A dismal attempt at Vietnam conflict and a massive waste of time.
GAMEPLAY: This is the part of the game that makes and breaks the game because the gameplay intrinsically works itself throughout every other aspect of a game. And if you don't sell your audience at the gameplay you lose a pretty myopic demographic and their channel of funds. The gameplay in this game is pretty much atrocious compared with today's standards. The creators don't make any try to separate themselves from other games. Most games seem to follow a pretty austere and basic template but it seems these guys wanted to retool it and try to make it better. The game makes a pretty lousy retooling especially when it comes to gunfire. The game has only two shot scenario modes: sight and regular mode and they both are good ideas but the developers forgot to develop their targets. They also have different gun selections but it's just a firearm and handgun. A lot of the problems come from unrealistic biophysical interpretations (e.g. gunfire a two shots fired from an M-1 carbine is not enough to have these guys asking for mercy). They take the shot, bend down in agony for about .5- 1.5 seconds, and then almost miraculously get up and fire as they did before without any effect from previous shots. Which brings up the fact in this game, why use a high powered one shot gun on a soldier that will have the same effect has a far less powered gun? Which now gives you the most logical choice of just using a machine gun to raze the Vietcong. Now to the biggest problem which has been eluded to in the reviews of this game, your team. Your players act more like appendages to your own solo team rather than the group acts like a team. Your point man is very slow and its hard to tell when he is just stopping to look out for the rest of the team or telling you about a trap he has spotted. Also if you use your pointman he slows you down considerably and this can become a recipe for disaster. An average gamer can not take as long as the pointman does and that causes the gamer to get furious, run ahead, and ultimately run himself into a land mine. Your radioman is only needed when the game says that you need help from him. Your medic can be idiotic at times, stopping right in front of you or stopping you from moving and leaving you blind to any enemy fire. This only adds to small resistant forces spread throughout a pretty unrealistic looking jungle (more on that later), traps that no one else but yourself can disengage, and the constant chore of calling your team to your own area if you don't use your pointman. These ingredients make up a pretty boring and sometimes frustrating game.
GRAPHICS: In vietcong: purple haze, graphics do not play their own integral role and meld themselves with game but rather interfere with the game. The constant brush you encounter in the jungle brings you back to the realization that you are playing a video game. The brush looks like pretty much looks like low low-level cg textual graphics and shows the exact direction you need to take other than a few red herring paths. Kudos, though, to the building textual outlayers and concept artists. The buildings look very good and artillery placements look good but that's all.
AUDIO: The audio is probably the last problem with the game. Mouth movements are not used well when people talk to each other. But this can be gathered from a game like this since mouth to sound science is only delved into with strongly conversational games (e.g. RPG's and thought provoking Adventure games). Most of the problem comes with the conversations themselves and sudden expletive outbursts during battle. Men will use expletives so woodenly that the original meaning just becomes an obscene sentence.
I played this game one night and it was quite boring and now that I have go this off my chest I can go do something else.