Men of Valor: Vietnam Impressions

At this year's E3, we were admitted to a private screening of Men of Valor: Vietnam, the next first-person shooter from the creator of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC. The new game will attempt to re-create the intense and challenging jungle battles in the Vietnam War.

In the game, you'll play as part of a squad of US troops that must fight its way through the dense jungles and rocky hills of the Vietnamese countryside. However, 2015 has already proven its proficiency with creating dramatic, cinematic sequences in its previous game--this experience was evident it the demonstration, which began with a passenger-view helicopter sequence showing one of your squadmates firing on guerrilla troops in the jungle below. Unfortunately, your buddy gets hit by enemy fire, and you'll be forced to cover for him by manning the side-mounted minigun for an assault on a floating village on a river, which you'll eventually decimate. However, the chopper will get hit by a hidden antiair gun, forcing the pilot to crash-land. On the way down, your view will change quickly from outside of the chopper to the thick fans of bamboo treetops that flap past the helicopter's windshield.

Cinematic moments like these seemed common in the demonstration. We watched ambushes from soldiers leaping out of buildings, enemy fire from behind a wall of jungle, and even a napalm air strike--the kind of dramatic events you might expect to see in an in-game cutscene will instead happen in real time. We also watched the game's squad-based AI in action; friendly soldiers intelligently sought cover from enemy fire, covered each other's movement, and ran back across the battlefield to recover wounded soldiers. This action-packed shooter will be released later this year for the PC and the Xbox.