Have You Played... World In Conflict?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

The benchmarking test of World in Conflict long outlived the game itself, which was a fitting monument for one of the most stunning games of its era. World in Conflict still looks incredible, as it gives the most spectacularly destructive Cold War military hardware full reign over battlefields ranging from Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to icy Norwegian fishing villages to America's Pacific Northwest.

I loved calling down napalm strikes to surround my beleaguered troops with a wall of fire, or dropping cluster munitions on a formation of enemy armor and watching tanks pop like firecrackers. It was impressive enough in the surprisingly good single-player campaign, but in the MOBA-based multiplayer, it was staggering. One one level you were frantically trying work together with your teammates and create synergy between your specializations (armor, infantry, support, air) while you were also keeping an eye on the points you had available for special attacks like bombing runs and artillery. Did you call down that strafing-run now, or did you hold on a little longer in the hopes of gaining the resources you needed to drop a nuke on someone?

Now picture a battlefield packed with players all making the same kind of calculations. The result was unholy war porn that could give Warhammer 40K a run for its money.