One of the difficulties with creating a first person shooter set in Vietnam is capturing the feel of patrolling a lush jungle in which danger could be hiding anywhere.  In this regard Vietcong does a pretty competent job.  The jungle environments are filled with brush, trees, and tropical plants, and the game captures the mountainous topography of Vietnam quite nicely.  While the path that you can take is pretty linear, you have the illusion that the jungle is actually quite vast.  The lush environment comes at the expense of graphical detail and so the game's environmental textures tend to look blocky, especially under close examination.

The command center. Most of the buttons don't do anything.

The jungle patrol missions can be pretty tense at times.  You'll never know where the enemy is lurking and when you'll suddenly come under fire.  You'll also need to be on the lookout for tripwires and other booby traps as you make your way along the jungle trails.  If you're going to survive the jungle patrols, then you'll need to move cautiously and be ready for action at any time.  The patrol missions also tend to be long running, with new objectives added as you progress.  This all adds up to some edge of your seat, enjoyable gameplay.

Unfortunately, the fun you'll have with the jungle missions will be just about wiped out by some of the most frustrating missions you'll ever find in a first-person shooter.  The enjoyment that you derive from successfully completing your first long jungle patrol will be completely drained by the next mission in which you must defend your base during a nighttime raid.  While a base defense mission sounds like it'd be fun, the game's graphics are so dark that you won't be able to see far enough to make your way down your base's trenches, let alone see the attacking enemy.  And this is with the brightness turned up on your monitor as far as it will go and in a completely darkened room.  Should you stick it out and successfully stumble your way through, your frustrations will not be over.  The game tries to give you a larger taste of the Vietnam experience by having you clear out some Vietcong tunnels.  The tunnels are dark, long, and twisting, and even though you'll have a flashlight you won't be able to see much.  Many gamers will give up on Vietcong rather than endure the frustration of slogging through the tunnel missions.  It may have been a grim reality of the Vietnam war, but that doesn't mean it translates to enjoyable gameplay.

Vietcong includes support for multiplayer play in which one side plays as the US and the other the NVA.  The game does not make for a great multiplayer experience, though.  Instead of capturing the feel of the single player jungle missions, the multiplayer game is hampered by the lack of balance between the available weapons and its inability to encourage or force cooperative play.  What you end up with instead is a sniper-fest.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 74%.  Vietcong can provide some tense and enjoyable gameplay, but also serves up some very frustrating levels that will try the patience of many gamers.  With a bit more polish and consistent level design Vietcong would be a really good game, but as it stands its shortcomings will limit its appeal.

System Requirements:  Pentium III 700; 256 MB RAM; 32 MB Video RAM; 16x CD-ROM;  1.8 GB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.

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