Men of Valor Updated Impressions - The PC in Action

2015's Scott Maclean discusses what you can expect from Men of Valor. Double-click on the video window for a full-screen view.

While first-person shooters started off as simplistic action games in which you dashed about blasting everything from a first-person perspective, they've gotten a lot bigger and a lot better. Some games have included squad-based action, where you have a squad of teammates who follow you into battle, like 2015's upcoming PC and Xbox game, Men of Valor. In this new game, you'll play as a US marine who takes on various missions for Uncle Sam during the Vietnam War. You'll face fierce jungle battles in both versions, but the PC version will have several additional enhanced features.

The most obvious difference between the two versions of Men of Valor will be graphics. 2015 is a developer that's very familiar with the PC, since its last project was the acclaimed PC shooter Medal of Honor Allied Assault. Accordingly, the studio has retouched and, in some cases, redone much of the game's graphics for the PC version. The result is the inclusion of enhanced texture resolution (most textures have at least doubled in resolution), more-detailed character models, and a host of new graphical effects. These include displacement shading, which not only helps flat surfaces look curved and textured but also makes for highly realistic-moving grass (which, in some cases in the game, will be your only indication of enemy movement). The PC version of the game also features enhanced lighting and shadows that are cast not only by characters but also by foliage onto structures and characters below them. Furthermore, a very realistic heat-shimmer effect and modeled shock waves that occur as a result of air strikes and other major explosions have been added to the game. The PC version will even have enhanced water effects that present real-time reflections for pretty much everything, including characters, vehicles, and even special effects (like gun-muzzle flashes and tracers).

Aside from the graphics, you can expect to see some enhanced gameplay from the PC version of Men of Valor to compensate for the more responsive control scheme of the keyboard and mouse (as opposed to the Xbox controller). Aside from minor amenities, like a quick-throw button for grenades, you can also expect to see more-challenging fights against larger groups of enemies (which can all be accommodated onscreen by powerful PCs). Your enemies will be aggressive in both versions of the game, and they will actively attempt to flank you, flush you out with grenades, or call for help, depending on the situation.

Like Medal of Honor Allied Assault before it, Men of Valor will have a single-player game that consists of many varied levels with completely different objectives. We watched one on-foot level in which Dean Shepard, the game's main character, accompanied his men on a scouting mission in riverside territory. This and other missions are introduced with good-looking in-engine cutscenes that briefly explain your objectives, though once you're under way, you'll have an onscreen compass to guide you to your next goal. The on-foot mission we watched featured plenty of fast-paced firefights that were characterized by alternating bouts of intense gunfire and tersely shouted orders and warnings, both in English and Vietnamese. In Men of Valor, you'll fight against both Viet Cong rebels and the North Vietnamese Army, but your teammates will speak plenty of English--and plenty of English profanities. According to Scott Maclean of 2015, while Men of Valor won't feature lots of gratuitous violence, it will attempt to capture the gritty and intense feel of war. So you can expect to see blood spilled on the battlefield, and you can expect to hear more than a few choice words spoken in both versions of the game.

Another mission we saw in action was a night one in which Shepard rides a riverboat to infiltrate an enemy base in search of an enemy intelligence officer. The first part of the level took place on a moving sampan, and it required Shepard to pick off any enemy soldiers that would either appear on the riverbanks or glide past in other boats through the night fog. We then watched another on-foot mission in which Shepard and his squadmates were accompanied by allied soldiers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), who also happened to be on foot. Together they had to fight their way up a country road to reach their objective. As Maclean demonstrated, you won't have full control of your teammates, but they'll act according to their personalities (so some will be more aggressive than others), and they will act. So even if you're sitting still, your teammates will patrol the area, and they may even engage nearby hostiles if they are found.

In addition to the enhanced graphics and difficulty of the PC version, you can also expect to see enhanced multiplayer. Both the Xbox and PC versions will have numerous online multiplayer modes, including free-for-all deathmatch, team deathmatch, and a team-based "capture the documents" mode (in which one team must capture a set of documents while the opposing team must prevent this capture from occurring). Both games will also feature a team-based mission mode as well as a territory-based mode called "frontline," in which each team must capture and hold control points on the map. In addition, the PC version will support more simultaneous online players (up to 24 at this point), and it's expected to ship with six PC-exclusive multiplayer maps. From what we've seen, if the team can pull off everything it's attempting, Men of Valor will be an exciting and visually impressive shooter on the Xbox--and it will be even better on the PC. Both versions of this promising action game are scheduled to ship later this year.