Order of War Preview

Visually Order of War is doing a lot of things right

Wargaming’s Victor Kislyi is a confident man. He's standing in front of a large projection of his new WWII PC RTS Order of War, chest out and with a smile on his face. He’s just said something that's caused the assembled throng to frantically scribble in notepads and check recorder status: “We will beat Mr Spielberg at his own game. Our Omaha beach will be massive.”

He is, of course, referring to the opening seven minutes of Saving Private Ryan, perhaps the best seven minutes of WWII filmmaking ever. To say Order of War will “beat” that is either extremely brave… or extremely stupid.

Still, he's got our attention, which is good, because the first reaction to any WWII game these days is to doze off and dribble a little bit. But Order of War isn’t like other WWII games. In all honesty, it looks pretty good.

And Victor’s Omaha comment is actually grounded in some reality. In the top left hand corner of the screen is a magic button that looks like an old Hollywood camera from the 30s. Press it and the camera flies off on a journey of cinematic epicness, showing the 1944 French countryside in all its historically-accurate glory. The finely-detailed army vehicles and the hyper realistic American and German troops are seen blowing themselves to bits as the camera darts at speed through cobbled streets and up and over French rooftops. This is what Victor was talking about. This is graphical gorging on a level WWII RTS games simply don’t do.

But wait. This is an RTS. What are you doing sitting back and enjoying the show? Is that popcorn on your lap? Take control of the mouse, man, and position those infantry behind those tanks before those Germans blow your paratroopers to smithereens! Calm down, this is on the easy difficulty, and Victor says that on easy you can’t lose. Since we’ve already instructed our platoon to take care of those German troops and anti-air guns holed up in those trenches built into that cemetery, we may as well put our feet up and watch the fireworks as if Order of War were an actual WWII movie.

Behind the style is a deep RTS experience

Thing is, Order of War won’t be played like this by most people. For most people, the game will require careful management not just during battle, but beforehand too. You see you’ve got an entire army under your control. Whole tank divisions, platoons and artillery are just a click away from reigning hell down on those pesky Germans. You give orders to five, 10, 20 units at a time. This is not a game about micro-managing individual soldiers. There can be, at any one time, almost 1000 units under your control. This is Wargaming’s take on the Total War series. This is Total Order of War.

So, massive maps and hill-covering armies are the life blood that courses through the game’s virtual veins. You really do feel like you’re in charge of something big. Really, really, big. Sending a platoon of paratroopers to tear apart some tanks is a major military operation in of itself. Unit movement feels deliberately sluggish. It takes what feels like an age for your units to engage the enemy. But then so it should. Soldiers aren’t Space Marines. They’re not riding hover tanks or floating platforms. They’re cramped in ear-bursting tanks, manning falling apart artillery and traversing harsh terrain. WWII was a bitch, and so is Order of War.

It's not the magic camera button that's interesting, but the two fingers the game's sticking up at Company of Heroes and World in Conflict. As the RTS genre expands beyond the PC and begins to make inroads on consoles, as it starts to ape the dungeon-crawler, Wargaming is heading in the opposite direction with a hardcore PC-exclusive military RTS with massive armies and graphics card-eating visuals. This is what PC gamers want. This is what PC gaming is for so many.