Sequel ultimately disappointing
Vietcong 2
PC

Vietcong 2: Disappoints with numerous glitches and hang-ups.

The game: This sequel, an immersive FPS developed by Pterodon, gets back to the jungle almost exactly where its predecessor left off. The story centres around the fighting in and around the city of Hue in the days leading up to and after the infamous Tet Offensive of 1968.

The play: Actually boasts two campaigns, and you can play from either the perspective of a US officer or a Vietcong guerrilla. The VC campaign is a fraction of the length of the US campaign.

In addition to the campaigns, you still have the ability to play any completed single-player mission in quick play against a host of enemies, and there’s also a multiplayer function.

You start the game in a brothel before you travel to HQ to be assigned – this is straightforward and lets you chat to your fellow soldiers. Once the action starts, it drops the talking and exploring, transitioning to a straightforward shooter where you and your squad must battle the Vietcong.

The US campaign actually has a nice twist about midway through that serves as the introduction to the VC campaign. Though in the end, it’s something of a disappointment. The VC campaign is so short it can’t really be considered a campaign.

If you’re an FPS veteran you’re used to running around in the open, blasting guys and then picking up health packs before repeating the process again. That’s something you can’t do in Vietcong 2. While there are health packs to be found, Vietcong 2 is also a game where you must use cover at all times if you want to survive, because the combat can be downright brutal.

Your own team-mates are a mixed bag in terms of intelligence. They do crazy things, like rushing forward into the open or constantly getting in your line of fire. The terrain: The game suffered from all sorts of performance issues. On a high-end machine, it went through countless stutters and hitches, and that’s even after sliding the visual and physics options down to the middle settings. This is unacceptable in a shooter, particularly one where you can’t afford to make a mistake.

The settings had to be toned down quite a bit to get the game to run without a hitch. From a visual perspective, the graphics are decent, but they’re also dated – the animations are downright clunky at times.

The experience: Ultimately, Vietcong 2 is a game that doesn’t improve too much on its predecessor. It suffers from numerous flaws.

– Sqn-Ldr Nick Hogann

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