Theater of War 3: Korea Review

My latest in PC game reviews is of 1C Company's Theater of War 3 : Korea, out today on PC only, via digital download on Steam as well as via the official website and in local gaming retailers. This tactical simulator puts the player into Korean war campaigns as both the North Koreans as well as the Americans. Players must use their available military resources to formulate a strategy to complete various missions through a turn-by-turn campaign as well as on a real-time battlefield. Players are given the challenge of managing their army and reserves, as well as managing supplies and maintaining supply lines and troop movements in order to progress in the war.

TOW3 integrates turn-based management of troop movements while also incorporating real-time play for individual missions. The overall map of the Korean peninsula is broken up into various regions where players move there armies over. Each army can make a single move per turn. Once moved, the player enters that area, undertaking whatever mission is necessary in order to accomplish success in that area. The player is granted points to obtain troops and equipment to use during the mission in that zone. Once the army has been formed, the battle begins and moves to the battlefield.

The battlefield mechanics were well designed. First off, the battlefield can be viewed from virtually any angle from top-down to ground level straight-on. The camera zooms in and out, can be raised up and down off the ground, can rotate 360 degrees, and can also be attached to individual troops and equipment, providing both third-person and first-person control. For example, when engaging an enemy tank, you can attach the camera to a friendly tank, maneuver the tank and engage the enemy tank in first-person combat. Although you can not take direct control of the steering of the tank (you can give the unit orders to move by clicking on a spot on the battlefield), it still gives a great view of the combat.

Physics are great in this game also. Take for example the tank. Unlike many tactical simulator games out there, (I'm thinking Command and Conquer, StarCraft, etc.) where you give movement directions and the unit is off at full speed, in TOW3, when you give orders to a large, heavy, armor laden tank, the tank takes time to react. It slowly turns and accelerates up to full speed in a very realistic manner, and doesn't stop on a dime. It takes time to turn the turret and aim, then fire. When a piece of artillery needs to be moved the crew which is operating it must drag it along and moves based on the terrain. Weapons have reloading times and troops and equipment have limited supplies of ammo, all things you must consider when you are planning the make-up of your army.

In addition, there is a constant "fog of wag" in place, where you can only see enemy positions on the battlefield overview when one of your units can actually SEE the enemy. However, once you have spied an enemy position, you can have your artillery or other appropriate unit fire at the area of the enemy position in an attempt to do damage without direct line of sight. Again, a very realistic simulation of actual battlefield tactics.

I also enjoyed the fact that if you took out enemy troops that were operating a piece of equipment such as a machine gun, a piece of artillery, or even the dead troops own firearm, your own troops could take over or pick up that piece of equipment and use it. Your troops can also abandon their own damaged hardware, such as bailing from a disabled tank, and continue to fight on foot.

Points are awarded from completed missions, which can be assigned on a troop by troop basis to the members of your force, allowing players to have their individual men specialize in a variety of areas from accuracy in shooting for snipers to better driving for your combat engineers driving tanks and other equipment.

Overall, this is the most detailed tactical combat simulator I have ever played. So many details were considered and integrated. Players have the ability to control so much of their situation. This is great, and yet at the same time, may be overwhelming to some. Don't get me wrong, if you are a fan of the evermore sophisticated game, and are looking for more control and more realism, it is unlikely you will find it in this. If, on the other hand, you just want to get in and start killing, you might find this a bit of a challenge. There are some features built in which hasten some of the customization, such as an option to auto-assign attribute points and promotions to your troops at the end of the completed missions.

From a technical standpoint, graphics are great. The battlefield in 3D is really clean and it is easy to see what is going on, there wasn't any display issues with graphics set to max on my PC (a AMD Phenom x4 955 Black, 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM and a Nvidia GeForce HD card w/ 1 GB DDR3). It displays beautifully on my 50" Samsung Plasma in 1080x1920, and I had zero compatibility issues.

Sound is great too via my Kenwood home theater. The sound adapts well to the camera position. Based on your position near or away from the active combat zone, the volume adjusted well. Far off gunfire and explosions sounded appropriately proportional in volume to the close up ones. I enjoyed the rich immersion I received in playing this through my home theater in surround.

If anything, my only gripe is with the tutorial. I was not highly impressed. For what its worth, what was covered in the tutorial was covered pretty well, but the tutorial was very brief, and only explained the very basics of the battlefield play. While most of the time is spent in the battlefield arena, I really had to poke around for a while with the campaign control system in order to learn how to perform army movements on the turn-based side on the main map of the peninsula. There was no direction in the tutorial about assigning troops and equipment to my armies before a battle either. There should really be a tutorial about this aspect of the game as well.

Despite this shortcoming, my feeling about Theater of War 3 is that this the most realistic tactical combat simulator of all time. That's a bold statement, and I mean it. If you are a fan of tactical combat simulators and you are looking for a bigger challenge, I suggest graduating to Theater of War 3.

You can still pre-purchase Theater of War 3 : Korea via Steam, and will be granted access to download this title at about 12:00 PM Eastern Time on March 24, 2011 for $34.99. Visit the official site @ http://www.tow-game.com/.