Operation: Vietnam – NDS – Review

Welcome to
Vietnam. Known as “Sarge” by your squad mates, you were leading the team
successfully through various operations around the Nung River when things went
horribly wrong. A Viet Cong rocket struck your helicopter and down you went.
Fortunately, you woke up in one piece and had somehow avoided capture, but your
squad was nowhere to be found. Do you have what it takes to find them and get
back home?

That is the
basic premise of Operation: Vietnam, a mission-based action game by
Majesco that plays like a mix of the classic games Commando and Cannon
Fodder. Missions consist of traversing the landscape from a top-down
perspective searching for various items and gunning down almost anything that
moves.

Your team is
made up of four characters each with their own unique ability and unoriginal
nickname. There’s Sarge, the team leader, who packs an automatic rifle. Doc, the
medic, is a bit lacking in power with his slow rate of fire but is more
effective when using health packs. Scopes, the sharpshooter, can pick off bad
guys from far away as well as spot land mines. Finally, Hopper, the heavy
weapons expert, can take out turrets and vehicles with his rocket launcher.

At the start of
each mission you are thrown on one side of a huge map, and it is up to you find
your way around to any supplies or objectives. In certain ways, this style of
play works great. It allows for some serious exploration as there are often many
areas off of the main path just begging for you to check them out, and you’ll
want to make sure to. You can find much needed supplies such as health packs,
frag grenades, and smoke grenades, but more importantly, you will find more
enemies to kill as well as rare dog tags, both of which the game will tally at
the end of each missions and the more you have, the better your score will be.
Getting a high enough score will unlock a bonus mission, some of which are
throwbacks to classic games such as Pac-Man and Smash TV. On the
other hand, the game is very slow paced, and coupled with the large maps you
might sometimes find yourself wanting to simply get to the end as fast as you
can to avoid boredom.

Of course, even
with the exploration aspect, Operation: Vietnam is mainly a combat-focused action game. Waves of enemies will try to thwart your plans every step
of the way, and there are many options for fighting back. You have to keep in
mind each team member’s strengths and weaknesses and switch between them as
needed. Of course, since you can only control one person manually, you can give
some basic commands to the others if you feel the need. The touch screen shows
each character’s status and simply tapping their portrait will allow you to pick
certain tactics whether you want them to stay in position, follow you, or seek
out enemies on their own. Unfortunately, other than a few simple puzzles where
you have to make them stand in place, I never felt the need to have them do
anything except follow me as it is the best way to avoid taking excess damage.

While the game
does offer a decent amount of options for combat, it can get repetitive. Every
mission feels basically the same, and it’s easy to fall into a pattern of
slogging through missions using Scopes to pick off enemies before they even know
you’re there. They sometimes mix things up a bit when they split up your team
and you only have two to command, but it’s still not enough to make things
interesting. Because of all this, the game is not fun to play for extended
periods of time. On the bright side, the boss fights are fun and challenging and
are worth looking forward to.

Perhaps the
most unfortunate aspect of this game is the controls. Instead of taking
advantage of the touch screen for aiming, your crosshairs simply point in the
direction your character is walking, which means to aim at enemies you have to
run straight at them. Luckily, there is an auto-aim feature in place to remedy
the limited eight-way aim the D-pad allows, so you don’t have to be precise, but
strafing still would have been a nice addition.

In the graphics
department, Operation: Vietnam isn’t bad. The environments are detailed
and effectively make you feel lost in the jungle. Just as well, the cutscene
illustrations and character models have a certain “cartoony” quality to them
which is rather charming and shows the game does not take itself too seriously.
Still, though, the character models are small and pixilated which can be
unattractive, and there could have been more variety in enemy and villager
models.

In addition to
detailed environments, the game feature’s some decent sound effects that help
set the mood. Chickens squawk, crickets chirp, and guns go boom all in a way
that fits the game well. The menus and cut scenes have some nice music, but the
missions have none at all which is too bad since some atmospheric music might
have increased the tension level and made the missions more enjoyable.

Review Scoring Details for Operation: Vietnam

Gameplay: 6.5
The gameplay
suffers in that it is basically the same in every mission. The slow pacing
doesn’t help either. However, it gets some points for having fun boss battles
and a decent amount of replayability if you want to unlock and master all the
missions.

Graphics:
7.0
The environments
have a surprising amount of detail but tend to get boring as most of them look
very similar.

Sound: 7.0
An abundance of nice
sound effects set up a nice atmosphere that could have been even better with
some music during missions. The menu and cut-scene music is decent enough.

Difficulty:
Medium
The game starts off
easy, but you may find yourself restarting some of the middle or later missions.

Concept: 8.0
There are plenty of
war games these days, but the mix of action, exploration, and strategy helps
this one feel a bit unique.

Overall: 6.5
Operation:
Vietnam is not a bad
game by any mean, but it has certain flaws that I would like to see corrected if
Majesco decides to make another game in the same style. It can be hard to play
the game for more than 10-15 minutes at a time due to the repetitive gameplay.
That said, the game does a pretty good job of delivering a play style
reminiscent of classic top-down action games, and the addition of fun bonus
missions is, well… a bonus. At only $20, it’s at least worth a shot if you’re a
fan of the genre.