War.
The storyline in the game is your standard war game sort of fare – you’re a rookie solider, faced with the fun and games of war for the first time. You start off as a low level grunt, before making your way into the elite Special Forces unit and beyond. Cut scenes take place before and after missions to give you a little back-story about your motley crew of soldiers. Of course, there isn’t exactly a whole lot of depth here – the main point of this game is to kill as many ‘Charlies’ as possible.
Opening up a can on the… Uh, cave by the look of it.
What is it good for?
Nam ‘67 is mostly your standard third person affair. You progress on a linear path – with other team members – through the jungles of Vietnam, killing off any resistance (and there is PLENTY of it) on your way to certain objectives, usually consisting of blowing something up. Unfortunately, sometimes you complete an objective and have nowhere obvious to go. This will lead to you running around the levels, before you run past an invisible checkpoint and the game gives you another objective. Incredibly irritating.
There are a variety of weapons at your disposal, including the American Rifle (near useless due to the recoil), the K7 Rifle (single shot weapon that kills where ever it hits) and the aptly named Death Machine (1000 round machine gun that requires a backpack for its ammo). Each of the weapons handle completely different. For example, the AK-47 is useless at hitting anything at a distance – but up close, it will wipe out a group of Vietcong without fuss. Because you can carry only one primary weapon at a time, a certain element of strategy is required. Do you want to pick the Vietcong off one at a time with the K7 rifle? Or do you want to emulate Rambo’s heroics with an assault rifle? The choice is yours.
One problem here is that the recoil on some weapons is a little too severe. The crosshair rapidly expands when you begin opening fire, spraying the landscape – rather than your enemy – with bullets. Even the single shot K7 rifle takes a good two or three seconds to re center the crosshair – not good when you’re under pressure. Worse still, most of the weapons just cannot hit anything at a distance – even when crouched and totally still. It’s not like we want a perfect headshot, either – just that fifteen rounds at a stationary target should make some sort of contact!
Regardless of this frustration, the game is still quite good to play. Your team is invincible (wouldn’t want to mess up the narrative, would we?), and not entirely useless – their main supply is suppressing fire, with the occasional kill. Which is nice, as you definitely will appreciate their presence when swarms of Vietcong start pouring out of the trees – which they do, and often. This leads to some intense shootouts, where you will be ducking behind the nearest rock for cover. Fantastic stuff.
RPG style destruction. No, Final Fantasy has nothing to do with this. * sound of gunfire *
Absolutely nothing.
The games visuals were nothing to write home about – and even featured pop up and slight fogging (although this could be argued as a more atmospheric mist), despite being played on a powerful PC. Hmm. Worth noting is the way the limbs of the hapless Vietcong explode into a red mist. It’s actually quite funny, particularly when you nail a headshot (if you don’t think of the poor chap’s family, anyway). However, everything else is perfectly serviceable, if totally unremarkable.
The game’s audio on the other hand is a different story – many popular 60’s artists, such as John Lee Hooker, Sonny & Cher and even The Monkees, supply music to the game. Of course, you will not be enjoying these tunes during combat, but rather during your time back at the base during other various activities. The tunes capture the feel of 60’s quite well. Better still are the sound effects, particularly of the gun. Each weapon has a powerful and satisfying BANG when you pull the trigger – it’s a little thing, but it’s a great little thing. Uhh, yes.
Get used to seeing this.
Say it again! Or not.
Whilst there are problems with the game – extremely linear, repetitive objectives, AND NO MULTIPLAYER (seriously, is there no multiplayer option in this game? Or are we just blind?), among others – the game is a whole lot of fun to play. And, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.
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