against a preliminary invasion of the US. As Bennet mentioned in the previous preview, the game is running silky smooth and provides some excellent thrills.

The story follows several characters throughout the war, though this particular six-mission portion we were allowed to play focused on Sawyer, Bannon, and a French commander named Sabatier. As the story rolls along, we're treated to personal moments of each of these characters as they call home to talk to loved ones. These particular cutscenes are styled as illustrated slideshows rather than full cutscenes, though they do have voice-overs. The wartime cutscenes with characters interacting use the game's impressive engine and custom animations to set up the scenario, character conflicts, and set the mood for the coming fight.

''The overall war briefings in between missions during loading screens show off the world map and troop movements on a larger scale and are narrated by Alec Baldwin, who basically gives a lay of the land and a hint at what you'll be getting into. These particular missions are also presented somewhat like a history lesson as Baldwin keeps referring to the invasion of Seattle as something that happened in the past even though the timeline of the war has it happening in the future.

Each of the missions provides some distinct challenges and puts the player character Parker in command of one of the various classifications of units. The first mission, described in detail by the Aussie, put players in control of a selection of tanks and support units for artillery and anti-air support. Other missions provide a mixture of armor and infantry, while others still focus almost entirely on infantry or aircraft.

The success of each of the missions is going to depend a lot on what troops are called down in support. Calling in a ton of humvees when you're going up against tanks isn't going to do much good, but relying on only tanks to get the job done is probably a recipe for disaster as well. When helicopters come in and there's no infantry or anti-air to defend, chances are the tanks will die quickly. The missions we played were pretty good about mixing up what happened so that we were careful about not loading ourselves too deeply in one direction since resources work the same in single player as they do in multiplayer.

Some of the missions put a large emphasis on certain types of units, which is actually nice. A couple of the missions that focused heavily on infantry (one of them is actually a modified version of one of the European towns from the multiplayer beta) were good in pointing out how tree and building cover can be a huge boon in a fire fight. Though they're also good at showing what little protection buildings really area against artillery fire.

''While there are primary missions that have to be completed to finish a mission, there are also secondary ones that will add prestige and promotions to Parker. Some of them are much harder to complete than others. One such mission, on a raid into enemy territory to retrieve data from a fallen stealth bomber, charged the player with destroying a power plant in the area in a certain amount of time while also trying to secure the area around the crash site. It was a tricky mixture of what to do when and which troops you happened to call down. Being the smart guys we are, we called down the demolition crew to destroy the structure, but didn't manage our troops correctly and accidentally got the demolition guy killed at which point we failed the secondary mission. We were still able to complete the primary mission with no problem however.

One of the aspects that's most fun about all of these missions is that Massive has made sure there's more action going on in the area than just your small group of units. While these side battles are usually irrelevant to your own success (unless there's a secondary objective associated with it), they fill up the environment with more explosions and dynamic play. You'll hear all of the concussions and even receive updates on the various other conflicts happening around the map. Again, World in Conflict shows that it's taken some ideas from action games by surrounding players with action that they're not entirely responsible for, kind of like Half-Life 2 or Call of Duty. It creates a much more realistically frantic environment.

In some instances, such as the last mission in the bunch where we were called upon to fly some helicopters in defense of New York, it really felt as though you were part of a much larger military push. Our actions directly affected whether your allied troops would be able to push forward a bit farther into enemy territory. Because we were incapable of capturing command points since we were in the air, we had to provide covering fire and help the ground units capture and hold the areas.

We'll get some more chance to see World in Conflict single-player pretty soon but what we had the chance to see at this point is definitely looking good.

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