Many people familiar with interactive entertainment for at least ten years remember Viet Cong. It was a truly breakthrough game – the developers managed to combine a shooter accessible to everyone with realism almost at the level of the first operation. There was everything for fans of the genre: Interesting shootouts, non-linear situations and the atmosphere of the Vietnam War. Just look at the training mission, carefully copied from the films of classic American films on the same subject. The closest analogue of the game is considered to be Medal of Honor, released a year later – the same jungle, the same team tactics, even the banal training ground was practically no different. But the execution was worse. If only because the developers did not try to work on balance, only reducing the health of NPCs and the player to a minimum. A year later there was the second part of the Viet Cong, and the game seemed to catch the current and sank below the medal. The jungle disappeared, and with it the lion’s share of the atmosphere. The traps were gone, so when walking around new locations you could only stumble upon enemies jumping out from around the corner.
And so, we act as a US Army captain accompanying a journalist at a holiday in honor of the Vietnamese New Year. But despite the truce, the city hall where the protagonist was located is “suddenly” attacked by the Viet Cong. A serious fight ensues, but we still manage to get out, and even take our unlucky partner with us. Due to the surprise attack, the Americans were unable to adequately repel the enemy, but there is an order to take the city at any cost. And that’s where the fun ends. Then there are only missions in which we, like a train, rush along the rails laid by the developers, capture bridges, piers, storm churches, and only in the end we will be given the opportunity to bypass the enemy from the side a couple of times. But as soon as such more or less free gameplay begins, the game itself ends. Of course, there is also a company for the Viet Cong, but everything there is almost the same.
The biggest mistake of the https://huc99casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ developers was the decision to move the game to the city streets. The computer here clearly does not feel as comfortable as in open spaces, constantly gets stuck in narrow doorways, not allowing the player to leave the cramped room, misses at point-blank range and tries to shoot the enemy through cover. The action is logical, but the local wooden fences can only be broken through with a grenade launcher. Comrades get in the way, but you can’t go anywhere without them, because the ammunition for a captured machine gun runs out in half a minute of battle, and you can only replenish your health once. And hitting enemies is often not so easy, because in the best traditions of shooting galleries, they sit behind cover and only stick out for a split second to fire a burst at a defenseless player. On the first missions, when you have only one pistol in your hands, the “first to shoot, kill” rule does not apply, and you don’t even have to think about tactics in the company of a frail reporter. The Vietnamese shoot immediately, and only cunning can save. This is why the health scale is perceived as a kind of timer that behaves extremely inappropriately. The hero can easily withstand half a clip in the stomach, but a magic bullet from a sniper or a shot from a double-barreled shotgun from fifty meters will most likely be lethal.
The game contains a mountain of various weapons, including the rare in-game RPD, and SKS, and even some kind of AK clone. It would seem, what else is needed for happiness?? There are a lot of weapons in the game, but shooting them is like firing an airsoft pistol at a wooden board. It seemed like he aimed accurately, but for some reason the bullet didn’t reach the target. Maybe I got it? A small ball is unlikely to leave a visible mark. So it is here – hits are not felt, and fired bullets sometimes fly through the model of an insidious enemy. Yes, the recoil looks realistic, but it’s just a visual effect. Particularly inexperienced players may accidentally shoot at their own people, but this only means mission failure if the unlucky comrade dies. This happens rarely, but it can be extremely unpleasant when shooting at a Vietnamese to hit a “friendly” bot that has jumped into the line of fire. But you can still play this, because many of us are already accustomed to budget domestic action films, in which the weapons are slanted, the bots stand still like turrets and shoot at the lazy player hiding from them behind a concrete wall to restore health. The computer may be stupid, but it can pin you to the ground even on easy difficulty. You have to maneuver, enter from the side, throw grenades.
The levels in the game try to seem varied, but they do it extremely poorly. When caught in endless ambushes, there is simply no time to look at three-polygonal houses with stretched textures, just like there is no time to listen to the theme song in the main menu. But not everything is so bad, the levels change so often that they simply don’t have time to get boring. The characters may not be interesting, but without them the full feeling of war simply would not have developed. And the weapon shoots more or less realistically. The game should be treated like the plastic toy soldiers from childhood, which we played without thinking about Vietnam, based on which they were made. And it’s also worth playing, immersing yourself in an atmosphere that depends on perception. Just like sometimes looking at an old bag of toys, which is either gathering dust under the computer desk, or has long been inherited by your son, you can return to this game many years later, remembering how it was then.
P.S.
The article is intended for those who have not played the game. Yes, I could have made some mistakes here 😀