World in Conflict: Soviet Assault Preview

When World in Conflict hit retailers in October of 2007, it zoomed to the top of the PC sales charts in North America, Germany and Australia. The critically acclaimed title was a hit among real-time strategy gamers so it was just a matter of time before the notion of porting it to the next-gen consoles took hold.

Developers Massive Entertainment, Swordfish Studios, and publisher Sierra, have just that in mind when World in Conflict: Soviet Assault heads for store shelves this fall.

Sierra showed off the title at a recent media event in San Francisco.

Representatives of the dev team were on hand to walk those in attendance through the nuances of the game and right up front it was acknowledged that the “Massive team and Swordfish team were cognizant that RTS games on the consoles were not the most polished of experiences.”  To try to correct that with WiC: Soviet Assault, the first order of business to address was the camera. Basing camera operation on first-person shooters, the controls were worked onto the controllers.

Soviet Assault will contain all the content from the PC release, while adding new single-player and multiplayer scenarios. There will be a weaving of U.S. missions and Soviet missions into the game, while in multiplayer (team-based gaming with up to 5v5 in a match), the dev teams are introducing the War Room, which tallies results from all matches and shows the win-loss ratios for both factions.

The game essentially follows the general setting of a strong Soviet presence that eventually invades the United States. Where the game departs from the normal fare associated with either RTS or turn-based strategy games is that in WiC there is no resource gathering.

Some other features in the game include:

• The authentic real-world arsenals of the military superpowers, including tanks, planes, trucks, troops and helicopters and nuclear weapons from U.S., Soviet and NATO nations

• Players can take on individual roles in the game, such as Infantry, Armor, Support, or Air specialists; multiplayer teams will bank on a solid mix of the classes for top effectiveness.

• The latest version of Massive’s proprietary Masstech engine features advanced lighting and physics, and allows for free 3D camera control.

• As the battle rages, the world environment pays the price as every object crumbles under the force of war.

Mapping the game to the controllers proved to be quite a task, but the teams did a remarkable job in allowing easy unit selection (which can be assigned to the D-pad), as well as incorporating a radial interface and voice commands. While hands-on was not realized during the session, the game did appear to have all the nuances of the PC version covered on the 360 controller.

The look of the game was also solid. Nothing radically has changed from the PC version, but rather the consoles’ version brings solid lighting elements and physics into play to give players a sense of the destruction caused by the war.

With quite a number of months to go before the retail release, WiC: Soviet Assault is looking to do on the next-gen consoles what the PC version accomplished … and so far it seems to be on track to do just that.