Korea: Forgotten Conflict

They Say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Pyro Studios (creator of the legendary Commando RTS series) should be tickled pink by Plastic Reality Technologies' new RTS.

In fairness to the Czech developer, it's given credit where credit's due. The opening lines on its web page say, "It is similar in style to the Commandos series, where the player takes on the role of leader of a small group of military specialists." Nice one - it's not often you see developers crediting their influence.

So, as you've already guessed. Korea: Forgotten Conflict is an RTS set in Korea, with the same gameplay style as Commandos. Now, there may be some among you - either coming out of cryogenic storage or hitting puberty - who may not have heard of Commandos. So here's a very potted description: Instead of command and conquer gameplay - where you mass-produce large numbers of military units for unrestricted warfare - you're given a finite (and small) number of specialist troops, whose task is to do XXX with YYY, without becoming RIR Skill, stealth and a bit of luck are the order of the day. It's hard but incredibly addictive, and there have been few imitations of note.

Korea: Forgotten Conflict is, indeed, an imitation: but with some rather obvious differences. While the Commandos series had you slogging it out during WWII, this one - as the name would suggest - has you fighting the North Koreans, Soviets and Chinese during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

The game kicks off with some simple tutorials. However, if you don't complete each step exactly as instructed, you'll find that it doesn't progress to the next step - rather annoying if you've found a better or more novel way of achieving an objective.

There are also issues with the control interface. To move your squaddie, you need to left-click the mouse (LMC). And to perform an action - loot body, open crate, search box, etc - you need to right-click (RMC). This would be simple enough, but the interface isn't intuitive. If you run up to a box (LMC), then try to open it (RMC), you'll often find you're not standing on exactly the right pixels, so you constantly have to repeat the process till you are. You end up playing a mouse version of Track and Field. A far easier solution would have been for the soldier to run up to an object and search it by just right-clicking on it once. Duh!

Off Course

Sadly, this problem also applies in combat - trying to run into position (LMC) to fire a weapon (RMC). only to have the target move a fraction while you're doing so is infuriating.

And if that weren't enough, the Al pathing still needs serious work. Fire a shot and bad guys come running at you from all directions, but try to scarper and you'll invariably end up charging into a jeep or running in a demented circle and ending up dead as a dodo. This spoils what would otherwise be an excellent game.

There's no doubt the concept is top-notch, but the irritations don't just limit the gameplay; they wreck it. With any luck, the developers will patch these annoying features - in which case Korea: Forgotten Conflict will definitely be a game to play this autumn. But based on what we've seen currently, the game will annoy more than it'll please.