Conflict: Vietnam

Sound off, soldiers, it’s that time again.  That’s right, it’s time to head back into the steamy jungles of Vietnam to fight off the Communist threat and to liberate these kind folks from the Northern Vietnamese forces that put the French army to shame.  I won’t lie to you; we’ve been down this path before when you were feeling a little Shellshock and your vision a little blurry from all that Purple Haze but this time it’s different.  This time it’s Conflict: Vietnam, a different tour into the jungles.  You’re not alone, though.  You have friends and they’ll watch your back but does this necessarily mean you’ll come out of this experience feeling satisfied?  I suggest you read this report then, soldier, it might just fill you in on what you need to know.

Set during the Tet Offense, one of this war’s bloodiest years, you start the game as a fresh-off-the-transport-carrier named Private Harold Kahler (affectionately better known as Cherry since that’s what they call all the fresh meat that arrive).  Cherry is treated like a nobody around the base camp and he’s even forced to run a few errands around the base.  Forget that he’s a Medical Corpsman, Cherry is just a small fish among a pool of combat hardened sharks.  Yet all that changes the second Cherry and his three other squad mates are sent out on patrol and thus into a tour fraught with danger, death and lots of combat.

Conflict: Vietnam plays a lot like Conflict: Desert Storm, which (right off that bat) makes this different from Vietcong: Purple Haze and Shellshock: Nam ‘67.  For starters, you can take control of the three other members of your squad who all possess their own combat specialty.  Junior is the group’s sniper while Hoss is the heavy machine gunner of the group.  You’ll even have a Sergeant with a fondness for his grease gun and, of course, Cherry is the group’s medic and rifleman.  Put together you have a squad that is able to be used the way the player sees fit to use so strategy plays a major role in this game. 

The jungles you’ll be patrolling are breathing with life and you’ll feel the tension as you move along a beaten path.  Foliage will move from birds taking flight and this will give you a sense that something could pop out at any moment.  Conflict: Vietnam is good at setting the mood and it does so masterfully here.  The terrain is unpredictable and you’ll find a number of traps scattered throughout.  You’ll come across enemy snipers hidden in the bush and villages that are forced into hiding the enemy.  And there will be plenty of moments where you will be faced with some pretty brutally graphic scripted moments that will seem familiar to anyone who has seen a Vietnam-themed film.  It’s some pretty startling stuff but it all falls under the context of reality and, for the most part, it works like gangbusters.

You’ll also see a lot of combat and while you can rush into a spot with guns blazing and grenades at the ready, this game realistically calls for strategy and the effective handling of each soldier’s skills.  It’s wise to use Hoss to provide covering fire since he has a heavy machine gun but if you’re looking for the element of surprise; Junior’s sniper rifle is able to kill a man with a single shot.  Switching squad mates on the fly is fantastic and works so much more effectively than issuing commands to your entire squad.  The command list is limited to the usual assortment such as Hold Fire, Fire-At-Will, Hold Position and On Me.  Each command is followed just as smoothly as in Full Spectrum Warrior but the control scheme is so complex that you’ll often be issuing the wrong orders.  I once accidentally had my squad open fire on civilians after one civilian panicked flashed a gun when my intention was to have them Hold Fire.

Another irksome feature is the automatic targeting system.  The crosshairs are good at spotting the enemy since it quickly follows their movement, but this also makes hitting the target a tad harder.  At one point I unloaded an entire clip on one VC and missed him completely.  Luckily there’s a first-person perspective that allows you to do the targeting yourself otherwise you’ll be spending a lot of ammo on a single enemy.  This flaw alone will make for some frustrating battles, even more so due to the fact that the enemy AI in Conflict: Vietnam is intelligent enough to pose a real threat.  You won’t find many moments where the enemy will rush right at you (although there are moments when they do).  Mainly they’ll take cover and react to grenades you toss in their general direction.

Joining the collection of flaws is the medical treatment Cherry and his squad mates administer when a soldier is shot down.  You’ll have two minutes to patch up fallen comrades before they die.  Their name will flash red and the health meter will drop until you heal him but doing so isn’t as easy as it sound when you’re sending a buddy to patch up your fallen squad mate.  Thankfully you can upgrade their skills and attributes RPG-style and thus making them more efficient stealthy killers that don’t draw too much attention from the enemy. 

The second best part about this game is that you can take control of vehicles such as jeeps, tanks, trucks, a riverboat and even a Huey helicopter.  You can go behind the wheel and drive the vehicle or then again you can man the gun while a computer-controlled squad mates drives or, if you’re on a jeep, ride shotgun while firing off your, well, shotgun.  And lastly, you can play the game with up to three other players taking the role of your squad mates.  That’s four players out in the field . . . it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Visually, Conflict: Vietnam is something of an eyesore.  The characters are rendered well enough but up close their faces just look way too odd to ignore.  There are also some pretty nasty clipping problems and many times dead enemies will look as if they’ve been half buried in the ground.  As far as the environments are concerned, they’re what we all dreamed the environments in a Nam game would look like.  There’s movement everywhere and the flora and fauna just seem to come to life.  Then again there is a certain plainness to certain spots.  Yet it’s the visual effects of explosions and gunfire that do the trick in bringing the war to life.

Okay, while the game isn’t very pretty, the sound will just drag you in and fill your senses with the sounds of Vietnam and the hell that is war.  Every grunt in your squad and in the base sound like they’ve seen it all and their conversations, which are sometimes startling and occasionally funny, portray the truth behind the war.  You’ll listen in as soldiers talk about killing a commanding officer out of fear that the officer will get them killed.  You’ll laugh as a soldier tells the tale of his misfortune with the ladies of Saigon.  You’ll hear a loud speaker calling for you to report to the mess hall while Martha Reeves and the Vandellas sing “Nowhere to Run” or Grace Slick’s great voice trip you out with “White Rabbit.”  Gunfire sounds menacing and loud while napalm will make you flinch.  This is some pretty great stuff. 

There are a number of things that make this an amazing action game, but there are also a larger number of things that make this a so-so title.  Yes, Conflict: Vietnam is a number of things but it isn’t a boring or awful Vietnam War game. Once you get past the unflattering graphics and the somewhat complicated controls, you’ll be so engrossed in the missions that you’ll forget about its flaws.  So if you’re looking for a somewhat better experience in the jungle, soldier, I suggest you pick this one up. 

Gameplay: 7.0
The automatic targeting might not sit well with gamers who want full control over targeting enemies and team management, especially when it comes to strategy, will frustrate gamers that just want to run-and-gun their way through each level.  Still, the beauty of this game is that you can switch characters on the fly and upgrade their skills RPG-style to tighten their specialties even further.  If the controls weren’t too complicated this would have been a stellar action game.

Graphics: 6.8
Conflict: Vietnam isn’t the prettiest of the Vietnam War games and you’ll know it the second you look at the faces of your comrades.  Sure the environments are alive with detail and movement but it looks so plain that often times the beauty of the local is swallowed by its dullness.  There are some pretty cool effects, though, such as napalm shredding the environment from a distance and the motion blur when you focus your weapon on a specific target.

Sound: 8.0
One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, but the one that mother gives you . . . don’t do anything all.  Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” joins a small number of other tunes like “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones but you can always add your own collection of 60s tunes thanks to the Custom Soundtrack feature.  You’ll love the sound effects and voice acting (especially when it comes to delivering the great dialogue)--it’s top-notch.

Difficulty: Medium
Unlike Shellshock or Purple Haze, Conflict’s enemies react to your presence and duck for cover or lay down suppressing fire depending on the given situation.  They’re good at laying down suppressing fire, actually, and do a better job of tossing grenades.  Teamwork and good use of your men is the key to surviving the jungles of this Nam.

Concept: 7.0
This game has a lot to offer in terms of gameplay mechanics as well as a story with characters you’ll actually care about as the story progresses.  It also touches on all the things we know the war involved, including villages forced to house the enemy and the brutal aftermath that follows when American forces discover this forced alliance.  The fact that you can take control of vehicles and tweak your character’s stats is just way too cool.

Multiplayer: 7.5
Like Conflict: Desert Storm, a more than decent single-player experience is made even better thanks to a multiplayer option that allows up to four players.  A group of friends can take up the roles of each member of the squad, choosing from the sniper to the heavy gunner.  It’s done excellently here since each player has his or her own view of the action.  At least your buddies will do a better job of covering you.

Overall: 7.5
If war is hell then Conflict: Vietnam is a tour in Hades well worth taking.  With this particular war receiving much attention lately, we haven’t been completely impressed with the titles available so far but Conflict manages to go the extra mile by bringing us a realistic and enjoyable action game.  It has its share of problems that occasionally get in the way but it never gets too bad that you won’t have fun.  Try this one on for size, you just might like it.