A decent jungle fighting game

Vietcong features an involved but well-structured single-player campaign.

Vietcong
www.vietcong-game.com
Developer: Pterodon www.pterodon.cz and Illusion Softworks www.illusionsoftworks.com/
Publisher: Gathering of Developers www.gatheringofdevelopers.com/

I have grown to approach Vietnam-themed games with a fair degree of caution following some pretty miserable gaming experiences in the past few years.

In fact, the last truly decent gaming experience set in the virtual South-East Asian jungles I had was in the early to mid-’90s through a fantastic shooter from Origin called SEAL Team. Pretty much everything since then has been … well, woeful really.

This isn’t just my experience. Countless words appear across the Web lamenting that the Vietnamese jungle seems to be either a definite no-go zone for developers (Strike Fighters Project One for instance) or a way to cash in on some redundant movie dollars (Platoon anyone?).

The Czech crew behind Vietcong has done well to learn from the folly of those before them. They’ve managed to take everything players love from recent FPS or team-shooters and weave it into the Karst mountains and primary jungle of Cambodian border region of Vietnam.

Vietcong is similar to Operation Flashpoint in many respects. It has an involved but well-structured single-player campaign as its centrepiece but can equally hold its own in a multi-play arena.

The player takes on the persona of SFC Steve Hawkins, a member of a US Special Forces A-Team operating out of a remote jungle base at Nui Pek. SFC Hawkins is joined by five other Americans, a unit of South Vietnamese Special Forces and the all-important Montagnards. He manages to see more action in his 20 missions than most Australian battalions saw throughout multiple tours.

Nui Pek is obviously the centre for operations and it is here SFC Hawkins can delve into some of the amazing details included within the game, such as the US Army’s Lessons Learned documents, historical data on the war in Pleiku province and even personnel folders on each of the virtual soldiers supporting the player.

The single-player missions are scripted but, like Operation Flashpoint, occur on such huge maps that a player is presented with an amazing amount of tactical freedom.

Tight jungle trails open out into expansive rice paddies with small villages and then close back in between jagged limestone formations. Each map is very detailed and quite impressive to play on.

They also make great multi-play maps for large team games (Telstra has a dedicated server) although just recently a large amount of cheaters using scripts have started to ruin the experience. There are also a couple of Aussie clans if you are looking for a regular session.

On the AI side the developers have also gone into some detail. Different classes of enemy behave differently while the player’s team mates have the typical gung-ho attitude popularised by recent Hollywood productions.

It’s funny but I soon wanted to be able to tell my AI team mate to shut the hell up as they had a comment for every aspect of the patrol.

Find a booby trap and they’d start jabbering, get in a contact and they run forward swearing their heads off (the swearing can be toned down if required), prop to use the binos and they’d be whining about what was going on. I was nearly ready to shoot them myself on some occasions. Americans may love it but it definitely doesn’t fit in with the Australian ethos of jungle fighting.

Aside from that and some pathfinding issues, Vietcong is very polished and is a worthy successor to the title held by SEAL Team. At the time of writing, Patch 1.3 had been released and this has fixed many of the early issues with the game. However, a lot of people are still having problems getting it to launch (myself included until I changed sound cards) so download the latest version of the demo first to see if you will have a problem.

The game has a MA15+ rating in Australia (R18+ everywhere else), so be warned that it’s not for kids. The publishers recommend a system with a 700+ MHz PIII or Athlon processor, 256+MB RAM, 1.8GB HDD space and 32MB 3D video card.

Midtown Madness 3.

Win the game

We have a copy of Vietcong (PC) and Midtown Madness 3 (XBox) up for grabs this edition. Entries should be e-mailed to ADFgamesmen@telstra.com with the name of the game you would like to win in the subject line. Only one entry a person please as subsequent entries will be discarded. Include your full name and mailing address in the e-mail or your entry won’t be accepted. Congratulations to our recent Return to Castle Wolfenstein winners: Air Force – SQNLDR R Madsen, LAC P Davis, LAC N Cairnduff, D Cummings; Navy – LEUT M Schurmann, AB R Broderson, P Herbert, S Tymes; Army – SPR J Boeyen, N Skog, M Dunn, J Berry. The Hearts of Iron winner is A Dury.

Without a full driving set-up such as those found on modern arcade machines I just can’t seem to drive a virtual car as well as the real thing.

Even with a wheel and pedals, the lack of G-forces, bumps and jolts make the visual elements too detached for me to remain in control. For this reason I don’t really enjoy serious PC or console car racing games.

However, Midtown Madness 3 is anything but serious. This now long-running Microsoft title is, for me, the perfect consoled driving experience.

In typical Microsoft fashion I can’t hurt anyone (no matter how hard I tried to run over some annoying Frenchmen and equally annoying Americans), my car is expected to bounce off everything to get around the course, and I realised just how unrealistic it was when on my third delivery task a crazy women was chasing me through Paris in a prime mover.

Starting off in a European mini car (or a big old Yank tank) and progressing through deliveries to unlock more missions, cars and other bonuses is the aim of the game. The AI seemed to make all the same mistakes I was making but most missions took several frustrating attempts before I could beat them … one mistimed corner is enough to have a player bring up the rear.

While the game side of Midtown Madness 3 is fun, I soon realised the best part of the game is to go split screen with another player, load up the Paris map, grab a couple of Audis (or Minis) to recreate that great chase scene from Ronin. It is something I keep coming back to watching the reactions of the other drivers as I hurtle down their side of the freeway at more than 300km/h with a mate in close pursuit.

It is a great family game and for those of you considering XBox Live this is another title that should be fun in a wider multi-play setting.

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