Vietnam from a Czech point of view

By Martin Kingsley

Aaah, the sniper rifle. Part of any healthy FPS diet

Oliver Stone's Platoon, and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (forgive the name dropping at such an early stage, folks, but I have to earn those commissions somehow) provided, at their time of production (1986 and 1987, respectively), some of the strongest anti-war messages ever seen on film.

No such sentiments are to be found in Czech developer Pterodon Team's gritty Vietnam-based FPS, Vietcong, although, as an experience, Vietcong comes up almost on par for immersion with the two above-mentioned films.

Indeed, the tutorial (cleverly disguised as a Marine Boot Camp) brings back memories of the first half of Full Metal Jacket, specifically Sergeant Hartman and his hard-ass attitude.

In the single-player Campaign, you are Sergeant First Class Steve Hawkins, Intelligence Officer for a Special Forces unit stationed at Nui Pek.

It doesn't take long for you to make yourself at home, and only slightly longer to be put in command of a team, made up of a radio operator, a point-man, a medic and, on occasion, an engineer and a machine-gunner.

In the war against both the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong (VC), you will cover hundreds of kilometres, with mission objectives as diverse as protecting a friendly outpost, to rescuing an American POW from VC forces in the dark of night, to fending off a siege against a radio outpost on the Cambodian border.

From cramped, claustrophobic VC tunnels to ancient ruins and humid, rainy swamps, Vietcong, for the most part, keeps you constantly involved and, above all, immersed.

In the single player camp, apart from the cool Campaign mode, there are Single Missions (read: Campaign missions as separate scenarios with selectable settings e.g number of enemies) and Quick Missions, which are unlocked as you progress through the game.

While there are less than 10 of these Quick Missions, they do make a fun alternative to the story-driven Campaign, if you just want to run around with a machinegun and shoot shit up for the fun of it.

The rickety bridge. To cross, or not to cross....

On the multiplayer side of the fence, you can engage in LAN-based frenzies or Internet skirmishes, and, despite some heavy levels of detail, everything seems to run pretty smoothly, even on a lowly dial-up connection.

Things are generally standard over here, so not much in the way of elaboration should really be needed, should it?

As a war-based FPS, the first thing you'd notice would be the weapons, of which there are just under 30 to play with, including such classics as the Thompson .45 carbine, the M1 Garand carbine and the 'light support weapon' of the United States Army, the M60 machinegun.

Other examples of Vietcong's armoury are the Winchester 70 hunting rifle (gotta love that bolt-action!), the M16 assault rifle, the Remington 870 pump-action 12 gauge and, of course, the impressive M79 snap-loading grenade launcher.

You also get five different types of sidearm, a combat knife that looks more like a machete, two types of grenade, and a lot more. Very impressive.

Also impressive on the weaponry side of things is the way that all the firearms can be fired from the hip, but they can also be brought up to eye height and lined up by the manual sights, which adds a certain something to the proceedings, especially when you see that convoy of VC down in the valley and want to try out for some headshots and get some melon-popping practice in with that Winchester.

The addition of eye-level sighting comes into play in a more significant role when you also consider the ability to both crouch and go prone, especially when behind cover, as the eye-level sighting raises you up a little bit and you can generally trade fire over whatever it is you're hiding behind without risking life and limb in the process.

On an aural scale of 1 to 10, Vietcong gets an 11 for sheer perfection. From the sound of rounds whistling past your ears in the middle of dense forest to the dull thud as said rounds impact with the dirt (and the ricochet) brings tear to my eyes every time I hear it.

"I saw something move, Sarge."

The chatter of automatic weapon fire and the rustle of leaves, the hum of exotic bugs and the screech of monkeys, every single sound can be said to be, at the very least, on a level with any big-budget feature film you might care to name, Saving Private Ryan included.

The music only helps to nail this observation down, with a groovy and really quite cool selection of 60's and 70's tunes on display.

Visually, Vietcong can be considered a hotchpotch, with highly-detailed character models that are meticulously constructed down to the point where you can see the whites of their eyes, and some very nice textures and weapon models.

Unfortunately, the foliage that makes up the majority of the outdoor scenes that in turn make up a majority of the game are pretty low quality.

Furthremore, there are two particular things apart from the foliage that let down Vietcong, namely the sometimes-inane AI and the tendency for Vietcong to read off the CD-ROM way way too much. Let's deal with the AI issue first, shall we?

Generally, the squad AI isn't too bad, and they can carry on with a fire-fight without you having to worry about becoming a casualty of friendly fire.

However, they have definite problems with path finding and with situations involving tight groups. For instance, should you manage to get into an enemy trench, then your loyal if somewhat stupid comrades will jump in with you.

However, unlike you, they seem to lack the necessary motor skills to get back out of said trench.

Same thing applies to tunnels, which is probably why, for the larger tunnel missions, Pterodon have set up the scripts so that you have to go in by yourself.

However, unlike several other games that shall remain nameless (*choke* Line of Sight Vietnam), both the enemy and allied AIs know how to take cover, and are good at jumping, ducking, weaving and diving in and out of the line of fire with great dexterity. So it's not all bad.

"We need a medivac, two humvees and some explosions!"

Now, the problem with Vietcong, as far as hardware goes, is that:

A) It attempts to auto-detect your system and does a lousy job; and
B) As stated two paragraphs above, it reads off the CD drive too damn much!

Now, the second problem can be worked around via the application of a No-CD crack (not that we at GameBlitz approve of such things *gasp*), reason being that the reading of the CD, or over-reading as the case may be, is only in place as a kind of copy-protection, in that the files that Vietcong reads off the CD are already installed on the hard drive, hence why the No-CD crack works in the first place.

The first problem, however, is really a nutty one to crack, so to speak. Again, it can be worked around, but it generally requires a lot of patience, and I don't get paid enough to go into detail about said problem here.

Suffice to say…Vietcong needs a patch. Not particularly urgently, but it still needs a patch.

A Vietnam-based shooter with a story to tell and a cool way of telling it, a decent engine and some amazing scenarios drenched in enough ambience to make David Fincher self-consciously flinch, Vietcong is good. Very good.

You would do well to put it down on your "To Buy" list, but wait for the patch, yeah?

Game: Vietcong
System: PC
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Gathering of Developers (GoD)

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explantion)

Vietcong is on the shelves now.