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Vietcong 2 Review November 13, 2005 Brett Todd |
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Summary: Vietcong was a little-noticed shooter that broke a lot of new ground and pushed first person shooter development forward with new levels of grittiness, the risky Vietnam setting and one of the first uses of iron sights. Vietcong 2 ... well ... look at the caption image and read on.
 Back to the shit | Page:: ( 1 / 6 ) |
Well, think again. Despite taking two-and-a-half years to make Vietcong 2, developer Pterodon has taken a step backwards in virtually every area. This sequel lacks much of the brutal charm of its predecessor, with crude controls, excruciating difficulty, and level design featuring the city-clearing drudgery that has made WW II shooters seem routine. Forget about running through the jungle. Here, you crawl down city streets where snipers shoot you in the head every couple of steps.
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And I’m not exaggerating with that last sentence. While the original Vietcong was a challenging game about halfway between a traditional kill-em-all shooter and a tactical challenge where one or two bullets sees you pushing up daisies, Vietcong 2 is maddeningly hard. It’s not the kind of crazy difficulty that you can come to appreciate and even make friends with, either; it’s the kind of crazy difficulty caused by odd design decisions and flaws.
The biggest problem is a dedication to realism over playability. Setting the game amidst the insanity that was the surprising Tet Offensive launched by North Vietnam in 1968 is a great idea, because it adds all sorts of pressure to mission objectives and puts the Americans under siege. But few compromises have been made to ease the challenge of fighting off hordes of fanatics in black pajamas. You’re asked to be Rambo in a fairly realistic combat situation; unsurprisingly this combination is an unworkable idea.
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There are a lot of reasons for this beyond the obvious. Perhaps the most notable problem is finicky movement. I had to turn mouse sensitivity almost all the way down just to avoid whipping around like an out-of-control Flash, and even then it was tough to navigate in closed quarters. Pterodon has made the interior settings far too small, with corridors in Vietnamese homes and office buildings so narrow that you get caught on every little table and chair. You really do get stuck, too. Back into a crate, for example, and you typically get jammed there for a moment.
| M-16 chainsaws | Page:: ( 2 / 6 ) |
Poor squad AI makes this design problem even more annoying. Like in every other shooter these days, Vietcong 2 adds the ability to control a small squad of men. But just like in many of those other shooters, your medic and ammo-distributing buddies here are more unwieldy than useful. In a game where creeping forward slowly is the only way to proceed, they charge into the fray. This presents all kinds of problems, as they frequently run in front of you and crouch right behind you, preventing you from moving around or seeking cover.
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I found myself rushing objectives in order to negate this interference, which of course is the last thing you want to do in a game crammed with ambushes and crack shots who can kill with a single bullet. My pals even routinely blocked corridors and refused to move. And since shooting allies is an automatic mission failure, I occasionally had to load saves to escape them. I was thankful for those rare occasions when I got to tackle the VC solo, but then the absence of my buddy with the medical packs was duly noted.
Wonky weapons make fighting alone even more of a grind. I understand that firing a high-caliber weapon isn’t as effortless as it is depicted in most shooters, but some of the hardware here is practically impossible to manage. The M-16, which as standard equipment for GIs in Vietnam is of course the weapon of choice through a lot of missions here, jumps in your hands like a runaway chainsaw. It rears up after squeezing off even single shots. I found it completely useless unless I had a VC or an NVA regular right in my face. There is a good assortment of other weapons, at least, including the far more manageable AK-47 that can be swiped from the enemy and an ancient, blunderbuss-like shotgun that gets across the North Vietnamese desperation to fight with whatever they could find.
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All of the above gives Vietcong 2 an erratic feel which is absolutely maddening in a game with so little room for error. Levels feature nothing but ambushes and choke points manned with eagle-eyed guys in black pajamas who can hit you on the run, from around corners, and across great distances. I can’t quite say that the AI cheats, because I’ve played plenty of multiplayer matches with human foes who are at least this skilled. But at the same time, levels are so thoroughly rigged against the player that everything seems ridiculously unfair.
| A deadly mistake | Page:: ( 3 / 6 ) |
Getting killed by uncoordinated goofballs
As in the first Vietcong, damage cumulatively lowers your maximum overall health. It’s almost impossible to keep your max health above 50% by the end of missions. This really cranks up the tension and the difficulty, of course, since a single shot kills when you’re this wounded. Add in the limited number of quick saves allowed in each mission and you’ve got one extremely hard shooter that gets measurably tougher as you proceed through levels.
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So, yeah, I got killed. A lot. On an average level, I needed to load at least two dozen saves. Most of the deaths didn’t come as a result of mistakes that I’d made, either. I’d typically get stuck on an object, get blocked at the wrong moment by a squadmate, get shot in the head by a sniper from across a courtyard, or peek around the wrong corner at the wrong time.
Another major annoyance was the bizarre way my soldier would pull his weapon up in front of his face whenever I got too close to a building or a buddy. I’d accidentally turn slightly towards a wall during a firefight and suddenly my own M-16 would block two-thirds of the screen. I appreciate the attempt to add realism by moving weapons to accommodate in-game characters and objects, but it makes no sense for a soldier to be obscuring his view during combat. I can’t believe this got past internal testing.
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My biggest issue, though, was with the lack of audio cues that the VC were lurking nearby. While enemies talk, giving you a rough idea that they’re in the neighborhood, they clam up whenever you draw near. As a result, it’s easy to think that an area has been cleared, only to get riddled with bullets by some guy huddled in an alcove. Which is completely realistic. I’m sure the real VC didn’t broadcast positions by shouting orders or prattling on in typically shooter fashion about noisy rats. But in a game, where our senses are limited by the monitor and peripheral vision completely removed, the odd audio clue is much appreciated. It actually restores some of the perceptions lost, so you can’t really call it a cheat.
| The better stuff | Page:: ( 4 / 6 ) |
’’Don’t f*ck with New York, suckah!’’
Pterodon has done a good job with the setting, once more slapping together a background that nicely recreates the Vietnam War era—or at least the Vietnam War era we remember from movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket. Seediness and chaos are everywhere. The game begins in a whorehouse and the leading character is an anti-hero who says things like “Drop the gun, you f*cking slopehead!”
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Visuals are fairly good, with character and location detail that, while not contemporary in terms of all the bells and whistles, are distinctive. Some of the realism is negated by hitches with the graphical engine, which, as already noted, seems prone to slowdowns in open areas, and repetitive audio. Your squaddies scream the same, typically non-PC battle cries over and over again. “Don’t f*ck with New York, asshole!” is a colorful line, but I really didn’t need to hear it every single battle. And I could probably tell that I had a black guy in my group without him adding “Suckah!” to every second line.
Pterodon has even made more of an effort than most developers in terms of actual gameplay content. In addition to the US campaign, there’s an ancillary one where you play from the VC side. It’s little more than a tacked-on episode to show the war from the other guy’s point-of-view, but still appreciated when other war shooters never even try to show other perspectives. We’re still waiting for the chance to play a German in a WWII shooter, for instance.
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Also, Pterodon continues its flirtation with the apparently forbidden cooperative mode of play. While all other shooter developers this side of Croteam (Serious Sam) have seemingly forgotten all about the option, Pterodon has included it in both of its Vietcong games. The one drawback is that co-op remains outside of the standard campaigns, so you can’t buddy-up to go through the solo American or VC missions. Still, it’s much appreciated that the option was included, along with the fairly standard team- and class-based multiplayer game provided with just about all war shooters these days.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 5 / 6 ) |
Pros
This is the end…
Powerful, if clichéd, Vietnam movie atmosphere
Buddy up!
Nice to see co-op mode in a shooter every now and again
Cons
Out of control
Controls feel off, as do many weapons
What happened to the jungle?
Too much corridor creeping, in too-narrow corridors
Get out of the way!
Poor squad AI causes them to get in the way more often than help you out
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| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 6 / 6 ) |