For some people, World in Conflict will be a game defined by its nuclear explosions - and with good reason, because the sight of that huge destructive mushroom cloud of dust and ash consuming a small, cosy American suburb and annihilating all in its wake is a fantastical spectacle to witness. However, for all the pizzazz these weapons display, I've got something of a soft spot for the simpler use of good old-fashioned artillery barrages. There's just something more gratifying about watching those shells rain down from the sky and deal out death and destruction on their target, leaving nothing behind but the smouldering craters where the enemy once stood.

Then again, I'm also quite keen on the occasional carpet bombing run, a huge air strike that lives up to its name by dropping a ridiculous amount of bombs over its target area, or a napalm strike, great for clearing out forests hiding any infantry planning an ambush. The truth is, I'm too spoilt for choice with World in Conflict's tactical aid panel to choose just one favourite, yet whatever I might choose to help me throughout the game's campaign to rid America of the Soviet menace that has invaded it, I still end up proffering them to those clunky nuclear bombs.

There are two reasons why this is. The first reason is purely down to my own childlike fondness for seeing things blow up in excessive quantities. The environments of World in Conflict are fully destructible; everything you can see can be demolished - trees sway from the shockwave of an exploded tank shell, buildings collapse into smoke and rubble under the force of an air strike and entire cites can be levelled to their foundations - and it all looks glorious. The second reason is it's more practical use, because although you may have command of portions of one of the world's most massive and modernised military powers, you're also vastly outnumbered and outgunned.

As this is Massive Entertainment's latest assault into the world of strategy gaming, whose first game - Ground Control - pioneered tactical strategy games long before it became fashionable, it's wise not to expect anything less than a full-on tactical laden experience that sacrifices the mind numbing tedium of resource management for that of making use of what units you are given. So there's nothing that needs to be harvested for profit and no bases for you to waste time defending, just the job of controlling a few tanks and infantry to accomplish an array of what should be rather simple objectives - except nothing in this game is as simple as it first seems.

Defying Supreme Commander's attempt to widen the playing field, World in Conflict is all about small-scale skirmishes in tightly packed environments. Although you will only ever control small squads of tanks and infantry, plus a few helicopters if you are lucky, this is in no way an easier game than those that have you controlling vast armies. The pace has been quickened to almost a first person shooter mentality, so the action becomes pretty relentless from the offset, while the objectives constantly force you to react almost immediately and with lighting speed.

Each level begins with one simple objective, usually involving you holding a strategic point for a short period of time, once these have been dealt with there's no need to stick around - the job's done, so move onto the next objective. These come so thick and fast that very you rarely have the time to sit back and take it all in; you're constantly on the move, always trying desperately to hit that next objective before Ivan sends his reinforcements your way. Secondary objectives crop up from time to time too, purely optional but can they sometimes reward you with units that you might otherwise be unable to command. The inevitable downside is that you have top factor these objectives over your main ones, further complicating an already difficult battle.

Unlike other strategy games, World in Conflict also likes to make you feel like part of something bigger, as though the entire war effort isn't decided by you and you alone. Allies accompany you throughout the game, who each have their own missions going on elsewhere, so as you are doing your thing, other battles rage on around you, while artillery barrages and air strikes can be seen and heard in the distance as your comrades take up arms against the enemy, freeing you up to focus on the important business of getting your job done. There's a great sense of being little more than a bit player in a far greater war; you aren't the general overlooking the war on a continental scale, but rather one commander in control of a handful of units that fight this conflict up close and personal.

This does have its setbacks though, and without the vast resources at your disposal that being the leader of all of the armed forces would have provided, you find yourself with a paltry amount of command points to spend requisitioning units from the reinforcements menu. This holds everything you need to wage war with - tanks, artillery, infantry, helicopters - it's all here and it all has a price. Not making things easy for you is the expense each of these units incurs. The heavier and more destructive, the more it's going to cost and with so little command points ever given to you, simply spending everything you have on the biggest tank will leave you severely disadvantaged.

There's also the added difficulty of the vulnerability of each unit. A tank might be able to easily sweep away enemy armour, but when thrust into a fight against a helicopter for which it has no defence against, it's as good as dead. Getting through World in Conflict is more about getting the right balance of units more than it is about their destructive potential. Almost every level begins with nothing left under your command, so it's always up to you to call in the reinforcements and choose which units you'll need for the ensuing mission. This does mean that you have more of an appreciation for the units you command and less of an urge to needlessly sacrifice them to the encroaching Soviet army.

Speaking of which, World in Conflict's proposed revisionist take on the Cold War does provide the game with an interesting, if not entirely original story. In this alternate 1989, the USSR didn't back down, the Berlin Wall never fell and a full scale invasion by Soviet forces into West Germany has plunged Europe into a full scale Third World War. As NATO and the American forces try and stem this sudden and abrupt attack, Russia launches a new offensive into mainland America and brings the two warring superpowers right into the back garden of the USA.

Although riddled with the usual plot twists, the story does manage to be quite engaging, utilising a gruff voiceover from Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin, who narrates the progress of each mission mid-level with a series of hand painted cut scenes, all helping to build the characters of each of the allied commanders you serve alongside during the campaign. Despite what would seem like a ridiculous notion of a massive invasion force somehow managing to cross the Pacific Ocean and strike the world's largest superpower almost unseen, the entire game never feels less than plausible.

This does also give the game an interesting setting, where large urbanised cities and the white picketed fences of suburbia become the new battlegrounds. It's the detail though that impresses the most; the sight of civilians fleeing from their hometown about to be turned to dust, or the distant silhouette of the hundreds of parachutes of the Russian airborne soldiers all descending on the city of Seattle. This is a game that loves the little details and one of the few games where even the sight of an approaching cargo plane swooping down to drop off the latest batch of reinforcements becomes an event you never want to miss.

The attention to detail does get to some ridiculous extremes when you view things close up and notice just how true to life every unit and infantryman is - and this applies as much to the sound as it does the graphics. Zoom in close enough and you won't just hear every clink as tanks reload their next shell; you might also hear their crew's banter as they discuss how beneficial it would have been to be granted armour upgrades before fighting the Russians! Sound does play its part in brining the battlefields to life with the distant explosions of far off battles helping to encase you in a world of bitter unending conflict - it might be an aspect of the game you'll overlook but its importance in adding to sense of place isn't to be understated.

It all looks beautiful too - ridiculously so, in fact. While it has often been the case that strategy games sacrifice their looks for their gameplay, World in Conflict decides that it wants both, producing visuals that even manage to top the most up to date first person shooters. The smoke effects in particular mean that the game has by far some of the finest looking explosions ever rendered; combine this with some dedicated physics modelling on each and every piece of scenery and you will perhaps understand my glee at watching things getting blown up. It's a fantastic looking game and a clear indication that strategy games of the future may become the new benchmark in testing the capabilities of the latest graphical technology.

So it looks great, is punctuated by an intriguing story and has a nice single player campaign - all that's left for World of Conflict is for it to redefine strategy-based multiplayer gaming, which actually manages to be the game's greatest achievement. We're back with the first person shooter mentality with this part of the game, as things feel less like an ordinary strategy game and more like something approaching Battlefield.

Supporting up to sixteen players, the objective is to hold and control a number of control points dotted around each map. One main difference from other games of this genre is that each player is required to choose a role beforehand. These are split into four categories. Infantry, as its name suggests, allows you to control grunts; slow and less armoured than the other units in the game, but manoeuvrable and able to hide in buildings and forests to ambush enemy forces. Support is all about standing back and pelting the enemy from afar; they can use an assortment of long-range artillery, anti-air support and repair vehicles but are vulnerable unless defended by an ally with shorter ranged armour. Air is about superiority of the skies, placing numerous attack helicopters under your control, deadly against unguarded ground vehicles but easy picking for an AA battery. Finally, Armour is the spearhead of every battle where tanks and armoured personnel carries are the order of the day, heavily armed but very vulnerable to air assaults.

Just to make things that little more interesting, all the extra Tactical Aid options open to you in the single player portion of the game are all present and correct in the multiplayer too, so artillery barrages, carpet bombing and even nuclear missile strikes can be utilised here - but with a more strict limit on the amount of tactical aid points you get awarded for certain feats, games fortunately do not degenerate into a nuclear missile slinging match.

Having such a clever class-based system in place the multiplayer really drives home the fact that to succeed you all need to play as a team. Everyone has a role to play in the game and everyone can and needs to lend assistance to one another to successfully beat the other team into submission. Going it alone really isn't an option, as without the support that you can offer to and receive from other players, it's easy to become a victim of a better-organised team. Luckily, people are already cottoning on to the fact that this is a team-based game, and together with some great VOIP support, it's not difficult to find games where the players are organised enough to prevent things falling apart into a mishmash of random forgettable skirmishes.

Perhaps the only real problem with World in Conflict is that it isn't a game that does anything particularly new, or at least nothing groundbreaking. The action might be more adrenaline-inducing and the pace ramped up to such a degree that half hour battles fly by in what seem like ten minutes, but at the end of it all it's still a strategy game that follows the usual formula of its entire ilk and not too dissimilar in style to its ancient cousin, Ground Control. But that's just fine, because World in Conflict isn't about revolutionising the genre - what it does do is reinvigorate it. Combining its fast paced almost action game style single player campaign with a multiplayer component that does actually manage to be sufficiently different from the norm, what you have isn't just a damn good strategy game, but one of the best strategy games of the year.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).