By Alec Meer on May 31st, 2008 at 12:27 pm.
You know what’s funny? Being IP-blocked from accessing your own website.
You know what’s not funny? Being IP-blocked from accessing your own website. Also, Garfield.
Anyway, I return from 24 hours of infuriating blacklisting to find Kieron’s done a splendid job of managing the place while Jim and I have been offline and Walker’s been away snuggling with Gabe Newell, so why bother posting? Oh, alright. Here’s an enjoyably epic new video for Soviet Assault, the upcoming World in Conflict expansion. I’ve not played WiC for a while, but this has convinced me to dig it out again. Shamelessly ripping off Gillen’s video-autopsy shtick, I’ve stuck some blow-by-blow commentary beneath the cut. Yes, Saturday is RPS is Hungover So Fobs You Off With Trailers day.
10s – Wobbly VHS effect on the logo, a canny nod to WiC’s 80s setting and curiously evocative of a thousand terrible teen horror movies
15s – Massive Entertainment really is a very good name for a developer. But only if they are indeed massively entertaining. They should have renamed themselves to Adequate Entertainment for Ground Control 2.
20s – The Thing, as soundtracked by outtakes from Donnie Darko.
50s- It’s like Lost! But with less preening former models and Party of Five stars!
1m – Reflective snow remains a cheap but effective trick to make games pretty. I wholeheartedly endorse it.
1m05s – parachuting men as maudlin beauty sky-ballet. Nice.
1m16s –Bugger me, that /cannot/ be in-game graphics, surely?
1m20s – Excellent synchronisation of the music with the puff of snow-cloud from the rear of the tank tracks. All piano ballads would be improved by the addition of tanks, I suspect.
1m35 – Notice the lyrics – “death to my hometown”, as gigantic Russian army silently sieges sleepy, snow-bound village.
1m50 – At last, sound effects slowly fade in alongside the music for the climactic assault – war is noisy and brutal, not the elegiac, noble thing the video’s fooled us into thinking it was so far.
2m – Ah, WiC ‘splodes. There’s still nothing quite like ‘em.
2m15s – God, look at that. If you don’t want to play this game right now, you’re broken in the head.
2m30s – Death, so much beautiful, glorious death.
2m50 – Well, that was all remarkably stylish and spectacular. It’s told me absolutely bloody nothing about how Soviet Assault differs to WiC, however. To Wikipedia I go!
5m – Just rewatched it muted and with The Ting Ting’s Great DJ playing in the background instead. Worked incredibly well, especially because the carpet-bombing scene matched up near-perfectly with THE DRUMS THE DRUMS THE DRUMS THE DRUMS.
To save you asking, apparently the Radioheady music’s by a band called Logh. Well done, Logh.
31/05/2008 at 12:43 dances_with_ninjas says:
I’m always amazed at how system hungry this game is. Especially when it looks so much worse than Company of Heroes.
Not a fan, not expecting much.
31/05/2008 at 13:03 wcaypahwat says:
ah well. Im always looking for a good excuse to terrorize rural folk with a hind. But that’s just how I roll.
31/05/2008 at 13:09 Dinger says:
Cool, they’ve modeled those badass soviet ground-effect assault craft. I can’t wait for them to get them to work.
31/05/2008 at 13:09 Optimaximal says:
You’re kidding, right? My fairly above-average gaming rig at home barely broke a sweat on WiC unless a nuke was involved but CoH had all the fans going hard and it slowed down a fair bit when lots was going on.
re: Soviet Assault – will the voice comms be worth it? Voice Recognition is always flaky at best.
31/05/2008 at 13:30 artofwot says:
I was pretty impressed with WiC, even if half of the fun was watching the pretty DX10 explosions. It seemed a little light on the “tactics” part of the RTT, but then again, I haven’t played any multiplayer. I should give that a try.
31/05/2008 at 13:33 Seniath says:
Speaking of WiC, whatever happened to that tank compo?
31/05/2008 at 13:42 Mull says:
WiC may have been a bit of a system killer, but it boasted the most stunning explosions of any strat game. I loved the strategic use of bombing runs, etc, as opposed to micromanaging troops; it gave the game quite a different feel to the starcraft heritage RTSs. I actually wanted DoW2 to follow WiC more than CoH, but that was not to be…
And yea, what about the tank compo?!? I asked this in a previous thread, and it died unanswered!
31/05/2008 at 13:43 Alec Meer says:
Yeah, we’re a bit behind on a couple of compos, sorry – will sort soon.
31/05/2008 at 14:16 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j63JDpw-nuU Well done, Logh, indeed. This was the first thing I thought when I read the post. Acronyms make for quality unintended puns.
EDIT: Also, I entered a compo, too. Forgive me, as I wasn’t aware about rules regarding contact info until long after I entered. Whoops.
31/05/2008 at 14:17 sbs says:
Aurora Borealis!
IN A VIDEOGAME
31/05/2008 at 15:14 Arathain says:
Garfield not funny? You’re looking at it wrong.
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
31/05/2008 at 15:47 Andrew says:
Poor World in Confict.
Try as it might, it’s still soulless. :(
31/05/2008 at 16:08 GiGinge says:
I love WiC…glorious destruction and pretty DX10 effects YAY! ^^ (also I tried the same thing with Great DJ, and I can say it works REALLY well with the trailer)
31/05/2008 at 16:45 Ryan says:
Sweet. WiC is a great game. Looking forward to it.
Ryan
lessons in brevity: http://www.mofata.com
31/05/2008 at 17:14 andy m says:
the ting tings are dreadful. i need to play this game though.
31/05/2008 at 17:54 Alexander says:
ok this is far better with the following music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOqVSA5-nys
try and sync them up!
God this alternative trailer music is superb, everyone post suggestions!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-c94VVU7zc
31/05/2008 at 18:18 Nimic says:
I wasn’t really going to get it, but when the trailer involves (entirely consists of) Soviets invading Norway and a battle taking place somewhere that could very well be damn near where I’m sitting now… well, what’re ye gonna do?
31/05/2008 at 18:23 Alexander says:
this is seks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBnSaskMe0k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPT0q09anuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvOkvn9JmPg
31/05/2008 at 18:28 Mike says:
Good awareness of visual themes, Alec, but you need to bring in more external sources in your next draft. B+
See me.
31/05/2008 at 18:45 Horatius says:
What an attractive Zerg rush.
31/05/2008 at 19:13 Faust says:
Arathain: thank you, that link has me chuckling still…
As far as this goes, looks really fun to watch, but when you’re not a fan of strategy…. doesn’t really appeal so much.
31/05/2008 at 20:06 Dagda says:
I love how trailers these are making more extensive use of music, but it also bugs me because of how much missed potential there is in terms of synchronization and the like. Or maybe it’s all my taste and no one else really cares one way or the other. I can offer http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/129569.html as an example- if you had seen that as an assassin’s creed trailer, would it increase your interest in buying the game or just be a curiosity?
31/05/2008 at 20:08 RichPowers says:
Half the reason I got WiC is because of the battles in Seattle. The neighborhood I live in is modeled fairly accurately too, which made the whole experience that much more enjoyable.
The single player campaign is a bit dull for my tastes, but WiC is the most fun I’ve had in RTS multiplayer since my WarCraft II heydays…
31/05/2008 at 21:48 RichPowers says:
PS: Those giant transport planes are called “Ekranoplans.”
http://inventorspot.com/articles/plane_flies_inches_over_water_5661
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekranoplan
01/06/2008 at 01:22 Dagda says:
Actually, tell you guys what: If we/you all can come to some sort of consensus as to what music would best suit the trailer, I’ll put it together- spend a few hours tweaking the timing so as to sync things up. I can avoid speeding things up or slowing them down if that’s preferable.
01/06/2008 at 02:20 zima says:
@Dagda – theme from “Hunt for Red October”? (the one performed by choir; might as well be some sort of Soviet Navy Anthem performed by their choir, I wouldn’t know)
As for WiC…I absolutelly love nuke explosions. Was there ever any game that portrayed them so well? (I really hope there was, my machine isn’t capable yet of running WiC…and Janice warhead from Ground Control isn’t in the same class unfortunatelly)
01/06/2008 at 03:11 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Caspian Sea Monster, eh?
Just a few meters removed from a hovercraft, I gather. A hovercraft… that looks like a plane. That’s actually pretty neat.
01/06/2008 at 08:57 Kieron Gillen says:
EKRANOPLAN!
EDIT: (I’m an enormous fan of those babies. I have various plans of getting one into a comic somewhere.)
KG
01/06/2008 at 10:37 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I’d hate to see what a rogue wave might do to one of those planes, though.
02/06/2008 at 04:08 Akirasfriend says:
@ Dagda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggwIkAqdgoU
You know you want to. :D
03/06/2008 at 05:10 Dagda says:
Okay, it’s done! With the help of the Red Army Choir the re-edited Soviet Assault trailer is viewable at http://youtube.com/watch?v=G4dDmfGAnn4.
@Akirasfriend: Tempting indeed, though I’m afraid your reply was a little too late this time.
I’d be up for doing this again sometime, we’ll see.
EDIT: Curses! The first minute of the video has some discrepancies, a few small gaps in the timing- it looks like I must have reverted to an earlier save or something before exporting. I’ll see if I can’t get a better version up tomorrow.
23/06/2008 at 08:48 ChainSOV says:
imho, a sovjet campaign should have been in the main game to begin with!
Finally, I can give out some communist ass-kicking, ekranoplans ftw!
19/10/2008 at 23:42 Erlam says:
Sorry to revive this thread, but do any of you know what the word is on this? I heard Actividiots essentially canned this.
30/10/2008 at 22:45 Kua says:
So far as I can make out its dead. Which is sad. WiC was a hugely enjoyable experience for me.
24/01/2009 at 04:51 Paul Andre says:
Just an amazing site!
==
http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulandredevera
25/08/2010 at 03:33 wholesale new era caps says:
amazing post!