World War III provides six campaigns with 30 missions - two campaigns for
each of the game's three sides - that follow the storyline as the war
unfolds. Unfortunately, they must be played in succession, so you might
have to play for a while before getting a chance to play all of the sides.
However, the game does come with a skirmish mode that will allow you to play any
side and specify your opponents.
The AI in World War III is a mix of good and bad. The computer
generally puts up a pretty good fight, although it does seem predisposed to rush
attacks. The location and make-up of enemy units appears to be fairly
scripted in the campaign games, but the AI is free to act more on its own in
skirmish matches and in these games it is more relentless and tenacious.
On the other hand, the pathfinding AI is lacking and can prove to be quite
frustrating at times, especially when dealing with grouped units. If you
try to move a single unit down a road, it will follow the road quite easily, benefiting
from the speed bonus provided by road travel. Try the same with a group of
units and things quickly degenerate. One or two of the units will follow
the road while others move off road and try to avoid each other on their way to
their destination. The offroad vehicles travel more slowly, which means
that your group will soon be spread out all along the length of the road.
This can be disastrous for the lead unit as it goes barreling down the road into
danger while its support is trying to make its way around a tree by the side of
the road. Also, all hell tends to break loose if you try to move a group
past any kind of chokepoint. The units towards the rear quickly grow
impatient and begin charging off in all sorts of directions (even smack into the
middle of enemy anti-tank batteries) trying to find alternate routes to the
destination. This can obviously prove to be disastrous if you do not keep
a close eye on things.
Games in World War III tend to run on the long side. The default clock
rate is fairly slow, and it can feel like an eternity waiting for a new
technology to be researched or to build up a sizable force. The clock can
be sped-up, but even at the fastest rate, build and research times run fairly
slowly. Another factor which causes games of World War II to run long is
the disparity between build times for units and structures. It takes quite
a while to build a good-sized attack force, but relatively no time to build up a
base. This can lead to situations where you destroy an opponents base only
to find that in the mean time he has built up a fully functioning base
elsewhere. If your attacking force suffered losses wiping out the original
base, it can quite easily be too weak to take the new one and you'll be forced
to take the time to rebuild it.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 72%.
World War III features great graphics and challenging gameplay, but is hindered
by poor pathfinding and slow production and research.
System Requirements: 300 MHz Pentium MMX CPU; 32 MB RAM; 4 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 200 MB Hard Drive Space; Mouse.
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