A faint glimmer of some good qualities, but overall a big dissapointment.
User Rating: 6.5 | Vietcong (2003) PC
This game could of benefitted from a bit more polish, because as it stants it is very dissappointing. The action just isn't that good. The sequences of firefights are not long enough and there are too many interruptions in the action (checking in with headquarters via radio). All of the interruptions chop up any action and enjoyment. Further gameplay dissapointments include walking behind your pointman waiting for something to happen. The way things play out is usually slow and ardous; the action sequences are just too far a few between. And when you do encounter the VietCong, the firefights are very short. Sound is terrible. The weapons sound are almost good, but lack any oomp and the volume of the weapons is not balanced very well. They frequently sound muffled. There is a lot of character speech, but some of it sounds cheesy. On a good note, at least the Vietcong speak in their native tongue. That is a nice touch. But overall, many times it is very difficult to hear what your squadmates are saying: sometimes they come in loud and clear, other times it is muffled similar to weapon firing. To sume it up, the sound levels are just so inconsistant. The only sound that comes through loud and clear is when your mission fails. The volume and tone the game makes is so much louder than everything else, it almost hurts your ears and it certainly frustrates you when you die because it almost deafens you and adds insult to your failure. Too bad the weapon discharge sound is so pronounced. The only real good thing to say about the overall game sound is the fantastic environmental sound effects. Superb. Other than that the sound is unbalanced, inconsistant and should be better. Graphics are very good. Even after being out for almost two years, the graphics still look very, very good. I've recently played Far Cry and Doom 3 and althought those two games are graphically superior, VietCong holds its own, and manages to still look great. There are some big clipping issues, but that is very common in most games anyway. The AI is ok. They hide well, etc but many times you will witness the Vietcong jumping up and down and just doing odd things. This holds true for your squadmates too. A couple of times, when you are at your base camp, guys would get stuck trying to walk past each other. The only way to proceed forward in the scripting was to restart from a save and hope that events don't play out similarly. Also, in one of the missions you have to drive a jeep. I went off the road abit and the jeep was stuck on its side. There was no way to get it back on four wheels and the game would of been stuck infinium. So I had to replay the mission. There are a few other things that indicate to me that this game just wasn't tweaked properly. It does feel kind of rushed because there is a lack of polish. Overall the gameplay was frustrating and I ended up abandoning the singleplayer campaign about 10 missions short of completion (out of a total of 30). It just was too unpolished and I was still having a hard time becoming immersed into the game. Bad gameplay mechanics and sound are what did it. Too bad as this game ALMOST could of been a great experience. Unfortunately too many things just didn't feel correct or complete.
