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| Clearing a village. |
Another aspect of the game which detracts from its feeling of immersion is
the aiming reticule. When placed over an enemy it will turn red and when placed
over a friendly it will have a big yellow “X” through it. Part of what made the
Vietnam War so intense was that the jungle made it difficult to see the enemy
and even to tell who was who in a firefight. In Men of Valor, whenever you
encounter the enemy you just need to sweep your reticule across the screen and
fire whenever it turns red – you don’t even need to see the enemy. Combine this
with the enemy AI’s boneheaded tendency to pick a spot and stick with it and
you’ve got yourself a turkey shoot. The game provides you with statistics after
completing a mission and you’ll find that your hit ratio is about two hits for
every miss or more and that you’re killing enemies at a rate of one kill for
every two shots fired. With results like these the war would have been over in a
week. This is supposed to be jungle combat, where you can’t see where the enemy
is hiding and sometimes can’t tell friend from foe.
I don’t usually write about the sound in a game because quite frankly gamers
don’t pay much attention to it unless it is exceptionally good or equally as
bad. Men of Valor’s sound falls into the former category. It’s not just the
classic rock clips on the soundtrack, the thundering roar of low-flying F-4s or
of the napalm they drop along enemy lines, or the concussion of mortar and
artillery shells that land nearby. It’s not only the distinctive sound of each
weapon, the ping of ricochets, or the disturbing thwack of bullet striking
flesh. It’s not even the chaotic shouts, curses, and insults yelled by both
sides as they’re locked in battles. It’s all of these things together which work
to create a far more immersive environment than is possible based on the
graphics alone.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
72%. An immersive Vietnam war experience hampered by poor AI.
System Requirements: Pentium 4 1.3 GHz; 256 MB RAM;
64 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 3 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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