Product Description

Set during the Vietnam War, Vietcong is a first-person shooter with tactical elements, combining thrilling action with strategic thinking. The evolving storyline combined with the game's intense sound system, graphics and animation truly bring powerful jungle combat to life on your PC.

Acting as an elite soldier, you command the A-team, part of the US Special Forces, in realistically represented Vietnamese environments. Players will lead as many as six expertly trained soldiers through 20 dramatic missions, and follow a storyline that captures the danger, fear and unpredictability of the war itself. The full-featured multiplayer mode also allows gamers to play as US Special Forces or Vietcong soldiers and to battle over specially designed levels.

In Vietcong the player chooses from more than 25 weapons, including M16s, grenade launchers and sniper rifles. Players can order air strikes or ambush enemy patrols, but success ultimately depends on their ability to keep a level head in the thick of intense action.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4149 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Take 2
• Released on: 2003-04-17
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Preview
Laden with expletives from the off, Vietcong is as far removed from a friendly family game as you can get. A gritty first-person shooter set in the midst of the Vietnam conflict, it's a brutal, engrossing game that needs one beast of a PC to be fully appreciated.

The Vietcong of the title are a crack fighting force, who put up some substantial resistance in the challenging single-player game. You can also, in multi-player mode, switch sides and pit your wits against the American forces. However, you don't have to play with humans to get a team-based feeling. The single-player mode at times demands that you lead a small team of fighters, although that's just one of the cocktail of tricks it throws at you.

The game's 20 missions generate really quite varied gameplay. If you've played other titles of a similar genre, you'll probably be familiar with the drill. Some require you to go out on attack, some require you to defend your positions and others involve more snooping and searching. At their best, the missions really are excellent; they're involving, deeply satisfying and offer a sturdy but enjoyable challenge. On the flip side, they can be a little uneven in tone. There are times when you can go a little too long without a sniff of action, for instance, and things can get quite frustrating.

But overall impressions are still very positive. The AI is strong, and the atmosphere the game generates is particularly engrossing. A varied arsenal of weapons helps add to the adrenaline-pumping action moments. Ultimately, if you've got a beefy PC and enjoy your first-person shooters, Vietcong should be at the top of your shopping list. -–Simon Brew

Manufacturer's Description
You forge ahead through the thick, oppressive heat. Your erratic heartbeat and amplified breaths are all that escape the hostile stillness. Sweat beads down your face as an all too familiar vibration breaks your concentration. You turn to face the threat while the rookie lays down a wild burst of gunfire into the trees up ahead. The jungle explodes into a fiery deathtrap with roars from automatic weapons interrupting the incoherent shouts from your men. Spin, aim, shoot, duck, dodge, fire. Your actions form a dance as rapid explosions create a giant fireball of destruction. And then, as quickly as the chaos sprang to life, it departs, slipping away into the darkness. A downpour ensues, quelling the raging jungle, setting things right once again. But there's no time to rest. This is a war, and you've got a job to do. Experience the danger, fear, and unpredictability of lethal jungle warfare against a cunning enemy in Vietcong, a first-person action shooter set during the infamous conflict in Southeast Asia! Command expertly trained members of the U.S. Special Forces on critical missions through dangerous territories! You are the leader of one of the finest fighting forces ever assembled. It is time to show the world what you're made of.

Customer Reviews

Vietcong
General/Summary: This is a great game.Very realistic to play.

Gameplay: The game play is great.You need to take your time in the field or you will die quickly.The missions are very realistic as well as the multiplay portion of the game.The enemy is very hard to find in the thick jungle. The squad that you command and give orders to is a nice feature.

Graphics: Graphics are great. I had some frame rate problems at first, but that went away when I installed the no cd patch. While in multiplayer your frame rate depends on how good your game server is.

Sound: Sound is also great.I did however go in to dxdiag and turn down the audio excelerator.This also increased framerate with no loss to sound.They really did a great job with the sounds of the jungle.

underrated and untouchable
Vietcong is one hell of a game. For once and quite uniquely, the “enemy” have some character, you’re in their jungle territory, you hear them speak, you’re in their homeland, they care, they’re gonna get you before you get them. You’ll get up close instead of blindly shooting at anything that moves across the screen. All in all a little realism goes an awful long way in Vietcong.

What Vietcong has, that other more famous war time FPS fail to achieve, is atmosphere. This feels like a real war game and a real battle. There’s plenty of stealth as well as full on fire-fights. You have to think as well as push the trigger. There are some moments where you will be so immersed you’ll jump out of your skin as a Vietcong emerges from the jungle in front of you. There are moments where you’ll feel totally overwhelmed and vulnerable. Refreshingly you’ll not feel the script is rushing you on to the next scenario.

Vietcong is different and better than most war games because you are fully involved. You get the in between mission briefings animated, there are no cut aways to typed documents with mission overviews. You get to see the choppers getting you out once the mission is finished.

And for an all time, wonderful gaming experience the rescue of the American POW from the Vietcong camp is tough, stealthy, brilliantly realised and amazing to play.

There are one or two minor glitches but overall a great game that deserves a great deal more credit and great deal more gamers to play and savour. Rank it alongside Medal of Honour and Call of Duty when you want some quiet time mixed with trigger happy jungle trekking. It deserves its 18 rated badge for the language and often dodgy motivations, but at least Vietcong takes no prisoners in a straightforward and hard core Hollywood Platoon style romp.

Could have been title of the year
This game is produce by Illusion Softworks the team that produce the very memorable and brilliant Mafia, that went on to become game of the year as voted by gamespot. This game could have also been another run away success but fails on to many levels. The problem is that there was a rush to get the title out before the current explosion of Vietnam games, and the designers missed out on a number of bugs. The game sees you flying into the jungle as Sergeant First Class Steve Hawkins not to be confused with Professor Steven Hawkins, with a machine gunner and clone of Chef from Apocalypse Now, talking about what happened to your predecessor. You land at your base and the fun begins. You get to meet the team and learn to shoot and you are of on your first mission. The game for the next few missions is great and exciting, you are in the most part a team of men with a medic, a radio operator, a machine gunner and an engineer and the very hand guy on point who leads your team through the jungle. The teams AI is reasonable and can get you out of many scrapes. But after a while you start to realise that the jungle start to look the same and a bit repetitive. And be prepared for the level in which you are down in Charlie’s tunnels, it just seem endless and makes you want to quit the game. The plot line is good enough to keep you playing but the voice acting isn’t the best. Illusion Softworks should have spent more time on this title; it could have been a classic rather than a good game.