Conflict: Vietnam for me was the best in the series, hard to beat Conflict: Desert Storm 2 but did it well.
Out in the jungle the game picks up the pace and runs with it, providing the feeling of sitting in a steamy jungle with possible threats at every turn. There are booby traps, snipers, plenty of Vietcong, and a whole lot of foliage to get in the way and make the problems go from horrible to really, really bad and worse. With some story elements and some scripting there are a few cool events that happen along the way, but the primary journey here is along a long and twisted path as these unlucky grunts have to go it alone as the whole world goes to hell around them.
To make control of these four soldiers that much easier the d-pad is used to quickly select the different men. The soldiers have their own skills in terms of disarming traps, sniping, healing, and whatnot so managing each situation is often a matter of finding the right man for the job and selecting him for it. While not being directly controlled the other soldiers can be easily given some basic commands to follow, stay put, hold fire or fire at will. Their own skills, which can be upgraded at the end of each level, will help to determine just how well they handle themselves on their own. For example, Junior could be counted on to drop Vietcong with a single rifle shot once he's boosted his sniper rifle points to a respectable level.
So with these basic controls the game works like a dream, absolutely no problems whatsoever, but with the other finer points about giving commands and coordinating efforts the control scheme feels like a set of PC controls that had been shoved onto a console controller without much though given to the process. Giving a command to another soldier to run to a specific area or to assist with a squadmate requires a complex controller juggle that never quite feels right. A shoulder button is pressed while the d-pad and then a face button followed by some analog stick movement and then another face button. It's sheer madness and the same problems pop up with the regular inventory and passing items from one person to another.
Another problem happens when trying to heal the same person or a squadmate. When a soldier's health goes down to zero their health bar goes red and they can be revived with a field dressing (as in gauze and tape, not a way to liven up arugula). Obviously it would be even better to heal people before they even get that far. This then leads to more struggles with the inventory system of opening up inventory, scrolling all the way down to select the dressing, then going back to the game and pulling the trigger to use on one's self or going to another to help them out. After that it's a matter of going back to inventory and scrolling back to the gun at hand to get back in the fight. It's like trying to fight through red tape while in the middle of a battle and it just makes the situations even more confusing than it should be.
Conflict: Vietnam is the best of the bunch so far for me!