Vietcong – PC – Review

The jungle is full of VC, booby traps, and tunnels. You and
your squad of Special Forces soldiers must flush them out!

Be prepared to take on the most cunning guerilla fighters ever
seen in this nonstop action shooter. The game starts as you, Sergeant First
Class Steve Hawkins, arrive at Nui Pek, a Special Forces camp located in the
central highlands of South Vietnam. As an Intelligence Sergeant, you have
already served two previous tours in the far east, and have been sent to Nui
Pek as a replacement for the former I.S. which is now K.I.A (Killed in
Action). The small camp of Nui Pek has a strength of Special Forces team A-216
(6 members) as well as a squad of South Vietnamese Special Forces and a few
local Montagnards. And you are located right in the heart of Vietcong country!
It is your job to lead your squad through the jungle, locate the enemy, and
almost always, engage them in some very fierce firefights.

The Vietcong have been transporting supplies down the Ho Chi
Minh Trail, and the whole area is webbed with miles of tunnels and booby
traps, so watch your step! Cong tend to pop up out of nowhere to blast away at
your unsuspecting squad and then just as quickly disappear back into the
tunnels. On occasion you may even have to go in after them, and the deeper the
tunnels go the darker it gets! There’s nothing fun about these missions but
someone has to do them, and you’re that someone!

Other missions will take you into the rice paddies, the river
deltas, and on helicopter insertions into deep lush jungles.

Your squad employs a Vietnamese Pointman who is very good at
tracking the enemy through these locations as well as acting as an interpreter
with the local people, it’s very wise to use him to his fullest potential. A
Machine-gunner, Medic, Engineer, and Radioman, fill out your squad, each with
his own specialty, and you will need each and every one to complete your
missions. Arm yourself with whatever weapon you can, many times you may run
out of ammo and have to throw your weapon down and grab up whatever the fallen
enemy in front of you was carrying just to keep up the fight and stay alive.
With more than 20 weapons in the game there is always something laying around
you can use. All the missions flow together very well with some good
intermission video that takes you from the last mission to the next and fills
in all your needed intelligence reports and prepares you for the next mission.

The game does give you several play modes including single
player Campaign mode (as described above), Quick Fight, Single Mission (in
which you can re-fight any mission already completed in the Campaign mode,
this gives you a chance to try different weapons and tactics), and
Multiplayer. Multiplayer modes include Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Last Man
Standing, Assault, Real War, and Co-Op.

Controlling your squad is done through a set of commands such
as ‘Cover me’, ‘Hold here’ or ‘Attack’ direct the squad as a whole. To
interact with an individual you must first approach him and when within range
a prompt will appear allowing you to ask, instruct, or direct that soldier.

Options for graphics and sound are rather limited, but you
really don’t need too many. The graphics are very good and the sound is too.
This game has a pretty high Minimum System Requirement (be sure to check your
systems numbers before buying this game to make sure it meets the minimum
requirement) and most low end systems wouldn’t be able to play it even with
the settings at minimum. But any system over 1Gig with ample memory should
play this game with no problems. I have played on my tweaked 933 Mhz and have
not had a single glitch. You do have the option to set your controls to your
own preference.

So if you’re ready, grab your M-16 and a couple of those hand
grenades and hop on that chopper over there, its next stop is NUI PEK!

I liked this game alot and if you are a fan of First Person
Shooters set in time, then this is a game for you.

Gameplay: 8.5
Several modes of play offer something for everyone depending on how much time
you want to spend. From Quick Fight to full blown Campaigns, and several
Multiplayer modes as well.

Standard First Person Shooter format based on conflict in 1967
in the country of South Vietnam. Good portrayal of period weapons and enemy
tactics.

Graphics: 8.7
Great graphics driven by a good game engine results in smooth play even when
the action gets hot and heavy. The graphics in these new generation games
never cease to amaze me, some of the backgrounds are absolutely beautiful.

Sound: 8.2
Great sound quality and matching sounds to actions. Really liked the
background soundtrack as well, very well matched to the time period and place.

Difficulty: Easy/Hard
With the Difficulty Options available you can set the game to be so easy that
the enemy almost stands up and begs you to shoot them, but at the other end of
the scale, it can be so hard that if you poke your head out from around a tree
for more than a second, some VC will put a bullet through it. How Gung-Ho are
you?

Concept: 7
FPS games have been around for quite a while and are some of the most popular.
That also means that just about every scenario for a game has been tried at
least once. While there are not a lot of games based on the Vietnam War, there
are a few. This one does a pretty good job of portraying a small portion of
that conflict and the added feature of multiple mission types within the same
game is welcome. At least you’re not running the same missions over and over
with different scenery. It is a pretty solid attempt at giving us something
new and fresh which is hard to do in this market.

Multiplayer: 7
Pretty standard Multiplayer set up. Nothing new about any of it. It does all
work, and if you and your buddies want to team up and become the baddest
Vietcong clan around, here is your vehicle.

Overall: 8
Good solid FPS game set in a believable setting. Good graphics and sound make
the game enjoyable to play.