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Vietnam is the new World War II. Only a few years ago, making a game based in the Vietnam War was taboo; it wouldn’t even be considered in a meeting. These days though, it’s the next best thing, it seems. The famed Battlefield series had a game there, Eidos recently released their own take on the war, and Take-Two’s Global Star has Conflict: Vietnam for next month. Sensing that Vietnam is “hot” now Take-Two’s Gathering label decided to port bits of the PC’s Vietcong: Purple Haze and its Fist Alpha to the Xbox.
In Purple Haze’s nineteen single player missions, you’ll go through with a group of soldiers through Vietnam’s thick foliage. As is expected, each team member specializes in something, which adds just a tad bit to the game’s depth. The team includes a point man who leads you to your objective and makes sure you know where the enemies are, and also includes an engineer who makes sure you have ammo and a medic to help you when the going gets tough. You’ll need to use cover, but the majority of the gameplay has you charging forward to move on as the gameplay is quite simple.
Although the squad does add some depth, as I mentioned above, Purple Haze doesn’t use it in a very smart manner. Giving commands is slow and clunky and you’re better off just winging it in intense situations than trying to give a command to each of your squad members. And when you do give the command, the AI doesn’t do that good of a job at following it out. Sure, you can tell them to clear but it’ll take a while before they actually do so. And as they scurry around they’ll get stuck on objects or even on each other. Lastly, when the point man does his job, it is great to have that guidance. Unfortunately, he’ll often forget what he needs to do and will wait until you tell him again, which sort of eliminates his purpose.
Purple Haze does give you a lot of game for your money, though. The game features many of multiplayer modes including Deathmatch (free-for-all), Team Deathmatch (same as Deathmatch but with teams), Capture The Flag (each team has a flag to protect) and Assault Team Game (where one team is given an objective to complete and the other needs to prevent the objective from being completed). Additionally, there are also a few cooperative modes as well. For immensely detailed multiplayer information, click this link.
In terms of graphics, Vietcong: Purple Haze isn’t very pleasing toward the eye. The simple character models don’t seem at home on the Xbox, and though some textures are above average, others barely approach the passable line. The game does succeed partly in recreating the atmosphere of Vietnam. The simple, sprite-based foliage isn’t particularly hardware demanding but looks pretty good nonetheless and recreates Vietnam’s atmosphere.
The game’s audio is rather enjoyable until you notice that there are only four licensed songs. The rest sound authentic (I’m not really sure the Vietnam War was quite distant from my date of birth) but nothing particularly great.
Vietcong: Purple Haze for Xbox isn’t a bad game it’s just not a good game. The dated graphics and pretty simple gameplay, mixed with the clunky command interface and just overall slow movement just don’t scream “This is exciting stuff!” Where Purple Haze does succeed is in giving you a lot of game for your money. The single player adventure can last a good seven hours and then there’s the myriad of multiplayer modes. As I mentioned, it isn’t a bad game but interested parties should definitely rent before plunging down the $40.
-- Edited by: Jose Liz -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Sep 22, 2004
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