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World in Conflict

War paints a beautiful picture

World in Conflict is different from most of the RTS crowd not only because of its "real-time tactics" gameplay, but also because of its free-roving camera. The camera's not a gimmick only useful for screenshots, either: because of the variety of roles, units, tactics and environments in the game, a single-perspective RTS camera simply wouldn't work. Units have a realistic line of sight, and you have to swoop down to their level to plan your movements in uneven terrain. Massive has done a great job with several levels of detail for every model and texture - when you climb up high with the camera and look to the horizon, the draw distance is impressive, and when you zoom in on an infantry unit you can see highly detailed individual soldiers running, taking cover and using their weapons.

In full DX10-mode, effects such as smoke and blast debris are particularly convincing.

Epic battles deserve epic views.

World in Conflict is also in the first wave of DirectX 10 games - a wave that has yet to make a significant impression on the gaming population. World in Conflict distinguishes itself in at least one area: DirectX 10 rendering is slightly faster than DirectX 9 in Windows Vista. The caveat here is that Vista's DX9 performance lags behind that of Windows XP; however, Massive's graphics engine team has done a great job optimizing the game's DX10 renderer. Qualitative differences, on the other hand, are much harder to spot. See below for a video where Nicklas Cederstrom describes the visual advantages of their DX10 rendering; of the ones mentioned here, only clouds casting real-time shadows on the ground are really noticeable during normal gameplay.

Although technical director Niclas Westberg told us earlier that World in Conflict would scale down to rather low hardware requirements, a few months can make a big difference. Publisher Sierra's officially stated minimum requirements are a notch higher, and our hardware testing revealed that realistically, you'll need a faster video card than the official minimum to enjoy the game. While steep system requirements are disappointing for many gamers, on the positive side World in Conflict requires minimal tweaking of graphics settings if any: the game detects your hardware, and gives a very useful suggestion of the graphics settings you should use.

The game's own benchmark is a useful tool if you want to tweak the settings; don't be too concerned about the minimum frame rate, as that tends to drop rather low on almost any system because of the very demanding particle effects shown in the benchmark. During gameplay the particle effects accompany huge explosions, and you'll be too busy watching the beautiful effect to notice the momentary drop in frame rate. Particle effects are done more efficiently on the DX10 renderer, so on Vista with a DX10 card you'll get less of a frame rate drop.

YouGamers minimum setup

YouGamers recommended setup

The publisher's minimum system couldn't run the game with acceptable frame rates, even with graphics settings turned to low. They recommend a system very similar to our YouGamers minimum system, which can run World in Conflict with a steady and playable frame rate at Medium settings in resolutions up to 1280x1024, in Windows XP in DirectX 9 rendering mode. The dynamic lighting advantages and efficiency of Massive's DX10 renderer are the basis for our YouGamers recommended system, which can run the game at resolutions up to 1920x1200 with full detail, with playable frame rates typically between 25-30 fps.

Page 1: Introduction & Single playerPage 2: SP campaign qualityPage 3: Multiplayer AnalysisPage 4: Graphics & Hardware RequirementsPage 5: Final thoughts & Scores

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