Gathering of Developers Vietcong-Purple Haze X Box Action Review

KSTEGALL

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Price Paid:  $10.00 from eBay

Summary:
Pretty kewl game if you don't mind a second-rate shooter. Set in the Vietnam war, your soldier goes on various missions through the jungle locales trying to survive and take out enemy Vietcong supply depots. Most levels you're accompanied by a Vietnamese tracker who you can send to scout ahead and will warn you of upcoming dangers such as ambushes and traps. You're also accompanied by your squad-mates who, as long as you can keep them alive, will assist you with re-supplies of ammo and medical assistance. One also acts as a radio-man, offering mission updates from HQ as you progress.

Strengths:
-Compelling story and unique historical environment, not just a dumb and nameless shooter
-Nice graphics, especially if you play the Xbox version on your Xbox 360 as it's backwards-compatible. Definitely bumps up the graphics & resolution.
-Allies who accompany you and are actually useful
-Historically accurate weapons
-Just a simple, fun shooter

Weaknesses:
-Allies can get hung up on pathfinding and sometimes you need to babysit them, prodding them to continue
-Game can be short & doesn't have much replay value

Dinkabus

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 0 of 5

Price Paid:  $1.00 from Blockbuster

Summary:
Whatever you do, DON"T BUY THIS "GAME"! After it loaded and the cheezy team began to move, I found myself alone in the bleached out jungle. I went back to see where the rest of the guys were. One was stuck on top of a big rock. He was walking but not going anywhere. One was kneeling down looking in the wrong direction and the last one was just standing, not moving. They were all in the same position as when the game started! I had to give the command to move 3 times B4 they would respond. Next to that the weapon (as your walking) looks like it should have a bayonet, back and forth, back and forth in a stabbing motion. I couldn't take much of that. The jungle rendering is simply awful. It looks like your oldest shirt after 1000 washings. Add to that fog and you can forget it. I was hearing cheezy bullet sounds go buy me and before I could figure out what that noise was I was being hit (never hearing rifle fire!).
You can run right up on the baddies, shoot them in the face (several times and they still don't die. Oh man, don't these game developers have testers who tweak the bugs B4 releasing these games to the buying public? Or at least someone to tell them that, "hey, your game sucks!"? Come on.