World in Conflict

Just when you thought they'd run out of good ideas for Real Time Strategy games, they come out with another one to take the genre to the next level.

Now, Hardcore RTS fans might balk and skin me alive for blaspheming against the holiness that is Starcraft, but I have to say, I haven't played a better RTS game other then World in Conflict.

YouTube - World in Conflict - New York trailer

The game is a "What If" version of history. the Cold War was supposed to end in 1989, but instead of the USSR collapsing, they invade Europe, but this was only a diversionary tactic to get the bulk of the US military committed to the European front, and to hide their real goal: Invading the United States (Ala Red Dawn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia style)

The first mission is errie, you get thrown into a full scale invasion of Seattle Washington by Russian forces that got past the US Navy in disquised cargo ships. The US army was caught compleatly off guard and with their pants down. You play the game as a Lt. Parker of the Washington National Guard trying to mount a desperate defense against the Red Horde.

The game mechanics are are a departure from your standard RTS format. You use the WSAD keys to move the camera around the map, and move the mouse to the edge of the screen to tilt/pan/spin the camera.

You only get command of a set number of units in the field based on Reinforcement points that you earn by completing objectives and killing Commies. When you call for reenforcements, they're air dropped in.

Now the coolest part of the game is Indirect fire support (Artillery and air strikes). I had some serious fun raining some "Death from Above" down on the Red Army (Its possible to have about 7 artillery strikes rain down simultaneously, with some pretty kewl effects).

The graphics are pretty high up there, you need a beast of a machine if you want to pump the graphics up. I have a pretty decent rig (2ghz proc, 1 gig ram, 256mb nvidia geforce 8500gt), and I can't get it past 1024x768 on medium with out visiting Lag Country. The environments are lush and detailed. All buildings are destructable, landscapes will develope craters, ect ect.

Has anyone else played this game, or interested in playing it?

I'm very interested in playing it now that I've heard of it. Never was really into war games, but, I love a bit of 'what if' scenarios in stories and especially in games. Plus I get easily addicted to RTS games

I'll have more to say after I play the demo :)

This game plays more like a Action RPG then an RTS game. Hope you like the demo, I wound up buying the game :D