Conflict: Vietnam

Written by Phillip Ellis on 10/27/2004 for Xbox  

Conflict: Vietnam is the third game in the Conflict series, put out by Global Star Software. The Vietnam War lasted 11 years and killed over 3 million people from both sides. In the game, four men are cut off behind enemy lines during the 1968 Tet Offensive with no way to contact for help. The only hope for survival by these four American soldiers is to head into the heart of darkness with little ammunition and a small supply of rations. 100 miles of terrain separates them from freedom. Can you make it?

Conflict: Vietnam includes fourteen missions that takes you deep into the Vietnamese jungle, through small villages, and into ruined temples, and down Viet Cong tunnel complexes. Through these missions you will encounter stiff resistance from the Viet Cong, and booby traps that might just end your chance for freedom again. You’ll travel through miles and miles of unsuspecting forest, not looking for a fight, only to encounter the resistance as you enter a small Vietnamese town, where the citizens are looking to you to save their town, and to save them.

If you’ve ever played any of the other Conflict games, then you’ll find yourself in familiar grounds here. Nothing groundbreaking, and breathtaking about it. It is a very good Vietnam simulation, and that is all you will find here. If you’re all about the shoot ‘em up, do whatever you please styles of some other games, you may not like it here. The game focuses on teamwork, and keeping your squad of four men together through the end, in true American fashion. After each successful mission you are awarded points which you can use to up your soldier’s skills.

Anybody that’s ever been in a combat zone knows how war sounds, knows how loud it is with bullets grazing by you. Conflict: Vietnam captures the sounds and essence of true warfare quite well. The sounds of each gun is modeled fairly accurately, and the voice acting done by the characters is better than most war games in our day. Now you know, Vietnam was a time for the hippies, the peace, the love, and if anything it was time for some kick-ass music to be played so that everyone could take their minds off of it. Well the game opens in ‘Paint it Black’, both the pre-game intro, and at the base camp. That song sets the entire tone for the game. A tough war battle that rages on even where you don’t expect an enemy lying in wait. Not many people have been willing to take on the Vietnam game genre before recently due to the conflicts surrounding the war. Now game makers are realizing the importance that everyone who died in the war is considered a hero.

You start at the base camp to go through your training, and this is a pretty cool place to be. From there the Armed Forces Radio is playing over the loudspeaker, while you’ve got American soldiers patrolling the area. It’s a good place to walk around and learn more about the war, and what the soldiers think of it. They’ll talk about friends who have died, the war itself, back home, and some will even talk about conspiracy theories surrounding the war. All in all it makes for an interesting few minutes running around base camp at the beginning of the game just listening to the other soldiers talk about their lives among other things.
Of course the most important thing in a war game is the game play. I think if what you are looking for is a solid war game, well then you’ll find just what you are looking for in Conflict: Vietnam. The game, even on normal, is still quite a challenge, and you should consider yourself lucky to get through it in a decent time. I was rolling along quite nicely before failing my first mission, and that’s when the Viet Cong went all out on me. The Viet Cong are everywhere in this game, and they just keep popping up out of the bushes, just like the war movies and stories I know we’ve all read about the Vietnam War. I’m a big war game junkie, I own just about every modern war game there is, and occasionally I’ll buy the old time war games, such as this one. I’ve played many war games, and this has quickly become one of my early favorites, just for the pure realism. Unfortunately the hardcore realism of some war simulation games will scare away many casual gamers, the hardcore war gamers will definitely find a lot of love in playing this. The edge of your seat excitement is always there. Just close your eyes, and imagine walking down a small, desolate path in a country full of forestation, and a few villages. Everywhere you look there’s trees, grass, and all you can see is right in front of you. Out of nowhere you hear a bullet whiz by your head and quickly hit the ground. That’s the intensity of Conflict: Vietnam. Around every corner a new problem arises. Consider yourself lucky to spot that booby trap the first time, but if you don’t, you could be paying a big price, like your entire team. Just trying to figure out how to walk past the booby trap without tripping the line to kill your entire team strains your brain enough. After every war game I’ve played, I half expected my teammates to be ignorant and walk straight to the tripwire to kill my entire team, but to my surprise they did not. The teammate AI is pretty solid, in that your colleagues will do whatever you tell them to do. The computer AI is not always quite as solid. They will walk directly into your line of fire at time, basically committing suicide. They are Viet Cong, however, so it is highly likely they really did this. Sometimes the computer AI will blindly fire into the trees, and surrounding brush, despite never making eye contact with you. Fortunately your teammates will return the fire, without you ever knowing what was going on.

The graphics are pretty solid, but nothing new to mankind. They are not as good as say, Full Spectrum Warrior, but they are good enough to get the job done. The environments are immersive, and everything you’d expect to find in Vietnam is there. The soldiers are rendered fairly accurate to the ones you’d expect to find in Vietnam, and the Viet Cong look true to their counterparts. While the graphics are not overly impressive, they get the job done very well. You see exactly what you would expect to see in Vietnam if you were to go there today. The modeled country of Vietnam is very dense with forestry, and many very poor villages, such as the Vietnam our soldiers saw many years ago.

Looking past the obvious problems of Conflict: Vietnam, you will come away from the game with a very good war experience. Maybe even a little history lesson can be learned by playing the game, and understanding the dire times these soldiers faced, and the extreme need they had to stick together through it all. Looking at the game from a value standpoint, at $39.99, you do not expect to find a very polished and decent war game. Through the package you find a rare gem. Most war games just try to do enough to be called a war game while still being likeable to the masses. Every now and then though you’ll get one that will portray the armed forces as they are in real life. The game still is not as good as it could have been with a little more time in development, but if you are in need of a Vietnam fix, then this is certainly the best of the current Vietnam games available.