![]() Everything manages to look detailed both close up and far away, environmental destruction is so well done that I've found myself stopping to admire the chaos of the remains of a battlefield during the aftermath instead of pushing my surviving units ahead. WiC may be the best-looking real-time strategy game I've ever played. It's fast-paced, fun and tactical, and absolutely stunning to look at. Battles feel like they're on a massive scale even if you're only controlling 20 units. The title is all about the destruction of war, and it does a spectacular job. What you have here is a real-time strategy game that gets rid of the tedium of building up a base and all the associated defenses for getting the player into the action. However, if you've never played WiC before, you're in for a treat. Unit names are all the same, and they play virtually identically. While one could argue that new and exciting things are surely included by playing as the Soviet side, there is no difference whatsoever between the American forces and the Russian ones. This doesn't feel like an expansion pack as much as it should have been a downloadable add-on like we've seen with games like Fallout 3. In the end, the campaign length is increased by about 30 percent, and you get more of the excellent WiC story. ![]() While there are two new multiplayer maps included, they've also been released as free downloads for everyone to play. You get a new repackaged, more complete form of the campaign for $20. ![]() That's really all you get with Soviet Assault. To experience the new missions, one must play through the entire lengthy campaign again because there's no way to just play through the Soviet missions. While this really helps the narrative by showing what both sides were doing at various points in the war and how each side dealt with each other's actions, it's a bit of a slap in the face for players who have already played WiC. All of these play out from the Soviet perspective, and in a risky move by the developers, these missions are actually integrated into the main campaign. Soviet Assault fixes this by adding the previously mentioned six new missions. The original WiC lacked perspective the entire game was played out from the American side, and you never had an idea of what was going on for the Soviets. If you can make the player care about the fate of the soldiers in a war title, you've done a spectacular job. The story plays out from their perspectives, and while all of the characters fall into stereotypes, they are so expertly used that you actually care about them and what they do over the course of the game. The title puts you in the shoes of Captain Parker, and for the Soviet Assault portion of the campaign, you control Lieutenant Romanov. Most war games are quick to fall back on a lack of story and have lots of people yelling incoherently that "It's them or us" as a reason to wage war. Something that WiC did incredibly well was tell a story. It's a spectacular opening, and it expands on the story line. mainland several months into the war, the Soviet Assault expansion begins with the shots that started the war, putting you in command of the Russians (you didn't get to do this in the original title) as you destroy the Berlin Wall and storm into West Berlin to kick off World War III. While the original WiC started with the Soviet invasion of the U.S. What if the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed? What if in the waning days of the Soviet Union, they had decided to turn themselves into a war machine? The title tosses real history out the door and tells the "what if?" story of the Soviet Union starting World War III in 1989. World in Conflict toys with an interesting concept. If you've never played the game before, the "complete edition" for $30 is a fantastic deal that I can't recommend enough. The six new missions are not worth $20, and aside from the six additional missions, Soviet Assault changes nothing else in the World in Conflict formula. There are clearly two audiences being targeted here, and the more loyal one seems to be getting the raw end of the deal. The other version costs $30 and includes the original World in Conflict. On one hand, you have the $20 expansion pack, which adds six campaign missions and two multiplayer maps. World in Conflict: Soviet Assault is a little difficult to score because there are two different versions of the game that cater to two very different crowds.
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