Conflict Vietnam is a great hybrid 1st and 3rd person tactical shooter that captures that elusive 'Nam feel.
Despite being branded a 3rd person shooter, in my experience you spend almost as much time in first player view, especially in combat, as you do in 3rd person. 3rd person is best for moving around as you get a much better field of view but as soon as contact is made with Charlie it's time to switch to first person and use the iron sights. That said, Conflict Vietnam (CV) is probably better defined as a tactical shooter, and the command system, once you have it "locked into" your brain, makes this a great gaming experience. [For the record I own the budget "Best of Atari" edition which comes with the v1.1 patch installed.]
CV works hard to achieve that "Vietnam feel" and is overwhelmingly successfull. It uses, as most Vietnam games do, period music and dialogue. Just hearing "Paint if Black" during the intro movie puts you in the mood, or at the very least brings back memories of watching Tour of Duty. Likewise "White Rabbit" will channel your inner Elias from Platoon. The US base, jungle, villages and Vietnamese cities are nicely rendered. This game looks good, but beyond that you get that "you are there" feel. It's obvious a fair amount of work went into making this game look and feel right.
The narrative flow is pretty good and it keeps the pressure on. At the start you arrive as the new guy, Cherry, at the firebase, undergo a brief training mission, and within hours you're thrust into the middle of the Tet Offensive. When I write "You", it's not neccessarily the young medic who arrives you quickly become four characters making up the squad (Cherry/Doc, Ragman, Junior and Hoss). While character development is somewhat limited you do end up caring about the squad ... all must survive for the mission to succeed, so you spend lots of time making sure they are well munitioned, their wounds are seen to and that they provide mutual cover fire. It's a difficult juggle and that's what makes the game harder than most ... that and the miserly save system (2 per mission on Medium).
I knew I was playing a difficult game when I got "stuck" in the third of 14 missions, at the point where you need to fend of hordes of VC attacking your base camp with airstrikes and destroy a T34 tank. I grudgingly admit that I restarted with a new profile on Easy (in which you get 3 saves per mission) and it was still tough. Then I read about the hold-shift-type- "agentorange" cheat that allows you to have unlimited saves and used that to keep advancing on Medium. [To unlock all cheats for the PC version of Conflict Vietnam you go to the "Main Menu" then press and hold the shift key while typing agentorange, which then unlocks the cheats menu in the "Options" screen. I did not use the other cheats on offer, just unlimited saves.]
Of the Vietnam games I have played and enjoyed, Men of Valor and Vietcong Purple Haze, CV is the most tactical in nature. While VPH has tactical elements they are quite rudimentary, whereas CV allows you to issue a range of commands to your squad mates as individuals or as a team using a point and click or single key commands as appropriate. This takes some getting used to but as with all games becomes second nature after a while. What keeps the tension high (even if the unlimited saves option is used) is that the missions follow on from eachother so the weapons and ammo you carry or can find are what you have available and this can mean weapons changes as your US weapons run out of ammo. Scavenging each battle site for enemy weapons, med-kits and ammo is a key part of this game as you are in-country for mission after mission, without a respite at base.
On-mission you will need to keep your men pretty spread out as one well aimed enemy grenade or triggered booby trap is enough to wipe out the whole team. Pretty soon you will get used to advancing with a pointman while the balance of the team holds position ... that way if the pointman takes a hit you can then advance with another character to patch him up or give cover fire while another does that. The command system works very well ... once you customise it and get used to it. This game oozes with realism, not just the settings, weapons, dialogue but also the command dynamic which really focusses you on solving the tactical challenges that arise, whether by sending your team-mates out on the flank, ordering your sniper to take out a target or adopting a character and having him act as point, defusing traps and doing the recon before bringing up the team.
Now to the missions. Firstly there are 14 of them. Apart from the on-the-rails PBR and helicopter rides all the missions are quite long and full of surprises. Each mission has pre-stated primary objectives however these are usually supplemented by other tasks as the mission progresses. A read through a walkthrough or guide may lead you to suspect that CV comes with what are arguably standard Hollywood-ised Vietnam game missions. True, to an extent, but they have seldom been done better.
Mission 1 Ghost Town, is essentially a training/tutorial mission that gets you used to the gameplay with the bonus that your reassigned keyboard/mouse commands are incorporated into the tutorial rather than referring to the defaults.
Mission 2 Rumble in the Jungle, essentially a stroll along a river valley amidst verdant green jungle is a visual treat. A few ambushes which play out in different ways whether you initiate the ambush or are ambushed. You progress to a search and destroy operation in a not so friendly village, some booby traps, followed by a firefight in a small temple complex before evac. Probably one of my favourite missions and coming early in the campaign you just know the rest of the game will be good.
Mission 3 Tet Offensive, is a tough base defense mission. After much hair pulling and teeth gnashing with the final part of this mission I started using the "unlimited saves" cheat to play the rest of the game, and enjoyed it far more thereafter.
Mission 4 Bad Moon, a downed pilot recovery mission amidst a surreal maze-like bamboo forest. Your team needs to disable a number of booby traps and fend of VC attacks. Another visual treat.
Mission 5 Hill 933, a reasonably difficult mission following on from the previous one, involving caves, bunker networks and a NVA headquaters compound, with some indoor fighting.
Mission 6 Into the Fire, still stuck in the jungle, fighting through a larger temple complex before a PBR evacuation.
Mission 7 Charlie's Point, a nod to the PBR ride in Apocalypse Now. Very much on the rails but definately the best PBR ride of any Vietnam game I've played. Each character mans a gun: fore, aft, port and starboard and the PBR's Chief tends to the wounds.
Mission 8 The Sacred Statue, you escort a villager who guides your team to a large temple complex where the village's sacred statue has been taken by the VC. This mission requires the use of stealthy kills to prevent detection. Clearing of the temple of VC is quite tense and with the gloomy atmosphere well rendered with the sound and lighting effects. Another favourite.
Mission 9 1st Air Cav, the bugle call at the start is a nod to Apocalypse Now but quicky degenerates into another tough base defence mission. To succeed in this mission it seems to be more a case of luck than good management. Not a favourite, even with unlimited saves.
Mission 10 Russian Roulette, your team was captured and as you may expect from the title we have a nod to Deer Hunter. You need to have the team escape the POW camp alive. One full-on mission indeed, plus you meet some Aussie SAS at the end. Another favourite.
Mission 11 Tunnel Rats, as the name implies you need to clear out a tunnel complex. Getting to the tunnels involves another ambush laden stroll along a river valley. Not the most realistic looking tunnels, but the 3rd person perspective obviously needs to make them a tad roomier. Clue: you need to find the underground room with the C4 stash in order to plant the C4 and blow the tunnels. You blow the tunnels once the team is outside so no need to make a mad dash for the exits as in some games. Pretty good mission.
Mission 12 Bloody Hue. Everyone's favourite Vietnam urban battle. Beautifully rendered and tense urban mission. Has a tank driving/gunning component, not one of my favourite gaming elements. Otherwise a challenging and fun mission.
Mission 13 Air-Mobile, this is the compulsory Nam helicopter mounted-gunner mission. Shoot up VC/NVA bases and missile installations in a network of canyons. Your pilot certainly knows how to fly! Strange mission ending ... you get shot down but mission is completed. Basically this is a set up for the next and final mission.
Mission 14 The Citadel. Not as expected a Hue Citadel mission, but one with a similar feel. The start of the mission is well ... you'll see. You get to operate an Ontos, a vehicle mounted multiple barrel rocket launcher to advance on the enemy citadel. Once inside the citadel you have lots of tactical challenges. The end of mission and game epilogue cut scenes detailing the post-Vietnam lives of your team are very well done. Excellent mission and a fitting end to a great game.
What seems quite different to most Vietnam games is that you rarely return to base. One mission follows directly from the preceding one so you need to ensure your team scavanges each battle site for weapons, ammo, medkits, etc as what you have is all you will have for a series of missions and the numerous firefights on the way. Also after each firefight make sure your
team is patched up to full health and that ammo is distributed ... then save.
Graphics? Well, just look at the schools of river fish in Mission 2 and how they respond. Water and rain looks real. The jungle is dense, and at times misty, the maze-like bamboo forest in Mission 4 is quite surreal. A lot of time went into getting the visual feel supported by excellent ambient sound effects just right. Simply this game is a visual feast, particularly in the jungle missions. The inter-mission cut scenes are very well done.
Sound? Very atmospheric, especially for those strolls through the jungle, through the excellent use of ambient sounds, flowing water, bird calls, wind, etc. You will quickly learn the theme that cues you into trouble ahead, if you are using the "unlimited saves" then this is usually a logical time to heal your wounds, distibute the ammo and save. Dialogue is sparse in-mission as these guys know the benefit of not broadcasting their location. When the bullets start flying so do the curses and taunts. Needless to say the use of period music adds to that "Nam feel" and thankfully the music is used in context during intro or outro cut scenes.
CV has some interesting gameplay aspects:
o Switching from 3rd to first person. This is easy to get used to and is very handy in firefights albeit the iron sights do really fill up the screen and minimise peripheral vision. Nevertheless your fire will be more acurate, especially if you zoom in. The problem is your view, because of the iron sights, is restricted and at times playing in purely 3rd person view is quite workable in most cases, except when mouting fixed weapons, like HMGs in bunkers. Iron sights can be disabled and replaced with a cross-hair (without a weapon barrel showing on the HUD) which maintains a good field of view and improves accuracy, but feels less realistic.
o Switching from one squad member to another which can be a bit confusing until you associate the main weapon on the HUD with the particualr squad member. You can set up your squad mates in positions such that there are overlapping fields of fire and overwatch protective fire. This gets to be a hectic thing especially if you have waves of VC coming from all directions and you are switching between team mates and first and 3rd person views. You tend to lose perspective and this just adds to the confusion of battle. You'll probably encounter this for the first time during Mission 3 when the VC Tet attack against your base is in full swing but this will soon become a routine that you rely on as you advance through the missions ... if not, you will fail.
Minor quibbles: Initially you may feel that the gameplay lets CV down. For me it was because of the default squad command system key assignments just didn't seem to work "out of the box". This can be fixed by reassigning the keys although what should be a simple task is somewhat cumbersome due to the interface. You can off course choose not to not use squad commands and simply switch between squad mates and use the simple single key commands to get your team mates to follow you, hold positions and free fire. Anyway once the keys have been reassigned giving commands becomes easier and a few missions in it will be second nature. So this really is a minor quibble.
OVERALL: GameSpot's rating does not give this fine Vietnam shooter the credit it deserves, however the review is spot on about the save system. Arguably the in-built save system is what makes this game almost impossible to beat, however I heartily recommend using the unlimited saves "in-built cheat" as the game is still plenty tough with it. Everything else about Conflict Vietnam is simply beautifully presented and for my money is is probably one of the best historical-military tactical shooters you will play. If you play this game in the right spirit it really brings out the importance of the team to success, something which by definition is not possible in a routine single player shooter.
Great game. Buy it NOW!