The Vietnam War era was a turbulent time for America.  Doubts about justified American presence in Southeast Asia divided the country in two as thousands of soldiers were shipped off to fight an unknown enemy in unfamiliar territory, many of them returning in body bags, wheelchairs, or in a veil of mental illness.  Having been born when the last servicemen left Vietnam, many of my perceptions of the Vietnam War come from movies, shaky news footage, and interviews with veterans.  Obviously, I’ve never heard anyone say the Vietnam War was fun.  Vietcong: Purple Haze, the first in a line of Vietnam War video games invading consoles this holiday season, unfortunately does this perception justice – it simply is not fun.  In fact, if ‘War is Hell’, then Vietcong: Purple Haze is Hell with a pounding hangover on a bad hair day.

How’s this for a recipe for disaster?  Vietcong: Purple Haze is one of the first titles in an army of Vietnam War games (Shellshock: ‘Nam ’67 was also recently released to mediocre reviews) AND it’s a PC port.  These are two red flags that every gamer should look for before being suckered into parting with fifty bucks.  The first games to be released in genres are rarely good, often being hurried out to beat competition for those who can’t wait.  PC ports start off on the PC for a reason – they just don’t work on consoles.  These general warnings prove all to true with Veitcong: Purple Haze. 

The introduction to the game showed promise.  Starting off with stock news footage of the war and the problems back home in America, The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, and narration that could have been lifted straight from Full Metal Jacket or Platoon, the game introduction really got me worked up for a true war experience.  Sadly, Vietcong never quite lives up to the teaser.

The single-player campaign sees the playable Sergeant on various missions with a squad of five or six soldiers, each with different responsibilities, including a medic, machine gunner, radioman, and pointman.  Each mission has a rather dull objective of “check out this crash” or “go pick up this piece of paper” (pardon me - ‘Intelligence’) but nothing really spicy.  There’s plenty of walking in this game, particularly if you follow the pointman.  The pointman is a Vietnamese guide who leads the squad and navigates the jungle looking out for traps and enemies. He walks painfully slow, keeping the action as intense as a poetry reading.  Not only does he amble along in geriatric fashion, but sometimes he seems to geriatrically forget his orders as well, stopping for no reason.  Did he find a trap?  Are there enemies ahead?  No, apparently he just needs a prescription for Ritalin.  It is possible to lead the group yourself, but running ahead in an attempt to turn Vietcong into a run n’ gun game ends up with a detonated tripwire and death, leaving the gamer with no choice but to walk behind the guide.

“Try finding a tripwire in this…”

Soldiers can crouch, go prone, lean, and jump, but the shoddy enemy AI doesn’t necessitate any of this.  When enemies do finally appear, it’s only a matter of time before they’re mowed down by the gamer’s hand.  On the default level, it’s really a matter of point and shoot and move on to the next guy.  Having the medic on hand makes things a little too easy.  He’ll bandage you up even when you’re still engaged, and apparently these bandages could completely heal bulletholes… ahh good old 1960’s medical technology.

Once the objective is completed, the next mission opens up and a few new weapons are available.  There really isn’t as much noticeable difference between guns as there is in the Tom Clancy games, so changing guns seems like more of an aesthetic decision than functional decision.  There’s a bit of a clumsy grenade option in Vietcong.  To change weapons gamers must hold down the X button and cycle through a menu to choose a new weapon.  It is not very effective or user-friendly during a firefight and usually ends up with the player needing some more of those super bandages. 

The AI in the game is pretty much the worst I’ve seen since those toy wind-up Godzilla dolls that shoot sparks out of their mouths.  Even Robotron had a better AI than Vietcong.  Soldiers will pile up against each other, spinning around to find a way out of the cluster.  It’s simultaneously pathetic and comical to watch the soldiers turn about, duck, and jump (yes – when the soldiers get stuck they jump straight up and down).  The pointman, as stated before, is pretty bad at being a leader, often stopping to gather his thoughts before moving another five feet.  I’ve even seen the guy do a circle… a CIRCLE!  The over eager medic jumps at the chance to heal up the player, administering a full medical examination at the first scratch.  It’s like the Keystone Kops in Vietnam. 

“Sarge… we’re stuck again… should we jump?”

The Xbox Live portion is really the only saving grace of the game, and even that mode isn’t that good.  The game plays like a poor man’s Ghost Recon, and when I say poor I mean food stamps, welfare, cardboard box type of poor.  There are five different modes of online play including Deathmatch (and Team Deathmatch), Assault (objective based team game), Capture the Flag, Real War (like Domination – controlling checkpoints), and Cooperative mode.  The online play is just like that of the single-player campaign, without the atrocious AI. 

Most of the game takes place in the jungle, which does a pretty good job in concealing the enemy and inducing a bit of claustrophobia.  The dark backdrops are filled with trees, ferns, and fallen logs, and really makes navigation tricky, particularly when looking for the incredibly annoying traps… words cannot express how utterly excruciating the traps are.  The landscape graphics really aren’t that bad, they’re just a bit boring.  It’s the animation (spurred by bad AI) that makes the game play way too robotic. 

The sounds pretty much nosedives after the intro song from The Stooges.  In game dialogue gets as clever as “Take us to the enemy, but be careful” and “F*#k You!”  Get used to listening to the same dialogue over and over in the jungle, and grab a tub of popcorn for the dialogue in the tutorial from the drill sergeant.  It’s so painfully awful and unnecessarily filled with expletives that it’s entertaining in that “Plan Nine from Outer Space” sort of way, so bad it’s good. 

Vietcong: Purple Haze is a mediocre game at best.  It’s biggest obstacle is the AI, but everything else is done without frills or any life.  It’s not that the game sucks, it just isn’t worth playing because it lacks any sort of fun.  Wait for the other war games to come out and let this one get killed in the frontlines. 

Gameplay: 4.7

The gameplay really doesn’t dazzle, and with several other fantastic FPS games out there, it’s a wonder the developers let this one go in this condition.  Vietcong: Purple Haze is flat as a board.

Graphics: 7.5

The graphics do a pretty good job of simulating the jungle experience, covering enemies and traps very well.  But past that, detail is a bit scarce.

Sound: 5.0

The weapons all sound a bit tinny, and the dialogue was apparently written by a fourth-grader.  Boring, uncreative, and silly, the in game dialogue is too simple.  Points for a few rocking licensed tracks, though.

Difficulty: Easy

The hardest part of playing this game is resisting the temptation to throw the disc out the window. 

Concept: 4.7

A PC-port with two exclusive missions doesn’t exactly make for groundbreaking originality. 

Multiplayer: 7.0

Can be fun… fans of simpler online shooters like Counterstrike (for the Xbox) or Return to Castle Wolfenstein may be able to stomach this.  Fans of Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six should be permitted within 50 yards of Vietcong: Purple Haze.

Overall: 5.0

While the game does have its fans and some decent points, its glaring weaknesses overpower everything else.  Like the war it depicts, Vietcong: Purple Haze probably never should have happened.