Developer: Take 2 Interactive
Release Date: Out Now
Avg. Price: $44.99 £24.99

As soon as you put Viet cong into your CD ROM tray and the install screen appears, experienced pc games players will know they have purchased a quality title. Vietcong has been been co-developed by 2 separate software companies for over 2 years, those being Illusion software, and Pterodom and both teams decided to name the co-development project 'Gathering'. Such a positive joining of 2 different software teams working successfully together like the 'Gathering' may inspire other pc game software companies to follow suit.

We've seen many games companies with separate departments such as EA and Westwood, Eidos and Core design working together, but essentially they are the same company. Illusion, surprisingly originated in the Czech Republic in 1997 and set out with its main aim and goal in mind...to make the best pc games. They boast some very good but few titles such as 'Mafia' in 2002 and the 'Hidden and dangerous' 1 & 2 series. Pterodom also being a Czech located business originated in 1998 and helped make games for a German firm called Virtual X-itment. Their only main title being 'Flying Hero's' a 3d flying 1st person shoot-em up.

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Set in Vietnam 1967 you play Sergeant Steve R Hawkins, an intelligence officer with his well balanced, mixed team who are your platoon for most parts of the game. Commanding your team members is basic and easy with the only options of calling them to aid you i.e. medic 'J Crocker' to heal you and radio man 'P J Defort' after every step of a mission is complete to talk to HQ. Sweeping through the dense jungle, encountering different situations that require you to use quick thinking, is key element in the gameplay of Viet Cong. For originality the game also compliments itself with an all new targeting system that I find very exciting and a great new addition for other forthcoming 1st person shooters to use. By pressing alternate fire (usually right mouse button) your character lifts the gun to his shoulder which puts you in direct aim with the gun itself and its metal target for an extra sense of realism, not to mention being able to switch from single fire shots, to full automatic machine gun. The producers have really gone to work by incorporating the idea of using 'short controlled burst' with machine guns used by real military training procedures, and therefore having the healthy balance of using short controlled bursts on single targets and full automatic for multiple targets.

The graphics team that created the terrain in Viet Cong decided to travel to the jungles of Vietnam to get a physical feel for the place and what it would have been like to manoeuvre around and it comes into play in the game perfectly. You're on edge at every movement you make with a heightened sense of alert due to the games AI being extremely accurate for what you'd expect a real guerrilla army to behave like. Of course depending on what difficulty you have the game set on, it will effect the enemy's tactics and accuracy. However in multiplayer you have many different game modes to choose from, one in particular is COOP where you and any number of players battle an entire Viet Cong army usually consisting of around 70 - 100 and when they shoot they don't miss, they advance, fall out and hold positions as your online players do and work together in a way I admire for computer opponents.

Almost every weapon has its own characteristics, individual firing systems and weights, some heavy machine guns will weigh you down and you'll be taken advantage of by someone running like a greyhound on red bull and steroids carrying a knife. The game engine, I'd say was vaguely related to the Medal of honour series but for me has bettered it. And then there's the air strike. In certain situations you will have the option to pick your type of soldier, e.g. on multiplayer COOP mode you can be a sniper, medic, soldier, machine gunner, engineer or radio man. The radio man's specific weapon is the ability to call artillery fire in on any given mapped-out coordinates on the battle field to where ever you suspect the enemy to be in numbers. All in all, this game has it all for a 1st person perspective shoot-em up, its original, real and great to look at. Buy this game.