
This time it's a strategy offering and it goes by the no-messin' title of World War III.
WORLD WAR III PC WINDOWS
WWIII: Black Gold, despite the promise of epic global destruction, will end its days in anonymity, let down by a lack of ambition more than anything else.ĭon't know about you lot, but those of us old enough to remember the paranoid '80s, with those ridiculous-yet-frightening public information films, movies like When The Wind Blows and The Day After, and of course CND, may like to know that hot on the heels of Operation Flashpoint comes another game aiming to have us ripping doors off their hinges and painting the windows white. If you want a strategy game offering weapons of mass destruction, get Red Alert 2. If you’re after realism, political manoeuvring and nuclear paranoia, watch CNN. It’s hard to care for a force of poorly modelled vehicles, each about as convincing as a Scalectrix car, set among shoddy cardboard environments. With its available nuclear and chemical weapons, WW3 offers a more realistic tactical game than Red Alert 2, with each side racing to research the required technology before the other, but without infantry units the game feels dry. The explosions and lighting effects are suitable nourishment, but like Earth 2150 and The Moon Projectile units and buildings have that Blue Fefer look about them, as if each has been cut out from an empty cereal box and coloured in with poster paint. Graphically the game is both impressive and shoddy.

WORLD WAR III PC PLUS
On the plus side, WWIIIshares a common interface, a rather good one at that, providing one of the few 3D strategy games where controlling the camera is less of a struggle than the actual game. The ability to design your own units is also one of the game’s hangover features, although only available to skirmish and multiplayer battles. The three campaigns are entirely linear compared to Earths dynamic construction and the underground tunnels through which you launch the odd surprise attack seem an odd feature to have left in. Earth And Beyondĭespite the game’s reliance on the Earth 2150engine, MW3 seemsa comparatively lightweight game. While there's nothing wrong with that, if you’re after a strategy game whose title suggests civilian casualties in the millions and hundreds of men running around in camouflaged gimp suits, you’re sure to be a little disappointed. But, where you might think that as the US you might command aerial superiority, or as Iraq you might be able to defend your bases with POWs or Western journalists, each side seems fairly even in battle. And while the setting may be eerily close to current reality, despite its contemporary background, the controversial release of WWIII reveals a formulaic and rather traditional strategy game.Įach side has tanks, jeeps, choppers and dozens of buildings, and you fight across deserts, mountainous and arctic regions through day and night.

It’s hardly what we might call World War III -'Gulf War II’ might be a more suitable title. As Iraq you’ll be looking to stop the infidels and as the Russians you must do a bit of both. Three Tribes CollideĪnd so, as the USA you must successfully invade Iraq. Each strategy game must have its Tiberium, and here it is oil. Without oil, an organised military force is little more than a rabble, and so it is that in WWIIIthe aim is to secure oil fields, from which you pot credits, which in turn can be used to purchase equipment. In much the same way that ancient armies marched on their stomachs, today’s high-tech forces drive about on their fuel tanks.

Indeed, aside from revenge there are also economic reasons for cuffing the Afghans, namely, the proposed Trans Afghan pipeline, which, in 1997, the US State Department said they would finance if the warring factions of Afghanistan would somehow unite. Despite the rhetoric, some would have us believe that far from securing world peace, Allied forces went into
