Genre : Action
Developer: Pivotal Games
Publisher: Global Star
Release Date : October 5, 2004

Buy 'CONFLICT: Vietnam': Xbox | PC | PlayStation 2

After years of enduring shooter after shooter filled with World War II-related material, the year 2004 brings to gamers everywhere a brand new take on simulated human conflict on a massive scale: Vietnam. That’s right: One of the most controversial conflicts in United States history is now the subject of a spread of action games hitting every platform from the Gameboy Advance to cutting-edge PCs everywhere. Battlefield: Vietnam, Vietcong: Purple Haze, and a few more war games with slightly unpalatable subtitles are all on store shelves, waiting to capitalize off the current trend of popular shooters – or at least that’s what the developers of these games are hoping for, since most of them are releasing in a solitary, monetarily unproven cluster.

Never mind the fact that over one thousand U.S. soldiers have just recently met their end (with undoubtedly more to come) in a war many of the more editorialized talking heads have been paralleling to the events that many players will soon be simulating in games like this one we have here, Conflict: Vietnam. And you know what? While it makes me somewhat uncomfortable, there is not a single damned thing wrong with these games, as every form of media should have the right to release whatever they please at any time they desire. But it makes one wonder: To what lengths will a corporation go to make a few extra dollars? Even worse for gamers, how many Vietnam games will we have to endure for the next few years? Journalists everywhere may have gotten their wish for an end to the long string of World War II shooters, but for what? Just another fad? I could blame this completely on the publishers, but the state of the market brings about the content of their business strategies, so perhaps the situation is a bit deeper than one might think?

Ah, right. There is a game to be looked at here. A game that, in fact, makes me feel slightly worse about the popularization of the Vietnam war. Conflict: Vietnam is not a realistic, powerful look at the events of the war. It is an exaggerated account, making sure to make good on the dollars of videogame fans everywhere expecting the latest violent cuss-fest to be as ridiculous as possible. Nothing here is as irritating as the presentation of Fugitive Hunter, but it is definitely of “B”-movie quality. Still, a few moving moments are spread about during the gameplay, with the introduction being the best example of this. Players follow a new recruit as he joins a squad of veterans in their tour through the jungle. Everything from talk of fallen foes to controversial (for some) religious discussion is covered, albeit awkwardly, and should have at least a small emotional affect on the player.

Once the action starts, Conflict: Vietnam begins to take players through a journey through both good and bad game design. The four soldiers in your group can be given commands by pressing the d-pad. While this sort of feature has never been executed smoothly in most console games, the Xbox version of Ubi Soft’s Rainbow Six 3 did bring the use of such techniques to a new level of pick-up-and-play intuition. Conflict is just as clunky as ever, and while it adds an interesting layer to the process through its upgradeable skill system, it doesn’t work as well as it could once any of the more specific commands are required. So many button presses and analog stick taps are required to get a soldier to do what you want him to that you are likely to end up watching your player catch a bullet in his cranium while trying to get a teammate to back you up.

AI is another problematic aspect of Conflict. The golden rule of programming proper AI for almost any genre: Make sure that the computer is never more capable than a human player within the rule set of the game. Conflict developer Pivotal Games breaks this simple parameter from all sides. This is a different level of lazy programming in comparison to the developers who employ artificial difficulty by giving computer-controlled enemies greater abilities than the human players. In this case it has nothing at all to do with difficulty, since even the AI good guys are often far too “intelligent” (given sarcastic emphasis for the next paragraph) for their own good, never mind the sake of the integrity of the realism of a game based on an actual conflict that still affects thousands of families to this day. Vietcong or American, it doesn’t matter; as long as these guys are computer controlled, they will be able to shoot what they cannot see, through obstacles that cannot be shot through. I wasn’t in Vietnam, so maybe I’m wrong here, but I don’t think anybody was taking out their opponents by shooting through impenetrable walls without having a single notification of the presence of an enemy there.

That seems too smart, sure, but the AI is also some of the dumbest around at times, especially the Vietcong soldiers, whose book of strategies consists of tactics such as, “charge the Americans head on,” or “run really fast at the direction of the enemy fire until you find yourself lying on the ground staring at your own intestines.” The Vietnamese in Conflict: Vietnam have rough jobs, that’s for sure.

Once the more able-minded American team figures out their enemies’ battle plan, the game becomes a matter of walking over to a certain point to activate the flag that causes the Vietnamese to run at your soldiers, then watch them die by your assault. This is what most of this game consists of. For the less sadistic of us in the gaming community (not too many, looking at the popularity of the Grand Theft Auto sequels), this means that Conflict: Vietnam is severely lacking in something very important to a videogame: Fun.

Conflict: Vietnam just never feels right. While it has above-average presentation, the gameplay (see: The majority of what makes up a game) is a clumsy mess. Whether this is more because of the unnecessarily annoying controls or the lazy AI programming is anyone’s guess. But that is not to say that this game is completely without any enjoyable moments! The basic controls are still a blast. The shooting engine is a lot of fun to play with at first. Getting to play around with the selection of available vehicles is a lot of fun. That’s what makes me realize that this could have been something good, maybe not great but at least good… but a few rough edges ruin the experience enough that I could not wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody.

As a matter of fact, this game would probably sit in the annals of forgotten releases if not for the fact that it is somehow the best Vietnam shooter on consoles this fall. In all honesty, it is a very average shooter – as was its predecessor, Conflict: Desert Storm – that will receive attention only because of its setting. Hey… a mediocre game suddenly gaining attention because of a controversial setting? This Vietnam thing is starting to make some sense…

Score: 6.0/10