World in Conflict is a Real Time Sress (or Strategy, depending on your take) which I had the chance to beta test recently, and I think I can say that it plays like no other RTS I've gotten my hands on before - and it takes a good RTS to impress me. No longer do you command an entire army, but merely a small group of units depending on which role you take - Infantry, Armor, Support, or Air that is dependant on your reinforcement points.

Reinforcement points are a set number at the beginning of the match, being split between available and unavailable points. Unavailable points slowly shift over to the maximum available points over the course of the match, rising whenever one of your units is killed, then becoming available again. It's a good idea to keep a few points in reserve so that you can immediately reinforce if a unit is knocked out of the action.

It takes a few ideas from C&C:Generals with it's Tactical Aid system. The more you do to further the advancement of your team, the more points you get to spend for Tactical Aid. This is the only area where you'll get any non-helicopter air support, with options ranging from a small napalm strike all the way up to a massive carpet bombing. Also available are minor vehicle/infantry reinforcements, artillery strikes, and tactical nukes.

In game voice chat is built in, and it can be both a blessing and a curse. It can be extremely helpful in coordinating attacks with other players, but on the flip side, nothing is more annoying than hearing "Moooommmm!! I'll take the trash out later!" Fortunately, there is an option to completely mute individual players via the score/roster screen.

I could go on and on about the different details of the game, but it would take a long time to put it all down. Suffice to say, it's an innovative idea to an old genre, and the graphics are amazing. One small "fluff" thing that I will highlight is the unit chatter. Should you get this game, zoom down in to ground level near your units and see...

To put it bluntly, M:TGO sucks. Why? First off, the inital installer/updater constantly disconnected from the server UNLESS I was moving my mouse over, rapidly clicking on, or rapidly pressing a button with focus on, the installer.
Second, the tutorial is another ~100MB download - it doesn't come with the initial install.
Third, the interface is really pretty clunky. Cards are small on the play board, and even smaller when held in your hand. You can scale them to different sizes, but for those of us that operate at high resolutions (such as my 1600x1200), it's just not big enough.
Last, you have to pay to create an account - $9.99, and then it appears that you have to buy any cards that you're going to use. There IS a free trial, where you get assigned a guest login, but I was unable to play against another player because I didn't own any cards. Yay.

There may have been some things that I might have missed, but all in all, I was unimpressed. One ticket to the uninstaller, coming right up!

I'm wondering if this new blog deal is some attempt to make Xfire more like Myspace... I certainly hope not. Whether I actually use this or not beyond this one entry remains to be seen.