Air Conflicts: Vietnam

Air Conflicts: Vietnam

          With this upgrade to the Vietnam conflict adding Huey's and a whiff of napalm to the morning, you can forgive us for expecting slightly better things from Air Conflicts: Vietnam. Which only makes it all the more disappointing that the game actually seems to be even more low budget, rushed and painfully flawed than its predecessor.

          This time around you are given a central character in Joe Thompson, a rookie US Navy pilot destined to be at the heart of many major events from the war that spawned an awful lot of good films. As before you’ll have a squad supporting you, with the ability to switch between pilots (and subsequently, different types of aircraft) on the fly, handy for when you’re running low on health or ammo – but you’ll need to make sure Joe gets back alive or it’s Game Over.

          The addition of helicopters to a reasonably impressive array of aircraft should really have added a lot more to the mix, as the notion of swooping through valleys in a UH-1 Iroquois (or “Huey”) or a CH-47 Chinook, with guns blazing and missiles shattering the environment as classic Sixties rock blasts out of the speakers (Vietnam really did have the best soundtrack) is enough to get us tingling. But while the music just about does its part, the rest is nowhere near as exciting or fun as it should be.

          We’ll start with the visuals, which looked dated back in Pacific Carriers and clearly haven’t been upgraded here. The aircraft models are pretty good, but the environments, cut-scenes and everything else look ropey as hell, with backgrounds visibly loading up in the distance – and it’s barely an exaggeration to say we’ve seen better on the PS2. That said, we can live with a few square edges or explosions that look less realistic than in South Park as long as the game play can keep us immersed, but Vietnam seems to be intent on dragging you out of the action as often as possible.

          There is a decent selection of bombing runs, dogfights, rescues and the like, taking in various land, air and sea backdrops. Every mission is split into numerous check pointed sections, but the system is woefully used. Just when you’re getting into things, you’ll be dragged out to another terrible cut-scene with some bland dialogue explaining the situation, before being dropped back close to where you left it – only now the game has changed and you may suddenly find yourself under heavy fire or facing the wrong direction and miles away from where you need to be.

          We reached a point where we died within five seconds each time we restarted and had to begin the entire mission from scratch – this kills any sense of involvement with the action and makes it feel more like a sporadic mix of occasional fun and fragmented tedium at best.

          Simple things like making you choose a starting plane for your next mission, without actually explaining what that mission is – and therefore what aircraft would be handy to use – remain from Pacific Carriers. There are also invisible ground troops that you can do nothing about, just so the game can unavoidably drain your health, presumably with the intention of making things a little more exciting, but in fact this just makes it all the more annoying; Ground troops you cannot control or see?

          Pretty much everything smacks of a low budget title that can’t have been play tested outside the development team. Actual gamers would have pointed out that the escort missions where you have to kill all the enemies yourself (because there is no AI attached to your squad as far as we can tell) within a short period of time really aren't as much fun as developers seem to think they are.

          Even the squad system that we liked in Pacific Carriers has been toned down in Vietnam. There’s still the same leveling up of all your pilots, with ratings boosted by their performance, but it feels a lot more detached than before and we really did not care for their well being like we used to. A few pointers taken from XCOM certainly wouldn't have gone amiss, but nothing about the game seems to have improved or moved forward over the past year.

          There is some enjoyment to be had, especially when you jump into the cockpit of a F-104 Starfighter or A-4 Sky hawk and get into dogfights (with a lock-on system replacing the WWII ‘leading’ targeting) or start raining down bombs and missiles on enemy ships and installations. But these moments feel too few and far between, while the helicopters handle rather awkwardly and it’s all just constantly interrupted by reminders of the game’s obvious limitations. As a Live Arcade title we might be more willing to accept them, but certainly not for £40.

Final Words About Air Conflicts: Vietnam

          Air Conflicts: Vietnam is a painfully low budget title that somehow manages to be a backward step on last year’s half-baked Pacific Carriers. While there’s some fun to be found jumping into the cockpit of a fighter jet with a classic soundtrack doing its best to lift your spirits, the wealth of flaws manages to suck most of the entertainment out of things. Pacific Carriers is a better game, Ace Combat a better air combat game than that, and there are far, far better ways for even the most ardent flight fan to spend their money; So what do you think? Air Conflicts: Vietnam worst game of 2013?

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