|
The third Vietnam game to be released in a month or so is the best of the bunch, so far anyway. Take-Two is largely responsible for this onslaught of Vietnam games since they released Vietcong: Purple Haze and now Conflict: Vietnam but Eidos added to the mix with ShellShock: ‘Nam 67 and VU Games will soon add another Vietnam-flavored shooter with Men on Valor. While neither Purple Haze nor ShellShock were horrible, they certainly weren’t readily-recommendable titles. Conflict: Vietnam doesn’t quite get to that status but it comes the closest so far.
Conflict: Vietnam lets you play through some 14 missions, many of which are the typical move forward and destroy whatever is in your way. There are variations of this here in there, for example, in some missions you’ll do this while riding around in a jeep while others allow you to do so while driving in a tank. Additionally, there are some shooting missions in which you’ll simply need to man the weapons for each of the four squad members.
Like the other games in the Conflict series, you are able to control four soldiers, each of who specialize in a certain area. For example, you’ll find the series regulars like a sniper, medic, assault weapons operator and the heavy weapons expert. You’ll only control one at a time, but you can switch between them whenever you want and issue broad commands to the others, as a group, while directly controlling another. You can also give specific commands to one troop such as attack (or heal if they’re the medic) a particular person, or pick up a certain item. That isn’t to say that the other squad members are less than intelligent because that isn’t true; they behave rather realistically and protect themselves from enemy fire.
The Xbox version of the game allows you to play with up to three others, with each player controlling one of the squad members. It would have been superb to do this via Xbox Live, but unfortunately we’ll need to wait for the inevitable Conflict sequel for that it seems.
The game’s single-player campaign is quite long, which is great but some of this length is artificial as you’ll be replaying some missions several times. This is made worse by the fact that you only have two saves per level, which means you’ll have to start from the beginning quite a few times.
The game’s visuals do a good job of portraying Vietnam’s dense jungles which adds to the authenticity. The character models are nothing special, but serviceable. If there is one thing I did notice is that many of the game’s textures are a bit blurry and bland which contrasts the excellent jungle architecture.
The game’s audio is solid; the sound effects are pretty good and the voice acting is believable and authentic without being too bothersome. The game includes some licensed tracks from the period including the Rolling Stones, which is nice.
Overall, Conflict: Vietnam is a pretty good Vietnam game. I happen to like the squad based gameplay of the Conflict series as I have been playing it since the original game. The guys at Pivotal Games and Sci should give themselves a hand; they crafted the best Vietnam game yet.
-- Edited by Jose Liz -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Oct 13, 2004
|
