A thoughtful Cornerite drew my attention to this extraordinary Early Access FPS. The email Bekay sent was so arresting and informative, it deserves to be reproduced in full.
“The other day I stumbled on a game in Steam’s wargame fest and made a series of tweets about it that went semi-viral. I thought you might be interested because I think this very buggy, very broken game may have actual immense artistic value as a portrayal of the Vietnam War.
If you’re familiar with MDickie games (Hard Time, The You Testament, Old School…) Vietnam War has very similar design, though it’s not from him. The developer is a Dane who’s made a few other, mostly mobile, games with similar mechanics, but much less ambitious than this.
Currently, the game is quite rough around the edges, to say the least, but the more I play the more I’m mystified, and the more I actually truly enjoy it.
It’s difficult to describe Vietnam War. It’s a fever dream of janky – but actual – implementation of every possible system you could imagine being in a “true” Vietnam simulation. You can play as a CIA Air America pilot. You can press villages into the Strategic Hamlet Program. You can dynamically dig massive sprawling tunnel systems as the VC, or clear them out as Americans. You have a pay grade, and you can use money on your off time to go into town and buy beer. You have to eat rations and drink water, and keep your weapons cleaned. You can call in everything from cobra gunships to B-52 Arclight strikes and Iowa class battleship gun support. You can be in the riverine force on a river monitor, or armored cavalry shooting Beehive flechette rounds into NVA bunkers. You leave calling cards on dead enemy soldiers, and you can be attacked in the jungle by rogue tigers. You can go “over the fence” as special forces and hit truck convoys on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Most incredibly, in a move that may elevate the whole thing into legitimate artistic commentary, you can finish your tour of duty and return to a massive sprawling open world version of America. There’s anti-war protesters, dead end jobs, the whole slate of First Blood and Deer Hunter tropes.
I’m not sure how interested you’d be due to the state it’s all in, but I’ve found the game endlessly fascinating. I think the representation of so many things about the war that aren’t direct combat may be of interest to you and your readers.”
Well, that was a mistake!
I was going to say that it looks worse than my Purple Hazy nostalgia for the two big Vietnam mods for OFP, but then foolishly did a search as I couldn’t remember their names.
I picked this up- I am amazed by its scope. And a lone developer, no less!