Men of Valor is one of the best Vietnam shooters to date, but it's difficulty may turn some players away.
User Rating: 8.1 | Men of Valor PC
Men of Valor is from the creators of the original Medal of Honor game, but this time the developers attempt to tackle the early campaigns of the Vietnam War, and they do an excellent job. But the overall difficulty of the game may dissuade people who liked Medal of Honor for its brisk pace from tackling this war. In Men of Valor you play Dean Shepard a fresh young African-American Marine of whom we learn more about from dictated letters to and from family in the States. The letters come after each level and set the stage for the upcoming level. The letters, along with staged in-engine cut scenes before and during most levels lend a sense of the cinematic representations of the war (like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket) to the game, foul-mouthed buddies included. The environments are rich, detailed and diverse. The jungle grasses virtually obscure all movement when crouched creating a sense that the enemy can appear from virtually anywhere (sometimes they do, spawning directly from the sides of the map). The village and city environments are convincing as well, and are a welcome break from the dense foliage of most of the rest of the game. There are even claustrophobic tunnel and trench levels. Overall the player gets a sense that these are much like the actual Vietnam locales that the game creators purport them to be. The character animations, however, leave a bit to be desired. While certainly sufficient, they did not seem to be on par graphically with the environments they inhabited. Their movements are sometimes a bit clumsy and not very convincing. What is a representation of Vietnam without exploding napalm? There is something satisfying about these massive explosions, and they are one of the graphical highlights of the game. Every time napalm is dropped near Dean's squad the explosion rips across the screen from one side to another, obliterating enemies and foliage alike. A shimmering heat wave obscures the senses for a few moments and the player can practically feel the heat. In one of the games final levels mortar explosions and gunfire tear through a system of trenches nonstop and one can appreciate the level of detail the game's creators put into its pyrotechnics. The sound effects certainly do not detract from the overall game, but they are standard fare. It might have been a bit more helpful in game play to have more directional sound effects. Finding the enemy in the dense bush may have been a bit easier if you could tell where they were coming from their verbal taunts. The game play is where it could be assumed that most players would find fault in the game. Those who are used to run and gun shooters will have to change their tactics here. The game rewards those who take each mission slowly, who use cover to their advantage, and who are willing to take the time to aim carefully. On normal difficulty, the player who becomes exposed from cover for too long will be dead before long. Those who take the fast approach will find themselves frustrated when they are constantly gunned down, especially since the game saves only at certain checkpoints, which may be spaced far apart. Repetition of the same trips through the jungle, cut scenes, and frustrating battles, may lengthen an already long game into an interminable one. A player can mitigate this, however, by taking a slow, cautious approach from the onset. Once this tact is taken, one realizes how much more the game can be compared to what it must have taken to survive the real war. The health system rewards those who are cautious as well. There are not a large number of health kits scattered around. If there are some laying about they are in logical places, like huts or command centers or on enemy soldiers. When the player is wounded the health will gradually deteriorate to a certain point unless you stop and apply a bandage (by holding down a button) until the bleeding is stopped and that health is regained. All told, health becomes a serious consideration and those who are less gung-ho will find it less of a problem. When the game is complete, the player may feel like he survived a war. This could mean that the player was fighting the difficulty of the game for so long that it's a miracle that it's finally over, or it could be that the level of immersion is so well fostered by the overall story, tense battle sequences, and realistic environments that the player comes to the realization that Men of Valor is one of the best Vietnam single-player games to date. 
