Vietcong 2 PC Review

Welcome to the jungle! Well it is more like a welcome back as it is time for Pterodon to release the follow up to the 2003 hit Vietcong. Vietcong 2 follows in the same footsteps its 2 year old predecessor thread in. It is time to step out into jungle warfare, although is more urban jungle this time round. the original Vietcong game did a great job of immersing you in a play style that forced you to play cautiously but still managed to be fun to play. Sadly the same can’t be said the second time round.

Graphics

Maybe a few years ago these types of graphics would have been passable but in this day and age they look very, very bad. When you couple this with the fact that the game is very glitchy and even while played on a high spec machine will flat out refuse to run without frame rate problems. This means you will have to make a already ugly game even uglier by turning down the settings which is downright unacceptable. The game really needed more testing before release. Even though some patches may fix this in upcoming weeks it is still a terrible thing for gamers who have spent thousands of dollars on their rig due to the high requirements of recent games…

Gameplay

Vietcong 2 starts with you in bed with a hooker, an interesting premise to say the least, but we are not quite sure if she “loved you long time” and quite frankly we don’t care. You are then ordered out of your comfy bed and sent down to a US compound to escort a US war reporter. The game then tries to build a vast amount of atmosphere and make you feel interested in the epic war you are about to take part in ,but once the main action starts most of this atmosphere completely disappears and you begin your tedious albeit short (see lifespan) game that feels very outdated when compared to current FPSs.

As I stated above, this time much of the in game action sees you fighting in vast urban jungle rather the green foliage filled kind. This could be classed as the game’s first mistake as part of what made the first game fun was sneaking through the undergrowth, hiding and waiting for your chance to strike, but alas there is not much of that this time round. The city you are bearing arms this time round is called Hue and the game takes place in the days leading up to and after the infamous Tet Offensive of 1968.

Sadly the overall game is very dull, it has the potential to be better than it is but it never pushes itself that extra bit. The enemy AI is also of the distinctly average variety and none of the opposition show any smarts while caught up in a fight. This same average AI is bestowed upon your team mates but interesting enough none of them will ever die, your team mates are truly god-like as they can stand up to any amount of punishment and be ready to give you health/ammo when you need them. Unlike your team mates you are just a puny human as you will die just like you would in the real world. A shot to the head equals instant death. This, like the original means the game is very hard to complete but because the game is much less fun to play it is very easy to get bored by having to repeat parts of the game and you could easily toss it aside before you complete the first few levels.

Sound

Vietcong 2 is home to loads of swear words that’s for sure. Audio is without a doubt the game’s strong point, with lots of nice touches that have been added to try and immerse you into the game. Your team mates share lots of chatter between each other while you battle through the streets and have a nice selection of phrases to stop many repeats happening, but after a few hours play some one liners can get annoying. The music is nothing special either and at times it does not suit the setting of the game at all.

Lifespan

On the plus side you do get two campaigns to fight through although the Vietnamese campaign seems rather short and feels like a last minute idea that was tacked on to slightly improve the longevity of the game. Due to the game’s high difficulty settings you should get around 15+ hours of gameplay out of it, although around 5 hours of this may be just repeats of areas as you will unfairly die many times through both campaigns as many awkwardly placed enemies just keep killing you over and over again. The last feature that Vietcong 2 has to try and keep you playing is its multiplayer and it has to be said there is so much better out there. Both co-op and deathmatch modes are years behind many other games in the genre and if you have played any other big names FPSs in recent years you will be let down by what you see here.

Overall

Vietcong 2 is a good game there is no doubt about that, but sadly there has been a lot of good war games in recent years so companies must strive to be great in order to make a war game that cuts the mustard these days. Sadly, Vietcong 2 falls below this metaphorical mark and in the process plummets into insignificance in the war game genre. The title does have some interesting features but sadly most of this stuff has been seen before in the many other games in the genre; and in all honesty these other game do a much better job of it. If you are still interested in the game and are willing to put up with the flaws and at times insane difficulty then I suppose it may be worth a buy but only if you have played and completed all recent incarnations of Call of Duty, Medal of Honour and any other game that has a reference to war in the title and plays from a first person perspective. Vietcong 2 is only for those that do not have the patience to wait around for something better.