What you need to know about WIC, my review is long & detailed, plus i included my older comp's performance.
The Bad: you can't control a large force, multiplayer battles require a lot of teamwork, no Soviet campaign, lack of auto saving in mid mission.
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I thought this game wouldn't work on my nearly outdated computer, but I can actually run this game with good frame rates in single and multiplayer with this rig:
P4 3.0 GHz
Nvidia 6800 256mb (with latest drivers)
3GB RAM
Integrated sound card
^none of which was OC'd
The game almost never lagged up on me with medium settings, even in a full multiplayer game with tons of units on screen.
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The campaign is a good start for everyone who picks up this game because it's slowly introduces you to the games difference from normal RTS games. Unlike C&C3 you don't build a base and collect resources, instead you start out with a large sum of resources usually enough to purchase 3-5 units. Once you make your unit selections you simply call them in and they are drop from the air in less than 15-20 seconds. And there you go! Start maneuvering and fighting and get into the action quick. Each side (US, NATO, SOVIET) is fairly equal in terms of unit stats, and they have the same units for every role, so no one get a unit the other side can't have. The only major difference is appearance.
Campaign:
Its great but early on I was slighly annoyed because 2 of the main characters argue a lot, but it gets better a little bit later. The objectives are very simple, like go here and secure the area.... capture this command point etc. There are also secondary objectives that can actually be quite important though, like sending aid to a far away unit like artillery on the verge of being attacked. And then if you accomplished that objective you are rewarded with those arty units to aid you. This adds a lot of replay ability since these secondary objectives can change you options in a mission. Once you progress a few missions things start rolling along smoothly and it gets very interesting. There are plenty of missions although you can only play from the perspective of the NATO and US(but its all mixed up in one campaign, so its not 2 separate stories), the soviets are not playable in campaign. You can't choose which combat role per mission, instead they decide what units you can't use in a mission, and often times you'll see combat roles mixed together giving you a lot of flexibility in the mission. Normal difficulty is not very hard, yet hard is probably more suited for most missions. The last mission on hard is well lets just say it's a frustrating experience, since you given only so much to work with yet you have to accomplish huge tasks. You learn to save a lot since the auto save only saves as you advance to the next mission, there isn't an auto save after completing an objective so if you lose near the end of a mission you have to restart the whole thing.
*by the way the skirmish single player mode is tricky to get to, since it's not clearly show in the single player menu. To get to it you must go to multiplayer, create a local server, add the bots etc. and there you go.
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Combat Roles:
There are 4 roles: Armor, Infantry, Support, and Air. And during a multiplayer match you select which role you want to play as, but keep in mind of what you other teammates are playing as. If everyone is playing only 2 of the 4 roles, then you almost guaranteed to lose. Balance is key here, if no ones playing Armor on your team you won't have any tough tanks on the battlefield making your light vehicles or infantry easy targets. However just because you play as a certain role doesn't mean you can't buy units from other roles, its just they are more expensive if they are not from your specialized role. And some units are only buyable if you selected that combat role. For example you select infantry as your role, so you can buy any unit in that roles list with any price hikes and you get access to the role specific unit others cant buy…. The Anti tank infantry. Now let's say you wan to buy some tanks to support your infantry, you can do it, but it will cost a lot more than normal and since you are the infantry role and you can't buy the armors specific unit the "heavy tank". So the best tank is out of reach to you, but at least you can buy the medium tank, albeit at a higher cost than normal. And the better the unit the more money it costs, so it's a choice of quality or quantity.
*Almost every unit has both a defensive and offensive ability which can be used free of charge, but have a cool down time between uses. For example the "troop transport" in the armor role has a defensive smokescreen and an offensive AT missile.
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Resources:
Reinforcements points: You start out with a certain amount of reinforcement points in what's called (duh) an available reinforcement pool (the pool that show how much you can spend), and some points in a unavailable reinforcement pool that will slowly drain into your spending pool. The amount of pts you can have depends on how many command points you control. But you can't ever run out of units and run out of money, if your units are killed their value in refunded into your unusable reinforcement pool but that refunded stuff will drain quicker and allow you to build more units right away instead of waiting a while.
Tactical Aid Points:
You earn these points in multiplayer matches by killing the enemy, and capturing command points. You don't earn that much at a time but after a little while your total TA pts can add up and grant you special abilities. Each ability has a pt price to it, and a recharge time between uses. And once a TA has been called in there's a countdown timer that show when its going to arrive, so calling in an air strike takes 10-15 seconds for it to happen so keep that in mind. And you can even share TA pts with other players for that expensive TA you want to use like the nuke. Your abilities are divided up into 3 categories:
The 1st is non lethal stuff such as a UAV to reveal enemies in a certain location beyond you site range. Other abilities are dropping airborne infantry or light vehicles, etc.
The 2nd one is lethal stuff like calling in a plane to deliver a napalm bomb or call in a tank buster to deal with armor, but these abilities have to be set into a direction of impact, and cant be corrected once set. So if the enemy moves away you're screwed. Other abilities like calling in anti air strike, etc.
The 3rd option is made up of different kinds of artillery strikes and area effect bombs from carpet bombing to chemical…… and then the final option in this list is the tactical nuke.
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Multiplayer:
They say multiplayer is only as good as the people who play on it. And that's true here. You have to work as a team to win and most people I've played with so far don't understand this or are unwilling to stick together on a map. Everyone just does what they want to do, and if you're lucky you win. Clans do work together and so there is the possibility of teamwork, you just won't always find it.
Voice chat is available and some people use it although not a lot do, thankfully there's a chat menu for simple commands to be given like I need air support here or attention here, etc. and then if you need a complex message to can still type it he old fashion way.
It's very easy to get into a match; in fact this is the easiest game for the RTS genre to get right into a match and play. Normally in other RTS you have to wait for even teams or for the total players to fill up, but not here. I've seen people come and go in a match and usually matches are balanced on player vs player numbers. And if not then its most likely the game will fill up soon anyway so don't worry.
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Conclusion:
This game is very good and breaks away from the normal with no base building, quick action, etc. No bugs encountered at all. I recommend this game because it's a great overall presentation and pushes the RTS genre further into new ground straying away from the normal formula.