.FLYINGHEAD WE GOT GAME!
.TITLE Men of Valor
.AUTHOR James Booth
.SUMMARY Our on again, off again gaming column is back with a report on the military shooter Men of Valor. Breaking the emotional and political taboo surrounding the Vietnam War, Men of Valor attempts to bring the look and feel of what it was like to be a Marine deployed in Vietnam. Read on to see what Senior Editor James Booth thought of his tour of duty.
.DEPT
Well, I’m back with our on-again, off-again gaming column. Military shooters have been the rage forever, and some of the more popular of late have carried a World War II theme. If you other gamers are anything at all like me, World War II has lost its novelty and you’re ready to move on. In this enlistment, I bring you coverage of Men of Valor from Vivendi Universal and 2015.
Men of Valor is an FPS (First Person Shooter) set during the Vietnam War. Much like the current war in Iraq, the Vietnam War engendered a lot of powerful and passionate feelings both for and against, creating art, music and public policy that continue to influence our culture even today. Because of these passionate feelings, the Vietnam War has typically been a setting that seemed taboo in the game world.
.CALLOUT Perhaps the reason the Viet Cong were so successful in their campaigns was because their straw huts were bulletproof.
That taboo has been broken by several games in the last year though. Vivendi and 2015 have a done a pretty good job of maintaining neutrality in the presentation of Men of Valor, striving to bring the feel of what it was like to be a Marine deployed to the Vietnam Theater, without preaching politics.
.H1 You’ve been drafted!
One of the areas where Men of Valor differs from any other shooter I’ve played, well any game period to be honest, is in the protagonist (main character). You play the role of Dean Shepard, shown in Figure A, a Marine just out of boot at Paris Island and assigned to the 3rd Marine Battalion in Da Nang.
.FIGPAIR A You play the role of Dean Shepard, a cherry Marine stationed in Vietnam.
Shepard is the first main character of any game I can recall that is black, and is an excellent tribute to all the black soldiers that have served, and continue to serve, in our military. It’s about time the game industry began creating main characters that are other than Caucasian.
.BREAK_EMAIL Sign in here to report for duty.
During his tour in the Nam, Shepard experiences his share of bush patrols, APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) rides, chopper deployments, and even a nighttime boat mission. Figure B shows one of those helicopter rides, somewhat reminiscent of a scene in Full Metal Jacket.
.FIGPAIR B Shepard takes a chopper ride.
Later on in that helicopter ride, you’ll have the opportunity to take over that gun, shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C In Men of Valor, Shepard has the opportunity to use several different mounted guns.
.PAGE
.H1 Mission briefing
Most missions are carried out in squad format, but the player has no actual control over the other squad members. They pretty much operate on their own, providing cover fire, disengaging traps, and placing explosives. Whether deployed by APC, as in Figure D, or slopping through a rice paddy, your squad mates will always have your back.
.FIGPAIR D Take care of your squad mates and they’ll take care of you.
If the action gets too thick, just call in air support, like the napalm strike in Figure E.
.FIGPAIR E Napalm smells like victory.
Shepard’s tour takes him from Da Nang, up to Ke Sahn, into the bush, swamps, rice paddies, and even the VC (Viet Cong) tunnel system. He’ll experience the carnage of the Tet Offensive, and house-to-house fighting in Hue (pronounced whey, as in curds and whey), all the way to the Imperial Palace.
The game’s cut scenes are peppered with actual video and still footage from the Vietnam War, along with quotes from various servicemen and political figures of the time. Between assignments, the realism of the character is brought home through a series of narrated letters to and from home.
Men of Valor has a multiplayer feature as well, which I know is important to some of you. Unfortunately, as I’ve stated before, I have no desire whatsoever to play online games, so that’s one aspect I didn’t test.
.H1 Debriefing
Men of Valor could have been a really great game. Notice I said "could have been." The story, plot, and character development are top-notch. The dialog doesn’t seem forced or trite like a lot of games, it feels real and natural. Men of Valor even features the voice talents of several celebrities.
Phil LaMarr, whom you may remember from Mad TV, lends his voice as that of Dean Shepard. LaMarr has done many other game voice-overs, as well as animated shows like Futurama, Family Guy, and King of the Hill.
Sean Astin, late of the Lord of the Rings movies, provides the voice of Shepard’s buddy Hodges. And Shepard’s commander, Captain Dandridge, is voiced by Tucker Smallwood, who played the Commodore on Space: Above and Beyond, and more recently the Xindi-Primate on Enterprise.
Speaking of celebrities. How could Vivendi and 2015 do a Marine-centered Vietnam game without including a Basic Training intro featuring R. Lee Ermey? You may remember Lee Ermey as the hard-core drill instructor of Boys in Company C and Full Metal Jacket fame. I can’t even think of the Marines without Lee Ermey coming to mind. Ermey is currently featured on the History Channel’s Mail Call.
The game’s music score is unbelievable, featuring appropriate era music from the likes of Strawberry Alarmclock, The Mamas and the Papas, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, and much more. The music is both included on the game cd and downloadable from the official site, but is in .ogg format rather than MP3.
The game was developed by 2015, the same studio that created Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Vivendi Universal, one of the studios behind Half-Life 2. With the combination of these two working together, I really expected a lot more. I think where the game goes wrong is that it’s a PC port of an Xbox game, and only the bare minimum was done to port the game.
The biggest, most gigantic flaw of this game is the inability to save. The player cannot initiate game saves at any time. The game, like a lot of console games, works on the principle of checkpoints, and herein lays the flaw. The inability to save takes a game that could have been one of the most awesome shooters of the year and turns it into a frustrating waste of time and money.
When will game developers learn that the ability to save the game at any point is one of the features most demanded by players? In visiting the online communities for Men of Valor, as a player, not in researching this article, the lack of a save feature was the single largest complaint of other players.
Several patches have already been released, but it seems the developers are unwilling listen to their customer community and issue a patch for game saves. In addition, the community itself seems to have pretty much abandoned the game. Generally, by the time a game has been out a few months a plethora of walkthroughs, cheat lists, and trainers can be found. Men of Valor has none of this.
I was only able to find one walkthrough, and that was the published and for-purchase Prima Strategy Guide, not a user-created text walkthrough. I’ve stated before that I like cheats, they make the game more fun, but with Men of Valor there are no cheats. None. Not a one.
Trainer programs that make up for the lack of cheats are sadly missing as well. I was able to find two trainers, one for unlimited ammo, and one for both unlimited ammo and unlimited health. The problem is, I couldn’t get the two-function trainer to work with v1.0 of Men of Valor and had to apply the v1.2 patch, nullifying the unlimited health feature.
I did come across a health cheat in one of the community boards, but it required editing of the checkpoint save files and was rather limited in usage, being disabled as soon as you search a body for equipment.
So why all the focus on cheats? Well, sometimes it’s just fun to be able to blast indiscriminately and without consequence. Sometimes, they’re actually needed to get past difficult game sections. With Men of Valor, the latter is definitely the case. As a matter of fact, I don’t know how some players could get past certain portions of this game without using cheats.
When you combine the lack of any save feature, the difficulty of some sections of the game, and the lack of usable cheats, Men of Valor was a big disappointment. Even more disappointing is that I based my decision to buy this game on the demo I played. It’s really sad when the demo is more fun than the full game. What’s even more sad is when a game ceases to be fun and becomes nothing but frustrating.
When compared to other FPS games, like Far Cry, which I covered in the September 2004 issue of Computing Unplugged Magazine, see http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200409/00001312001.html, the enemy AI in Men of Valor is pathetic. In Far Cry, the enemy used intelligent squad tactics, shouting orders to one another in an attempt to flank the player. The enemies in Men of Valor lamely spawn from predetermined sites and blindly rush oncoming fire. Somehow, I don’t think this was a tactic successfully employed by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.
Another area the game falls short is in the physics of the game world. As I remarked in my coverage of Far Cry, the player could shoot through light, thin obstacles like wood and canvas. But in Men of Valor, these materials seem to be impervious to gunfire of any kind. Perhaps the reason the Viet Cong were so successful in their campaigns was because their straw huts were bulletproof.
Even though according to our rating standards it actually rates a 3, I would have to recommend you stay clear of Men of Valor. It does work properly, functions as intended, and could definitely use a few improvements, but is almost unplayable do to the shortcomings I’ve outlined above. I got the impression that basically the game has been abandoned not only by the developers, but also by the gaming community as a whole. It gave me a whole Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. feel, and I’m sure some of you know what I mean when I say that.
.RATING 3
I have to wonder if Vivendi gave Men of Valor the short end of the stick in favor of Half-Life 2.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Men of Valor, visit http://www.menofvalorgame.com/us/.
For more information on Far Cry, visit http://www.farcry-thegame.com.
For more information on Vivendi Universal, visit http://www.vugames.com.
For more information on 2015, visit http://www.2015.com/site.html.
For more information on Half-Life 2, visit http://www.half-life.com/.
For more information on Prima stratgegy guides, visit http://www.primagames.com/.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
