World in Conflict

No, it's not the same when the ground you're entrenched in has got "United States" written across it on the map. No, it's not the same either, when you're evacuating your neighbors next door rather than promoting propaganda on the other side of the Prime Meridian. And no, it's definitely not the same when the air strike you just called in is carpet-bombing a quaint slice of suburbia that could've been cut from a Thomas Kincaid canvas.

It's the late 1980's, the "Star Wars" program is in full swing, and it looks like in this alt-history scenario that the Berlin Wall isn't coming down anytime soon. World in Conflict's mantra is "War is coming home." But not only that, war is hitting home. It's hitting home inturn this into a solid game of online chess for many players in the coming months.

Multiplayer is also a tad overwhelming if a player hasn't pushed through the single-player campaign, since the multiplayer pulls the stops on a huge number of menu options and command capabilities. The single-player branch of World in Conflict, of course, introduces each element at a solid pace, never bringing in too many new aspects at once, and giving the tutorial screens plenty of breathing room.

[For a retrospective, my first impressions of World in Conflict were posted last month in the AT&T Blue Room.]

From the introductory chapter's loss of Seattle's Space Needle, to Tears for Fears crooning "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" during the credits, World in Conflict is a commendably-crafted game that