Without going into too much political debates, it would be difficult to find a balance between non-fictional events and gameplay. Granted some actually done a decent job balancing the two together (Vietcong / Call of Duty 1 and 2) however some didn’t and The Hell in Vietnam is one of them. City Interactive tried to grasp the immersion of this conflict however it all boils down to another budget title shooter with plenty of green hues.
The plot of this game tells the story of the main protagonist who has no name. As an officer of the US Army, you, among millions others are trying to liberate the communist regime in Vietnam. Technology and manpower outnumbered by a milestone, you will soon to realise that Vietnam is not a walk-in-the-park conflict.
The gameplay is your typical run-of-the-mill shooter. That is you shoot the bad guys and if you have difficulty knowing who they are, they aren’t the ones that has a red X on them. So there are no friendly fire which is a bit of a shame. Also all weapons have an iron sight however very soon you get to realise this is a wasted feature as you can aim just as good without them. Also, initially I thought I was playing with aiming assist on as my aiming was a lot better than I thought but soon to realise there were no options. So yes you can target a foe many miles away and still kill him.
And this uncanny accuracy applies with the Viet Cong however they have one other trick up their sleeve – they are able to see through the heaviest of foliage thus empty a full clip before you can say Charlie. Also during the Vietnam conflict, the Viet Cong were known to be the invisible enemy and this game proved this as they quite literally appear out of nowhere…like there were some kind of trigger point – who knows?
The controls for your main guy is quite typical – that is using the mouse to look and all of that however his movement is a little odd. For him to start walking / running, he takes a little time to ‘rev up’ and when you stop / backtrack, it’s like he’s sliding to next base in baseball. I get that developers City Interactive are trying to simulate real movement however I’m pretty sure no one goes on a sliding trip when stopping nor needing the time to ‘rev up’ when walking.
Thankfully though, there’s no ‘auto heal’ as there are med packs lying about. Granted that even that it’s not realistic however I was hoping the healing system was akin to say Vietcong, yet if I have to choose between immortal status (selfheal) versus health packs, I take the heath packs any day.
The graphics are way behind the times. Using the Chrome 2 engine, it looks like they only got the basic version as the buildings textures are pretty plain to see. However the foliage looks dense and impenetrable, the way it should be. The physics is a little too much to bear as when they die, they lie in a peculiar fashion – especially after a bomb blast as most of the time they die standing upright. But the ambience sounds and musical scores are pretty decent considering however there’s one scene they tried to replicate a late 60s song however didn’t quite get there. Maybe they don’t have the rights to any songs of that era.
The game has eight missions therefore it shouldn’t take long to finish however mission one can literally take only five minutes to complete. Also it sports that easy / medium / hard difficulty yet a seasonal FPS player should go straight to hard. Only issue is that at times, the game can be a little hard due to the Viet Cong appearing out of nowhere and their ability to see through the thickest foliage is nothing short of remarkable. And because the ending is absolutely atrocious I’m not sure why you really want to play this game. I guess if you like me and want a quick kill session, then go for it however don’t expect this game to simulate the Vietnam conflict otherwise you’ll be utterly disappointed.
Final note: my reason for a 4 / 10 is because it’s tagged as a budget title otherwise I would have scored it a 3 / 10.