Online Tour of Duty

If you'll pardon a pretty tacky analogy, Vietnam has long been something of a land mine for game developers, who've been more familiar with recreating the more black-and-white, good-versus-evil Word War II era in games like Medal of Honor™ and Call of Duty™: Finest Hour™. This holiday season, however, developers have taken on the challenge in full force with games like Vietcong™: Purple Haze, ShellShock: Nam ‘67™ , and nowMen of Valor™. This brutally realistic take on the conflict was created by 2015, the same acclaimed developer that brought the stirringly authenticAllied Assault to PC gamers.

The Men of Valor single-player game places you in the boots of an infantryman shipped out in the early days of the war, and it follows the fighting through the Tet Offensive and beyond. Perhaps 2015's biggest challenge was recreating that experience online without letting the action become too lightweight. I'm happy to report that they've succeeded—and in a big way. In a morally ambiguous war, that's no small feat.

Can you spot the soldier?

Xbox Live™ multiplayer gameplay is broken into several intriguing multiplayer games, played out over some of the most complex maps I've seen in any shooter, historical or otherwise. When teams are called for, players break into Allies and Communists, choosing from mirrored character classes like sniper, tunnel rat, and medic.

Multiplayer Missions
These are team-based conflicts where one team attacks and the other defends, all based on real historic battles. Each side has a set of objectives to accomplish and can win by either accomplishing these goals or simply wiping out the other side. The defenders, however, can run out the clock and win by accomplishing their own set tasks … or by simply stopping the attackers from accomplishing theirs.

Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch
They're familiar concepts to almost any gamer, but in Men of Valor, the environments ensure that the action is always as true to life as possible. Thick jungle settings provide massive amounts of cover and hiding places, and each side (Allies or Communists) has historically accurate advantages, depending on the setting. The Communist-aligned sniper, for example, wears simple but effective camouflage that will have Allied players jumping at every moving bush. I've never spent so much time prone in a shooter, to avoid enemy fire, but it really fits the setting. Get used to it.

Recover Documents
This is the Men of Valor's take on Capture the Flag. Two teams (again, Allies and Communists) vie to control a bundle of important documents that stand in for the flag. Again, one team attacks and one defends. The attackers need to find and take the documents back to their base, while the defenders need only fend off the assault. The defenders can't move the documents at all, and if an attacker is killed and drops them, there they'll sit. So, if you're on that team, you'll have to be ready to track and follow those documents, as the Allies attempt to move them across the map.

Search and Destroy
Two teams are against each other, but with a new twist. Each side needs to both attack the enemy and defend their position, while searching the map for the three pieces of a lost mortar weapon. Your team wins by putting the mortar pieces together in the assembly area and then letting the mortar open up on the enemy base.

Cover is everywhere … and crucial to survival.

Character Classes
As I mentioned earlier, whether you join the Allies or Communists, you'll get to choose a character class that will last until you get taken out. Examples include:

• Rifleman (Marine or NVA): This is your basic trooper on either side—a jack of all trades, master of none, but a well-rounded choice that's effective in a variety of situations.
• Machine Gunner (Marine or NVA): This class specializes in heavy weapons and is better than others at controlling the recoil of such artillery.
• Tunnel Rat and NVA Sapper: Two sides of the same coin, these classes specialize in infiltration and unexpected explosions.
• Marine Corpsman and NVA medic: These classes provide medical kits and health power-ups to other soldiers in the field … because self-applied bandages can only do so much …

Machine Gunners are better with heavy weapons.

Developer 2015 has taken a tough and tricky subject and created not only an intense single-player story, but an authentic multiplayer mode as well. Men of Valor never fails to take the setting as seriously as it deserves—all the while being truly "fun," if such a word can really be used to describe Vietnam in any capacity. Men of Valor may not change your mind on the war, but if you're a videogame pacifist, it's sure to change your mind on war games.

By Ben Barker