Vietcong

"Vietcong is one of the most intense FPS ever"

GRAPHICS 8/10
Vietcong has great graphics. This especially applies to the character models which are capable of perfect lyp syncing, facial expressions and moving fingers and such. The animation is extremely realistic, with fluid body movement, such as seeing a soldier roll over a fallen tree. It has the best looking character models since MoH. The environments are also well done. They are extremely vast, and loading screens are quite infrequent. Often you will find yourself moving among nightmarishly dense foilage, and this added with effects like tracers zipping through leaves and dirt kicking up in the wake of an explosion, makes the firefights in VC some of the grittiest in any game. The gore department is surprisingly well done. While VC doesn't pack the sheer detail in the violence that SOF2 gave, it does allow you to shoot off limbs from enemies, and you can see blood spattered all over their body.(I am referring to the european version by the way) Some bad points are the explosions which I thought looked a little weak. I was hoping to see a huge pillar of dirt kick up from an explosion, which follows a flash of light, but this is not the case with VC. Also some of the characters, have horrid looking faces. This is not to say the character faces were not well done, its just that they look ugly. Your character Hawkins has a thin face, but has the biggest nose I've ever seen on a person and your captain's nose is way bent to one side. Aside from those minor things, VC's graphics are for the most part extremely well done.
SOUND 7/10
Vietcong's sound is good. When moving in jungles, there is the constant noise of wildlife going on, from monkeys to crickets. This ambient noise create a tension in the game, since the creepy nature to it coupled with the well done environmental graphics make you feel very tense, since a vietcong could start firing out of nowhere at any time. Other noises like rain hitting the ground, footsteps, helicopter rotors are also excellent. Some of the other sounds are both good and bad. Take the weapon noises for instance. While the guns like the m16, 1911, Thompson, both the ppsh's have great, solid sounding sounds, other weapons like the mosin nagrant, m60, PKM and grenade sound muffled and weak. The voices are also well acted out for the most part, but some voices sound awkward, with dialogue that is silly to the point of being funny. Your radioman, Defort, talks in a cranky, sissy-like voice. Your character Hawkins sounds like the typical action hero dude, and overacts in some parts. Your pointman Nhut, thankfully talks in an authentic vietnamese accented english, but when in combat he yells out things like 'nasty pigs!' and 'I got hit!' in the strangest ways. Overall though, the voices effectively convey some of the character's personalities, especially Hornster's. The explosions in VC sound a bit distant, but at least they make your ears ring in the game which is a nice realistic touch. Finally, the music is of an excellent choice, consisting of 60s guitar songs that sound very similair to the likes of Jimmy Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. Overall, sound has some quirks but it is mostly good.
GAMEPLAY 9/10
Vietcong has excellent gameplay. The single player is nice and long, consisting of slightly over 20 missions of varied lengths of fifteen minutes to over an hour. The game is very squad based, since you control a team of five consisting of a radioman, engineer, pointman, medic, and machinegunner. The missions mostly involve hunting down VC, releiving injured troops, or doing a search and rescue, but each mission gives a different experience. One of the most fun parts of VC is walking along a jungle trail, with everyone's favorite pointman Nhut cautiously leading the way. These moments are very suspenseful and entertaining, because you never know when a battle is going to be triggered, and its great to admire the work the developers put into making the jungles. When you do get into a battle, VC delivers like no other game. For the most part, you will only see your enemy by the muzzle flash from his gun. The enemy AI is quite crafty, staying behind cover all the time and moving constantly. It is a great portrayal of the battles the US soldiers experienced in vietnam. Your team mates will constantly shout vulgarities and cries for help in a non-cheesy manner, and this hectic screaming and how bullets are constantly zipping past you makes the battles extremely chaotic and great. Instead of playing it in the manner of games like CS, you yourself have to stay behind cover as well and use your iron sights to aim. Sometimes you will also have to get out there and protect seriously injured team mates till a medic can get to him. Your team's AI is pretty good. They will rarely get stuck anywhere, they always obey your orders, and they are good at taking cover and avoiding fire. This is a very satisfying aspect of the game since you fail the mission if one of them is killed. The structure of Vietcong's Single player is very intuitive. Before any mission, you get time to hang around your bunk, look through your diary, documents and so on, and you can pick what gun to carry into the mission. After you finish a mission, you can play it over as many times over as you want in the single mission mode, and you unlock new guns and maps for the quick match mode which is identical to the skirmish mode found in most RTS games. One down side to the single player are the tunnel missions. While they aren't exactly difficult, they are so boring and monotonous that you're going to be crying out for a noclip mode so you could just skip the whole segment. Anyway, in the multiplayer mode, VC delivers as well. The game offers the standard deathmatch modes, as well as a CTF with a twist: you have to capture three flags instead of one for your team to win. There is also an excellent co op mode which is rare in many games, but VC has it. Though I havn't played a lot of it, VC's MP is great so far from what I've experienced. Overall, VC definitely delivers in both Single and Multiplayer very well.
STORY 3/10
Vietcong doesn't really have a story. Its just a bunch of missions strung together with no connection to each other whatsoever. This isn't really a bad thing since VC is a game based on a war, and it wants to put you into as many different scenarios of it without needing a story to complicate things. If you think about it, this was also the case with the excellent MoH. About as close as you'll get to a story is Hawkin's diary which is a pretty long read in itself.
REPLAYABILITY 10/10
Vietcong has it all in replayability. You can replay all the Single player missions in different difficulties, different team setups and different weapons as long as you unlock them. There is the skirmish mode which is also very fun to play if you want to jump right right into the excellent firefights VC has. There is the multiplayer as well, and that alone is an excellent factor in replayability. Overall, VC is a game that you'll be playing for quite a while.
BUY OR RENT?
This is an excellent game. Buy it NOW. And, just as it is with any game you burn, its illegal.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/29/03, Updated 04/29/03