Men of War: Vietnam

At least Men of War: Vietnam is honest up front. The very first mission tosses you into the deep end without any life preservers. Denied even the benefit of a brief tutorial or some tips on how to handle the first few enemy encounters, you're thrown into the midst of a battle between the US and a small group of Russian advisors and Vietcong soldiers. A Huey incinerates your convoy in the scripted opening seconds and then returns to obliterate the paltry four survivors in your squad within moments. Either you get your guys off the road and under cover in less time than it took you to read the start of this paragraph, or everybody dies. It's an abysmal introduction. It's hard to imagine anyone new to the Men of War series sticking around for very long after this greeting. Even series veterans can't help but be taken aback by how brutally the game begins. Playing on easy helps a bit by reducing enemy numbers, but the game remains incredibly punishing.

The two-part campaign that sees the first five missions focusing on Russian and Vietcong troops and the second five missions swinging over to the US is unforgiving all the way through. You go into missions with tiny squads ranging from just four guys to around a dozen or so, and you have to fight and/or sneak your way through huge maps crawling with countless enemy patrols and dotted with umpteen goals. The playing field is so tilted against you that you're at risk of it falling on your head at any moment. Enemies can spot you from long distances, hear you even when you're firing silenced rounds, and shoot you with unerring accuracy even when you're hunkered down behind brush. The entire squad can be wiped out in mere moments, at almost any time. You need to creep forward very cautiously, experiment with a lot of trial and error, and save every time you do anything even remotely good. Kill a bad guy? Save. Find a great cover spot? Save. And so on. At least the game helps out by autosaving at smart, frequent intervals.

There are a couple of saving graces. Mission maps are extremely detailed and come with multiple options to get past every enemy troop position. Granted, sometimes none of them are pleasant, but at least you have many choices, ranging from open assaults to flanking maneuvers to firing locations and weapon selection. Enemy artificial intelligence is lacking, too, though at least the stupidity of your foes makes it easier to complete scenarios against the incredible odds. Foes typically respond to attacks by going back to standard patrol routes, oblivious to the corpses of their comrades and the burning wreckage around them, or by walking mindlessly into the jungle until your lads shoot them to bits. When you're beaten, you're beaten through sheer force of numbers or by superior enemy positions like bunkers, but never from being outsmarted.


Zoom in close for all the glorious battle detail, like your men being overrun enemies.
Unfortunately, your own troops aren't very smart, either. They often switch weapons for no apparent reason in mid-battle and ignore enemies gleefully murdering the whole squad from a few feet away. Maybe it's the cover itself, or maybe it's dumb soldiers not standing in the right spots, but your boys often seem to think they're hidden when they're exposed enough to take a bullet to the head. Targeting isn't very accurate, unless you micromanage troops with direct control, which is hard to do in the middle of a big scrap. You can order your squad to assault a lone VC hiding behind a truck, for example, and watch in horror as your lads line up behind the bumper and fill it full of holes…while your enemy pops out of cover and slaughters everyone.

Special abilities and weapons offer some chance at survival. There is something of a role-playing flavor here with named squadmates who come equipped with gear and combat skills. At times, the game resembles the Commandos series. Troops with silenced SMGs, sniper rifles, and big M60s provide you with a shot at whittling down enemy numbers. That said, the small size of your squads makes it devastating when just one man is killed. Lose your sniper, and it's pretty much game over unless you're in the home stretch.

Jungle terrain is both an ally and an enemy. The engine does a great job rendering the foliage of Southeast Asia, and it isn't just for show. It's so thick that you can ably stage hit-and-run raids where you blitz enemy positions and then fade back into the green. Bad guys take advantage of the green stuff as well, though, and it's so voluminous that you often can't see anything. Events develop so fast that your men might be slaughtered before you can get the camera properly into position. You expect a lot of jungle in a Vietnam game, of course, but it seems like you wind up with a big frond in your face every time you adjust the camera the slightest bit to better view a firefight.


The plan: Kill, or be killed.
All of the campaign missions can also be run through cooperatively with up to four other players. This is the best way to play the game, as it mitigates the extreme difficulty of going solo. It also lets you tackle objectives more efficiently via coordinated attacks. Some missions seem to have been designed with co-op in mind. The first mission, in fact, features a section where you must detonate three US Hueys before they take off. This is hard to achieve playing solo without sacrificing at least one man during the assault, because the choppers head to the skies almost as soon as you open fire. But when you're playing with a buddy, you can divvy up the targets to blow them all up before the pilots can get the rotors spinning. Unfortunately, there are some technical problems with online play. Connection errors frequently pop up on the server screen, making it impossible to join many matches. This may be because of conflicts between various versions of the game sold by different retailers or conflicts between those who purchased the DLC pack released alongside the main game and those who did not. Either way, a patch is desperately needed. Even when you can get into games, the play is a bit laggy, and synchronization issues frequently arise.

As frustrating as Men of War: Vietnam is, it still provides some satisfying moments. Emerging hale and hearty at the end of a mission is always cause for celebration, seeing how the odds are so slanted against you, and the opposing forces are made up of what seems to be the entire US Army or Vietcong. Still, the extreme challenge is a tough sell, and it makes it so difficult to get past the first mission that you might never get to the point where you can get hooked.

Naval Warfare

Last year, Aqua: Naval Warfare launched on Xbox Live Arcade to below average critical reception. The game featured a highly intriguing steampunk story that took place at sea, and the gameplay premise—a twin-stick shooter set on water—was incredibly promising. Unfortunately, the game failed to deliver on practically every front. One year later, developer Games Distillery is re-releasing the game on Steam (this time simply titled Naval Warfare) and not surprisingly, it remains a big disappointment.
The world has been flooded, and various groups have been formed by the survivors. These groups are battling on the sea for total control of various territory, and this is where you come in. As part of one of these factions, it is up to you to take on enemies and engage in escort missions. Though the story is interesting on paper, the execution is rather lackluster. In between chapters you’re treated to stylish hand-drawn cutscenes. As cool as these look, it’s hard to really care about the story due to some weak characters and uninspired voice acting.

Storytelling isn’t the only area where Naval Warfare falls short. Oftentimes, games with weak narratives can easily be forgiven as long as they provide a compelling adventure. But even in its gameplay, Naval Warfare is an utter failure. Rest assured, the ideas are most certainly interesting. A twin-stick shooter at sea could have been really awesome, but a number of gameplay hindrances keep this game from being as fun as possible.
The first thing that really sticks out about Naval Warfare is its lack of direction. As you play, you’re tasked with certain objectives, but the game never puts much emphasis on them. You end up waiting for an on-screen arrow prompt to guide you to whatever destination the game chooses. Naval Warfare should have been a much more linear experience, but due to the large stages, which often feel devoid of life, you’ll constantly stray off course and hit barriers. You then realize that all of the enemies you’re supposed to eliminate or the ships you’re supposed to protect are on the other side of the map, so you have to backtrack before you can complete a mission.
You can obtain upgrades or play in two additional ships, but doing so doesn’t yield anything in the way of impressive results. Instead, the mild customization options make you wish there was more to do. This aspect of the game could have delivered some deep options, but with a lack of content, it’s just another failed aspect of Naval Warfare.

Naval Warfare feels so misguided, and the campaign ultimately gets too boring to sit through. You can team up with a buddy and take on waves of enemies as a team, and it’s certainly more fun than messing with the single-player game on your own. You can even play Skirmish mode, which pits you against hordes of enemies and tests your twin-stick shooting mettle. As decent as these modes may be, they get repetitive and only hold your attention for so long. Naval Warfare was supposed to offer a great story mode, and the disappointment will stay with you the entire time you play, regardless of what mode you’re tackling.
At the very least, Naval Warfare manages to do one thing right, and it happens to be the least important aspect of any game: the graphics are pretty damn awesome. Water effects look great, ships and enemy fighters are richly detailed, and the whole ocean atmosphere looks spectacular. Explosions are a bit weak, but other than this minor gripe, everything in-game is remarkable. As previously mentioned, the hand-drawn cutscenes are great, and they really give the steampunk story a unique appearance.

Tropico 4

ave you ever wanted to rule an island nation?  Have you ever wanted to be a dictator, decide which political activists need to “disappear”, run a military state, build a park, or side with communists over the United States?  Well, now you can do all of that.  I mean, you could have before with Tropico, Tropico 2, and Tropico 3, but now there’s Tropico 4!
This is the perfect city simulation game for people that always wanted to oppress their citizens in Sim City.  Tropico 4 is full of humor and detail—lots of detail.  Like, it’s almost too much detail.  Some people might enjoy controlling the number of jobs available in the factory, their salary, and which citizens to hire/fire for that job, but it left me wanting to turn off the game and let my brain unwind.  Some people, mainly those that Tropico 4 is aimed at, will be happy to control every single aspect of every building and citizen, and to them I say, “have at it.”  It’s just a bit too much for me at times.
That’s not to say I disliked the amount of detail in every aspect of the game.  If you really get into role-playing as a leader or dictator, the ability to customize your dictator is fun.  You can set your back-story to how you came to power.  Obviously, I was a secret agent that was supplanted into this role by the CIA, giving me better relations with the United States.  Down with the Communists!  I will not drink your Chernobyl-infused vodka!.




The game is mostly mission-based.  The same missions, over and over, just for different buildings.  There’s 20-something scenarios in the campaign, but most people play games like this for the sandbox mode.  You do all the normal things that you’d expect from a city strategy game; manage an economy, please your citizens, choose what crops to import and export, appease different political factions, or don’t, it’s up to you.  You have a great deal of control over how you want to run your little piece of paradise.  Factions are in your face about demands and how to appease them, and they all have a cooky leader as the face of their faction.  Realize that how they look and act are supposed to be done out of humor, so try not to get offended.  You’ll have to overcome the obnoxious, inconsequential thoughts of your citizens (just who do they think they are, telling their El Presidente how to run his country), and recover from natural disasters thrown your way by that b*tch, Mother Nature.  Doesn’t she have mass amounts of birds to be killing somewhere?  It’s been a while since she’s done that.
It’s hard to point out new features, because there really aren’t many.  It’s pretty much Tropico 3 with some tweaks to the economy and foreign powers.  It breaks no new ground, but if you’re a fan of what developer Haemimont Games has been building with the Tropico series, you might want to pick up Tropico 4.  The humor is there.  Graphics-wise, the game (on the highest settings) looks good.  The detail is definitely there, but if you aren’t used to city strategy games then you could get overwhelmed quickly.  Also, the music makes you feel like you are waking from a drunken stupor: inside of a cot in a cocaine-producing nation, with a bottle of rum, two days worth of facial hair scruff, a straw hat, a stained tank-top, and a dirty Tommy Bahama shirt thrown over it.  Pants?  No—no pants.  It was a rough night.
Like I said, this game is an entertaining, control everything city strategy game.  The lack of a multiplayer is a bit of a turn-off, personally, but at least you can brag to your friends via Facebook about the many ways you are destroying the lives of your citizens.  There’s tweaks that build on its predecessor, but it doesn’t offer much that ground-breaking or expand in depth.  There’s tons to do with the ability to control almost every aspect of every building and citizen.  It just gets a little laborious after a little bit, due to not enough changes from Tropico 3.

Delivery Truck Simulator (PC) - PC

Growing up I was never one of those kids who was into toy cars. I did have a few matchbox vehicles, and though me and the neighborhood kids had fun watching them loop the loop, we eventually discovered it was way more fun to beat each other into submission with the lengths of flexible orange track. Eventually our parents got tired of us whacking the crap out of each other and tried to placate our violent tendencies with video games, which I’m sure helped turn us into the stable well-balanced sociopaths we are today.
The point is that while most of my American classmates were properly weaned on video games, there was always that weird kid who only wanted to play with his Tonka trucks. The kind of kid who eagerly tore ass down the stairs so he could watch the garbage truck rolling past, popping a boner for those poorly-produced VHS tapes meant for kids with vehicle fetishes, with titles like “Big Rigs Gone Wild.” I can only imagine that these undeveloped morons eventually grew into drooling man-children, the kind of strange and terrifying consumers eagerly awaiting the upcoming PC title “Delivery Truck Simulator.”

I literally cannot watch this trailer without cracking up. The key source of hilarity is the crappy generic rock song that plays beneath the simulated engine noises, ramping up a thrilling crescendo as we see the incredible delivery-bay unloading sequence, guitars rocking hard as we see the explosively realistic brake-light effects and HD-audio backup noises. Not to mention that the entire trailer showcases the “unmarked white van” portion of the game, and from what I know of creepy white vans I can only assume that little delivery driver is dropping off hooker skeletons or something of that nature.
I don’t know about you, but I play video games as a way to escape from the crushing pointlessness of my actual life. It’s a sort of fantasy escapism that lets me free the adorable anime sorceress surely trapped inside my hideous body (Atlus sent me Atelier Totori to play… leave me alone). The thought that there are people out there dying to live the fantasy life of a truck driver, fills me with an unfathomable terror. My first thought is of some crazy backwoods hillbilly with a barely functioning copy of Windows 95, sitting down to haul some virtual cargo while admiring the human skulls adorning his walls. Though now I wonder if somewhere out there, there’s some the middle-aged boardroom executive driving his slick Mercedes down the interstate. Gazing fondly at the big rigs and sadly wondering what life on the open road would’ve been like. The thrill of greasy truck-stop food, the excitement of kidnapping and enslaving teenage runaways…