Vietcong

Rating:
Summary: This game rocks....after patch
Review: I rate this game as one of the best FPS games I have ever played neck-to-neck with Deus-Ex, System Shock 2 and Thief. Every action scene you have seen in the movies about Vietnam, you will experience here.

The graphics and sounds are great, and the game's AI is one of the best yet. Enemies will continue relocating, they literally jump away from enemy fire and they will run away if the see a grenade thrown at them. You can also call in mortar and airstrikes, which are way cool.

The effects are great too, Your ears will be howling if a grenade explodes near you, rain is realistic, leaves fall off when you brush by them.

But first you will have to download a 40MB patch to cure those "unkillable enemy" problems. After that, the game is great. One of the early contenders for game of the year.

Rating:
Summary: Nice graphic but somthing doesn't make sense
Review: Overall Vietcong is a good FPS game. The graphic is nice and pretty. I am using Geforce2 GTS 64MB and keep the setting at 1024X768 32 bit and 85 hz. The graphic is too good to describe. Smooth action and cool story. "BUT" something are too stupid and doesn't make any sense. You need to pound at least 10 shot on a Vietcong's head to kill him. It is no way to make one shot one kill. This is impossible. Remember, they can kill you with only one clear shot. What is that? Is this the way make the game harder to play? One more thing. You don't have a flashlight to use in the dark tunnel. You only can light up the neon light and drop on the ground to light up the dark tunnel. After you passed the point, it will be totally dark again. You won't see anything except your cross-hair point. It is stupid. You have to walk in a totally dark tunnel without knowing your direction. It is too frustrated to play that way. At least a flashlight is better. I don't think the real soldier will walk in the dark tunnel without a flashlight. I finished all level and mission in few days and decided to sell the game. Because it is no reason need to play the second time.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Game
Review: A must have for war game lovers, especially Vietnam. Vietcong takes you where no other war game has before. Featuring Vietnam-Era guns like the M-16, the AK-47, M-60, etc. If you are looking for a Vietnam game at an affordable price, then Vietcong is the answer.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but EXTREMELY frustrating
Review: Unfortunately, I can not share the enthusiasm of my fellow reviewers.

The game has a lot of good sides. The graphics are beautiful. Asides from the character interaction with the plants (brushing up to plants or pushing them out of the way), this game features some of the best plant, jungle, and mountain settings I've ever seen in a game. Mission design is also OK, although not great.

THIS GAME HAS ONE BIG PROBLEM THOUGH: Gameplay! I do not consider myself the world's best FPS player, but I also ain't the worst. Normally, I play FPS games on the hardest possible setting. This one, I played on "hard", which is the second hardest setting. And still, I was so frustrated by this game that I decided not to finish it half way through (which is a first for me).

I mean, don't get me wrong: I like that there finally is an FPS game where it is not unrealistically easy for the player to kill the enemy and where the enemy doesn't have an unrealistically hard time to kill the player. But in this game, things are outrageous! It is almost impossible to kill with one shot, while the enemy seems to be able to do that all the time!

To give you an idea of what I am talking about: I am in a scene where I need to enter a tunnel. I have a machine gun, and I already know that there are several vietcong just beyond the tunnel entrance. So I beging to lay down fire, and empty the whole magazine on the 4 of them. And guess what: At least 2 of them survive entirely unharmed every time! And not just that! But they turn against me, run towards me (while I am still firing), pull up their guns to aim (I am still firing), and kill me with a single shot!

After a number of attempts, I finally make it into the tunnel, clear out everything that is in there, and pick up a semi-stationary machine gun. Since I have played through the scene several times already, I know that more VCs will be waiting for me at the tunnel entrance. So I position myself close to the entrance and ready my stationary MG. I hear them talking and come closer, so I begin to fire. The 3 of them run into my fire. I hit them with all head and body shots. A whole amo belt worth of heavy fire. Yet not a single one of them goes down! Instead, one of them raises his gun and kills me with a single shot! And I am even in a prone position and mostly taking cover around the bend of a tunnel!

Give me a break! Vietnam certainly was tough, but I refuse to believe that a VC walks away entirely unharmed after taking 50 or more bullets to the head!

Oh, and what makes things worse is the save-game system, which only allows a small number of saves (around 4, typically) in each level. So you will play through the same stupid situations over and over again.

Also, the team mates are just plain dumb. They are OK when it comes to fighting the VC, but they move around like complete retards. In a game that features a lot of tunnel-fighting, it just isn't OK that your team mates block you from moving back or forth. This happened to me a number of times. All you can do is go back to the previous save-game. Argh!

Thanks, but no thanks! This could have been one awesome game. Technically, it certainly is. But play-balance-wise, someone took a lot of shortcuts. A bit more testing and fine-tuning would have turned this into a 4 or 5 star game. I play a lot of FPS games, and gameplay-wise, this one comes in dead-last!

Rating:
Summary: Essentially, the "Green Berets" of Vietnam games...
Review: ...and I don't mean that in a good way. However, I'm not really here to bash the game, in fact, I enjoyed it thuroughly and that it was a well done piece. It however really avoids any crucial points the Vietnam War really gave during the late 60's and early 70's. Being produced and created by a third-party company, Pterodon Games, it really has a sense of lacking that other games (much to say, 'Medal of Honor: Allied Assault') really give in choice. I actually was very surprised to see that the graphics and lighting of the game were very well done. But the game premisise? That's another thing.

You play Sgt. Steven Hawkins (although in the game, his name is pronouced "Stephor", that's really because his middle name is R.), a young-Clint Eastwood lookalike sent to Camp Nui Pek (an actual base camp, pronouced "Neo-Peck") near the Cambodian boarder of South Vietnam, 1967, less than a few miles from the notorious Ho-Chi Mihn Trail, as a replacement when one of the camp's officers was KIA. You take his place, in the Special Forces there (basically means you don't get to wear those cool helmets, but instead wear a bandana) You start off the game in a Huey helicopter, riding with a fellow soldier named Hornster, a machine-gunner. After a small chat, you arrive in the camp. The camp is strangely shaped very similar to the medical camp in M*A*S*H (although that was Korea) and you then meet your fellow platoon members; P. Defort, a wimpy radioman; Sergeant Joe Crocker, your cliche medic (why do they always wear coke-bottle glasses?);Thomas Bronson, a Black engineer; Hornster is in there; and finally, Sergeant Le Duy Nhut (pronouced "Lee-Day Nut"), a South-Vietnamese pointman that supposively was formally apart of the VietCong (or NVA) in the country's despute with French diplomats and colonists during the French Indochina war of the late 50's. Once meeting the guys, your first mission is a Red-Cross type of delivery of rice to a nearby village. Then chaos errupts when a VC sniper starts picking off fellow villagers and your men. Dispose of him and return back. Simple, right? Not really. It gets pretty tough, dealing with real life warriors instead of monsters from a nuclear disaster or Zombies from an experiment in the mountains.

Unlike MOHAA, your health is very limited, and you're given a small amount of ammunition through the ENTIRE game. Whereas in most FPS games, you're given around 1000 rounds of bullets, but this this game worlds, you're given 20 rounds per clip and only about 4 magazines, depending on the weapon. And if you reload in the middle of the clip, you just lost about 10 valuable rounds and one clip. Sucks right? Not at all. It very fun, actually. As the missions drag on, so does a heck of alot of time. One of the many lows of the game is that the levels drag on for way too long and seem almost like you're not getting anything done. Your second mission has you, Nhut, Crocker and Defort surging through the dense jungles of Vietnam, searching for a village and watching out for ambush attacks. It's a very long level, being that the helicopter drops you off at least 5 miles from the destination point, not including the cliffs, lakes and rivers you have to go through. And to a bizzare extent, your character can't swim at all, so don't think about crossing the pond to get over to the goods, because you'll drowned slowly and painfully. Interesting, to keep very little ambundance with time period, you have to go through around 3 very long missions with dated weaponary (i.e. the M1 Carabine, most popularly used in WWII and Korea, but only used in Vietnam during the very beginning of the conflict, such to say, 1962?) before you can advance to more modern (or cliche) Vietnam War weapons, like the M-16, AK-47 or M-60. But it's certainly worth some of the wait.

The game's atmosphere and level design are very highly influnced by practically very single Vietnam War film ever done; Looking at the canopy top of the second mission reaminded me so much of "Platoon", that I was waiting to hear 'Adagio for Strings' by Samuel Barber star playing. One level where you rescue a captured pilot from an NVA camp is remesicent to the imfamous Russian-Roulette scene from "The Deer Hunter". Your Boot-Camp officer in basic training is a carbon-copy of R. Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket". You charge a muddy hill, much like in "Humburger Hill", and then in TWO levels in the game, you search through VC tunnels as a 'tunnel-rat', much like in the underrated war film, "Casualties of War". However, the movie homages get pretty corny sometimes, much like in the beginning of a level with half a dozen Huey helicopters flying to a mission, yours is shot down and spins out of control onto the ground, while someone over the radio says "We got a bird down, we got a bird down!", always laughable beginning totally without a doubt inspired by "Black Hawk Down". Probably one of the coolest levels is when you're inserted into a base camp on top of a hill in Cambodia, while pouring rain, trying to defend the camp from being overrun by the North-Vietnamese Army (NVA), which it eventually does and you escape just in the nick of time.

"Vietcong", in no doubt, is a great game and like most great games, it has it's flaws. It pretty much represents the Vietnam war in a light toned maner that what most people saw it. In the game, no anit-war statement is made (as if hippies didn't ever exist!) and no drugs like LSD or Marijuana are used by fellow soldiers unlike the real soldiers did. There's almost no strong profanity (aside from Bullsh*t) and the racial slurs are replaced by political indentities (instead of bigot hard-ridden soldiers calling Vietnamese "Gooks" or "Dinks", the strong lashing towards them is calling them "Communist Pigs" or "Commies". It's really quite funny) Aside from politics in the game given a heavy dose of Political Correctness, I recommend either buying it or borrowing it from a friend. It makes a great time passerby. That is, if you have A LOT of time! ;-)

Rating:
Summary: vietcong
Review: this game is defantally very fun. from picking from the wide sellection of weapons to the freedom around ur fort. this game was thought out well. it is also very challanging. although it has one flaw so far. on the mission i am on u have to go down into thesse tunnels. it is pitch black. with only 8 flares to start. u begin to get lost very easily. i am stuck. and it can get irratating. but dont let dat desive you. this is a very good game. i reccomend it to som1 who wants to play a realistic action war game.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT CONCEPT..BUT POOR PRODUCTON VALUES...EXTREMELY BUGGY
Review: I had high hopes for this game when it first came out. I am a long time experienced gamer who is thoroughly grounded in hardware/software technology as well as gaming technology. However, except for my system specs, I will stay as far away from any technical descriptions in deferrence to the casual gamer who makes up the majority of purchasers of Amazon's PC gaming category.

First off, allow me to state that I have a fairly powerful gaming system. It is a Falcon Mach V and ANYONE who is familiar with gaming knows that Falcon is the premier manufacturer of gaming computers with Alienware coming in right on their heels.

My system specs are as follows:
1.) WinWP Home w/SP1 installed
2.) DirectX v9.0
3.) Twin IBM Deskstar 60 GB in RAID +0 array
4.) Nvidia GeForce Ti 4600 w/ 128MB DDR
5.) Creative Platinum Audigy
6.) Klipsch Pro-Media 5:1
7.) Sony 24" GDM-F-900 high end graphics monitor
8.) U.S.Robotics 56K v.92 external modem
9.) Toshiba CDRW/DVD ROM
10.) PlexWriter 24/10/40A
11.) current with all applicable drivers, game upates, and patches.

OK, so I go to play this game and right off the top I start experiencing system crashing, screen freezing, game hanging, significant sound issues, and serious lag issues. All of these right from the start!! Right away I reset ALL of the variables to their absolute LOWEST options, including screen resolution. When this failed to have any noticable effect, I went and retrieved the latest game patch for Vietcong and installed that. This had no effect either. I next tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the game and that also did nothing! By this time I was getting quite exasperated and frustrated as anyone would be who has just shelled out a sizable amount of money to Amazon for a long anticipated title and then comes to find out that it is unplayable on their system. I know my system isn't faulty because it can play all of the latest titles wihout so much as a hiccup!!

So I then do next what all experienced gamers would. I head straight for the technical bulletin boards of the publisher. I went to the publisher's bulletin board where I encountered an abnormally high amount of postings all complaining of the exact, or similar, problems as I; crashing, hanging, lag, sound issues, etc.

I tried all of the half-baked fixes that were offered (some of them are entirely laughable...as if chopping off the head of a chicken, spitting twice on the ground and throwin salt over your rig is going to do anything, haha!). The best I have as an option is to follow the progress of the boards and hope that some type of solution presents itself somewhere down the line.

I must mention that I have written to the tech support email address supplied by the game's publisher three or four times now and I have as yet to hear so much as a peep from them. It has been over four weeks since I have written to them BEGGING for help. I even tried writing to them through their on-line support and I still have not received even an courtesy acknowledment from them. You would think that that would be common sense basic customer service, right?

Like so many games coming out in the past year, this one seems to have been thoroughly rushed from A to Z and not completely tested and had ALL the bugs worked out. In all fairness, I must report that I did recognize a discernable pattern forming while reading the posts on the bulletin boards; that those players who were using Win98Se systems with medium end componentry were experiecing far less problems than those with WinXP operating systems using high end componentry. I have seen this pattern appear in other games recently released, but in all of those instances, the publisher was able to quickly address the complaints of their gaming customers and come up with solutions. This publisher doesn't seem to even care and that is a warning sign and a very poor precedent.

From what I was able to see before all of the difficulties started for me, the game looked luscious in it's graphics. I have a strong feeling this gme had the potenetial to be 100% prime escapist entertainment...a primo way to waste away a good Saturday afternoon. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to get lost in this game.

So what I am saying to you is this: BE FOREWARNED!!! For those of you with high end systems, do yourself a favor and go to the publisher's bulletin board, select "technical", and read all of the postings. See if any of it applies to you or if any of those folks posting complaining of strong issues have systems similar, or comparable, to yours. That way you may save yourself all the heartache and frustration, not to mention the significant amount of money that gets flushed down the toilet going straight into the septic tank that is this publisher's bank accounts. If you have a low end or an older system using Win98Se, it would still be a good idea to investigate a little further, but all in all and in due consideration, it seems that you will be far less likely to experience the problems that are curently plaguing those of us who are using higher end gaming systems. It looks like you fellas are finally getting some revenge against those of us with higher end rigs.

Rating:
Summary: CHARLIE DOES SURF!!!
Review: Well, what more is there to say, this has to be one of the most enjoyable and exciting FPS games based in a war setting. Being the type of person who enjoys FPS games based around real conflict I have immensley enjoyed games like Medal of Honour and such, I used to think Allied Assault was the best wartime shooter but I think Vietcong has snatched that throne now. The boys at Pterodon have really done a great job with this one it is obvious that they have done their homework as to the environment and feel of the war, and the times. The oppresiveness, fear and disorientation of the jungle has been captured perfectly, with expansive and detailed environments.

The singleplayer is excellent, the first thing which really jumped out and grabbed me about VC was the realism of the combat, I have exeperienced some of the most intense firefights ever in an FPS with this little gem. There is none of the run and gun Quake style fighting here, it is ass in the grass realistic fighting. Moving from cover to cover, hearing the VC shouting commands at each other and moving onto your flank while you and your squad desperately try to fight your way out of the killing ground you have suddenly found yourselves in.

The gameplay itself has a swag of very nice features;

- The system of command over your teammates is both functional and quick to use, plus easily mastered quickly which helps you get right into the game.

- A comprehensive weapon line up including;

VC
AK-47, SKS Siminov, SVD Dragunov and Mosin Nagant 91/30 sniper rifles, Degtarev MG, PPSH-41 and 43 SMG's, Bazikahal double barrel shotgun.

US
M-16, M1 Carbine, M1 Garand and Winchester 70 sniper rifles, M60 MG, Thompson and M3A1 SMG's, Remington 80 shotgun, M79 grenade launcher (singleplayer only).

- The use of iron sights for aiming, it is so refreshing to have a game where you actually have to aim with your sights.

- The system of interchanging your weapon with that of a dead VC as well as searching him for ammo and intel is quite a unique feature which really adds to the realism of the game.

The missions themselves are entertaining and varied, although the voice acting of your teammates is a bit cheesy I still like the way that the terms and language used by the troops in Vietnam was recreated in the game. Living in Australia I got the uncensored version (I feel sorry for all the US players who are victims of unfair censorship). Now I have the joy of being surrounded by a group of realistically foul mouthed soldiers, plus having some nice blood and gore effects which aren't over the top like many other games. My only complaint with the single player would be that there aren't enough damn missions!

Now for the life and soul of the contemporary first person shooter these days... multiplayer. All I can say is wow, this game sure is addictive! This game's environments and features like iron sights really combine to make quite a unique multiplayer experience. The gameplay is like no other FPS online, hiding, caution and teamwork trully pay high divends in VC, trying do run and gun will do nothing but get you wasted very quickly. It also has a class based system with Soldiers, Machinegunners, Snipers, Sapper/Engineers (and yes they can lay booby traps hehehe), Medics and Radiomen who call in air and mortar strikes.

Multiplay also contains a lot modes, there is;

Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag - Need I explain these?

Assault Team Game - This is different for each map, ranges from completing an objective like 'Kill the US Pilot' while he is armed with only a pistol and the US side have to defend him, to simple search and destroy the enemy. In this mode you can't respawn.

Real War - There are a certain number of control points on the map and your team has to capture them all to win.

Last Man Standing - Exactly like deathmatch with no respawning, the last man standing at the end of a round respawns next round with extra health and an M60, everyone else only gets a pistol.

Coop - This is one of the unique features of Vietcong, all players are on the US side and they have to go through and clear a map full of AI generated VC, it's great fun to get together with friends (or clan mates) using a voice communication proggy and fight an intense battle.

The only real shortcomings of the multiplayer are the relatively small number of maps, and some curious lag anomalies.

There's been a lot of bad reviews over bugs, PC Gamer gave 'Line of Sight: Vietnam' a higher score than Vietcong. Do not take this as gospel and go buy LoS: Vietnam instead of VC, VC is a much better game, and personally I don't know what the hell the PC Gamer guys were smoking when they pulled this one. The fact is that Vietcong was extremely buggy upon release and had immense framerate problems due to poorly implemented Securom disk protection on the CD's and it still does have technical issues. But a lot of these bugs were addressed within weeks by the 1.01 patch, if you live outside the US and buy the game it is already patched to 1.01. Now there is patch 1.02 on the horizon which looks to deliver new skins, maps, weapons and fix a lot of the bugs.

All in all I think Vietcong delivers a solid offering of both single and multiplayer action. It is a fresh, unique and promising game, although not forgiving to the lower end systems, I have a machine double the recommended specs and it just runs the game comfortably. I'd advise all fans of FPS games to look into it, especially those tiring of the mundane run and gun formula...

Rating:
Summary: Minimum specs requirements NOT accurate
Review: Forget running this on anything near the minimum requirements as listed on the box. I had this running on an XP system, 1500 mhz with a 32 meg graphics card and it STINKS. 64 meg would appear to be the minimum graphics card. Otherwise it's jerky movement and LOTS of slowdown. Consoles with FAR less CPU strength run better looking games than this. What a let down.

Rating:
Summary: Vietnam in your computer
Review: I went into this feeling skeptical. However, curiosity overcame all doubts, and I downloaded the demo and began playing. THIS GAME JUST BLEW ME AWAY! I've played my fair share of FPS games, and own quite a few; but this has to be one of the best looking, and funnest (<-This should be a word if it isn't) games I've ever seen. I really felt like I was there, fighting the VietCong in the lush yet deadly Vietnamese jungle. From what I've played of this game, I can tell that the makers really did their homework and put a lot of time and effort into this game. Granted that their are some annoying little quirks the game has, all-in-all this game definitely scores high on my personal lists of favorites. This is arguably as addicting for the PC as HALO is for the X-Box. I'm definitely going to have to go buy this game.