World in Conflict: Soviet Assault – 360 – 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 in the
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.