The video game world, like any industry, goes in and out of trends. Ever since the release of the original Medal of Honor from EA games, World War II has been one of these trends. Many first and third person shooters came out that sent you into Europe, wading through dense forests and ruined towns. While this was great to start out, the WWII theme began to feel a little tired and gamers began to clamor for something new. Thus, lately, we’ve had a rush of Vietnam-themed shooters. The latest game in the genre, Conflict: Vietnam, comes from the minds at Pivotal Games. Like many of the other new Vietnam games though, Conflict: Vietnam is going to be a top candidate for the bargain bin soon.
The game really doesn’t seek to give you much of a narrative as gamers are instead just thrown into the Vietnamese jungles to fight the powerful Vietcong. You play as a new soldier entering a four-man squad as their new medic. You’re given a quick tutorial, and then thrown into your first mission.
It’s in this first mission that Conflict: Vietnam proves itself soon to be quite the simpleminded title. Find one enemy and you’ll find a thousand. You fire your weapons as long and as hard as you can, brainlessly popping one enemy after the next. Sometimes you’ll make it out of
"The only modes you get in multiplayer are the co-op ones"
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the fray alive, more often than not you will end up as a corpse on the ground right next to your comrades.
Unfortunately, while fighting wave after wave of enemies is a blast in other games, Pivotal Games can’t quite pull it off. One thing that contributes to the dull gameplay is the lack of mission types. Throughout the entire game you will either be defending a base or trying to get your squad to a certain point.
So basically, without a narrative or any kind of variety, Conflict: Vietnam weighs everything on the strength of the shootouts you’ll get into. While these gunfights can sometimes be fun, most of the time there are design problems dragging it down. Simply put, Pivotal Games should fire whoever the dumb-ass was that came up with this game’s control scheme. Basic commands are easy to carry out, but in order to give a command to someone else in your squad, you’ll have to press numerous buttons in a row, holding a couple of them at the same time before you even figure out what you want him to do. Obviously, in a battle with the fast and deadly Vietcong, you can’t take too long to do much of anything before you get back to unloading clips on them. So, ordering around your troops is pretty much worthless. This takes away a layer from the gameplay that otherwise might of made the title more interesting.
To make matters worse Conflict: Vietnam has problems when it comes to actually aiming your weapons. The auto-aim feature makes the game laughably easy. You’ll lock onto enemies that you can’t even see yet, and when you fire your shots, they will fly straight and true into the enemy’s skull every single time. On the other side of the coin, you have the manual aiming feature. The game
"Simply put, Pivotal Games should fire whoever the dumb-ass was that came up with this game’s control scheme."
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lets you aim your weapons in a first-person mode, but no matter how well you line up the crosshairs, most times you will miss your target.
When you’re done being frustrated with these problems in the single-player missions, you can share the game with up to three of your friends. Conflict: Vietnam doesn’t come through here either though. The only modes you get in multiplayer are the co-op ones, where all of the game’s problems will only become more evident because of the overly small screens since system link is not provided.
It’s a real shame that Conflict: Vietnam’s gameplay is so mediocre because for the first ten minutes of the game you’re just entranced by everything else. The graphics, for one, are well above-average. The whole scene really conveys the darkness that shrouded the whole Vietnam war, making you feel like you yourself are a young draftee on your way to possibly die in a country you know nothing about. The environments are richly detailed and vibrantly colored, and the character models show almost the same degree of quality (all though they do lag a little behind the environments).
"It’s a real shame that Conflict: Vietnam’s gameplay is so mediocre because for the first ten minutes of the game you’re just entranced by everything else. "
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The sounds that will come through your speakers while playing Conflict: Vietnam will be crisp and realistic. Soldiers talk often amongst each other saying things you’d actually expect young men to say in such a deadly environment, and thus a new level of immersion is realized within the game. To put icing on the cake, Pivotal Games went ahead and licensed many songs from the era, including The Rolling Stones’ "Paint it Black." You’ll hear these tunes on the Army radios strewn about your base camp.
Conflict: Vietnam is exactly the kind of game you would give someone you really hate. Unlike classic crap like the Army Men titles, your prey won’t know that they’ve been screwed over gift wise until they play the game. There, the game’s awesome graphics and audio will draw him in, only to have the game’s flaws present themselves and drive your victim crazy. Conflict: Vietnam should be a rental for only the diehard shooter fans out there. Everyone else should go back to playing Medal of Honor until a deserving Vietnam-inspired title hits store shelves.
