A whole swarm of Vietnam based games have hit the market recently, and if any of them are worth picking up, it sure isn’t this one. Put simply, this game is a disaster. It’s boring, ugly, and the “special” AI of your team brings frustration to a new level. It’s a shame, because deep under all these no-brainer mistakes, there could have been a solid game. We’ll never know, I guess.

Vietcong starts off strong, with a neat little intro filled with clips of various events of the time to the sound of some great 60s tunes. It certainly sets the stage for an exciting Vietnam conflict, but all those initial impressions shatter once the game begins. The game tries to be a squad-based shooter, but your squad is lacking a bit in the AI department. It’s cumbersome to give them commands, and they have a tendency to forget them anyway.

There are typically three other members in your team: the pointman, the medic, and the radioman. The medic and radioman are pretty self explanatory, each one giving access to health and the radio, respectively. The medic will heal you without asking, though, as long as you’re near each other, which can prove problematic in combat because you can’t do much while being healed. The pointman is a good idea in theory, but there are so many problems in his execution.

The idea is that he’ll lead the way, pointing out trip wires and other traps, as well as keeping a lookout for the enemy. The main problem here is that not only is he horribly slow, he’ll often get confused, bumbling around without any real sense of direction. It took just a level or two before I was moving on without my team, scouting on my own, then just waiting around for the three stooges to catch up. This, of course, leads to quite a few trial-and-error deaths, but it’s still faster than waiting for my pointman to show me the way.

Once you’ve found the enemy, the shooting action actually isn’t horrible. It’s just nothing that hasn’t been done, and been done better, in countless other shooters. There’s a good variety of weapons, including a variety of pistols and rifles from the period. The controls are pretty sluggish, especially for movement, but it works well enough for a game this slow. I had a tendency to get stuck on the environment, though. Maybe I was getting stuck on the same objects as my pointman.

Like the combat, the visuals are average at best. The jungles themselves look okay, but aren’t really interactive. There’s a lot of grass for you and the enemy to hide in, but it doesn’t sway with contact. The frame rate is consistent enough, although it does drop at seemingly random times. I do wish the enemy stood out a little more. I realize it’s a Vietnam shooter, and that the enemy should be pretty difficult to see, but there were plenty of times that I’d shoot at rocks because I thought they looked like the enemy.

Those that actually enjoy the game can hop on Xbox Live with up to 9 other players for a variety of modes. The action here is tolerable, but with games like Halo 2 and Ghost Recon 2 on the market, why anyone would spend time playing this is beyond me. Fortunately, the action is relatively lag-free and the game is slightly more fun with friends. There are co-op modes, objective oriented modes and standard deathmatch. I had some trouble finding enough people to play games like Capture the Flag, though. There just aren’t a whole lot of people playing this game. I can’t blame them.



Article By: Joe Mackie