Men of Valor Hands-On

I swear, in the last two months I've been treated to such a barrage of video games that I feel like I've been thrown into the game reviewer's version of Iwo Jima. The only difference being that in this version of Iwo Jima you don't duck and cover from the hail of bullets flying at you. Instead, you open your mouth and you run headlong into them, and you're actually happy when one gets drilled through your skull.

Keep peppering 'em like that, Frankie, and we'll be out of this bush in no time!

Yo, Frankie, you some kind of religious nut?

Vivendi Games has been very active in the last few months, and that's a good thing, people. They've released a truckload of very decent titles, starting from Evil Genius to Tribes: Vengeance and so on. But the barrage of preview and review code isn't over yet, and I still have to take a few (welcomed) bullets before all this is over.

The latest game to come from VUG is 2015's new shooter set in the Vietnam War era, entitled Men of Valor. People are already able to sample the multiplayer demo but what we got is a full-blown 4CD preview copy, featuring both the single-player and multiplayer modes of play.

As some of you know already, part of the 2015 team that's still with the company is responsible for the making of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (published by EA Games). The other part of that team left to form a new company, Infinity Ward, the dudes behind the most excellent Call of Duty series. So as you can imagine, all of the games that I have mentioned (CoD, MoH: AA and Men of Valor) follow a certain game play pattern that'll be easily recognizable to the fans of the genre - frantic shooter action with lots of scripted sequences. The difference being that unlike Call of Duty and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Men of Valor takes place in a different era and is powered by the modified version of the latest iteration of the Unreal Engine.

Similarly to Call of Duty, Men of Valor puts players in the role of a simple grunt, writing letters home to his loved ones and basically just trying to get by in the hostile and brutal environment of North Vietnam. The first thing I've noticed after playing a couple of the opening single-player missions is that the developers worked hard to make the non-action sequences as down-to-earth as possible, with plain and simple folks talking about mundane things and trying to make the war more bearable. The single-player actually kicks off by having your character play some football with a bunch of his squad mates. The idea here was to give you a sense of being a part of a living and breathing community, even if you are in a war zone. Naturally, all this seeming normality soon gets blown to bits and turned upside down when artillery fire starts raining on the base camp. From there on out, the player and his squad are thrown into the jungle thicket where they are greeted with frequent ambushes by enemy patrols, and of course a great variety of particularly nasty (and very deadly) booby traps.

The first actual mission in the game had us take control of a hill that was heavily guarded by well-fortified VC troops. But to do that my squad mates and I had to make our way through the thick undergrowth, stay on top of VC patrols and dismantle a few booby traps in the process. (As opposed to the highly complicated brassieres at Victoria's Secret. Get it? Booby traps? ... I hate you people. - Ed.)

And then you take the pastrami and you...

But I don't want to go into the jungle!

While the Unreal engine doesn't provide spectacular looking character animation or the kind of special effects that could rival the ones in say Call of Duty: United Offensive, I was impressed with how the lush jungle vegetation was presented in Men of Valor. The thing I really liked about it is that you can shoot Charlie through the grove; thankfully, a bush is not an impenetrable wall, and nearly the entire flora is done in 3D. Needless to say, this helps a lot in providing the right type of immersive environment for the action. Other neat visual effects include the now customary heat haze effect that never seizes to impress me no matter how many times I see it in games.

While none of the other features that I got to see in the first few missions can be considered spectacular or groundbreaking, everything appeared to be working smoothly, even in the preview build. I was able to get quickly into the groove of things, dodging bullets, looking for cover and searching the dead bodies of VC soldiers for a medkit.

Naturally, I still have just about the entire single-player campaign to play as well as the multiplayer, so I'm sure that the game has plenty of nice surprises waiting in store for me. After all, this IS a title from 2015, and anyone who knows anything about action games knows that a company of their caliber deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making war shooters.