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Vietcong Fist Alpha Description:The Fist Alpha mission pack allows you to penetrate even deeper into the
jungles of Vietnam as part of an elite U.S. Special Forces team. Seek
out and destroy the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army in seven new
single player missions, then join the fray on-line in one of 8 new
on-line multiplayer maps. Also, an all-new campaign editor is now
included for fans interested in creating their own maps, mods and
missions.
“Marginal gaming bang for minimal gaming buck.”
‘Nam. Stinking jungle cesspool, dysentery, MREs, belly crawling through
bug infested swamps and caves filled with ‘Cong, boot rot, snipers, and
booby traps. I have no idea what possessed me to come back here. And I’m
not even talking about the war – I was about two years old when that
was going on. I’m talking about the Vietcong expansion pack, Fist Alpha.
Perhaps I should have cleansed my pallet between this and my previous
review, the Black Hawk Down expansion pack, because the sour taste of
that one is still on my tongue, and it doesn’t make Alpha Fist go down
any easier. It’s a marginal expansion pack at a bargain basement price,
and I’m kind of disturbed by the trend (and by trend I mean this is the
second that I’m aware of) to eke out an itty bitty single player mission
pack together with some multiplayer maps and call it an expansion pack.
There was a time I can recall, back when monitors gave out enough
radiation to make microwave popcorn on your desktop, that multiplayer
maps would just kind of show up on the web for free, and expansion packs
were saved for serious mission campaigns. I suppose as multiplayer
gaming gains in popularity, that game developers have come to realize
that multiplayer maps are far too valuable to just give away, though I
still have no idea when a handful of missions taking less than 8 hours
to complete was suddenly acceptable as a campaign. Perhaps we can blame
that on Halflife: Blue Shift. For only $29.99, if you haven’t already
done so, you can buy both Vietcong and Fist Alpha in a pack called
Vietcong: Purple Haze. I like that - that’s a pretty good deal, but
$19.99 for Alpha Fist alone – that’s a little thin.
Fist Alpha is a prequel, chronicling the construction of the base around
about 1967 that ultimately becomes the base of operations in the first
game – how very Back to the Future of them. This go round you are SFC
Douglas, good ole’ southern boy, a very gung-ho, Confederate flag and
pickup truck kind of guy. The rest of your team is the same (Hornster,
Crocker, etc.), with the exception of your pointman. Anyone want to take
bets of who dies? The seven missions that make up the story are a
pretty good mix of scouting missions, search and destroy missions, and
base defending missions, with objectives that sometimes grow and mutate
as the mission progresses. On easy setting the Vietcong, though
plentiful, couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn at any range. On hard
setting, they’re really very accurate, and often shooting at long range,
camouflaged and from concealment. Balancing this out is squadmates who
are nigh invulnerable, and an enemy that is almost childishly
susceptible to flanking maneuvers. The exception to all of this is the
final mission, which has you sneaking past a veritable platoon of the
enemy, any of which can raise the alarm and cause you to instantly fail
the mission. It’s about as much fun as it sounds, and I really thought
that game designers had matured past such flagrantly abusive levels.
In multiplayer Fist Alpha is a better game. The multiplayer maps are
well designed for the variants that the game includes such as CTF, DM,
team DM, LMS – that kind of stuff. But they’re all jungle or tunnels,
and, while I can’t speak for anyone else, I like a little more variety
in my maps.
The graphics are unchanged, and look just a might long in the tooth
compared to some newer games. At range the jungle plants sway pleasantly
with insects and sunbeams and such, but up close everything gets
pixilated, and your squadmates have a pretty low polygon count. The
sounds are likewise unchanged, and are loud enough to bring in the
feeling of cutthroat jungle combat. Ambient sounds bring an accurate
jungle creepiness, and the voicework is professionally done (even if the
dialog is kind of inane). The music remains sorta 60’s guitar riffs
that adequately get you into the mood for, pardon the lack of PC,
blasting some Charlie. There might be some new weapons; I’m completely
uncertain. I’m not really a gun guy, so sufficed to say that there were
more guns than I could keep in my head (and your character can only
carry two at a time anyway). There was a whole book about weaponry
statistics in your bunker that you could read if the urge struck you,
but for me it held no interest.
I was not, I recall, overly enamored of the first game, and while
inevitable, I don’t see that the sequel adds anything that anyone was
clambering for. Sold as a bundle with the first game on the cheap if you
didn’t get the first one alone – that’s a deal that is worthwhile, if
only to kill time until UT2004 comes around. But all alone, I don’t know
who’s buying it almost no matter what the price. They’re probably the
same goobers who keep buying all the useless Rollercoaster Tycoon
expansion packs.
Game & Publisher: Vietcong: Fist Alpha (c) Gathering
System Requirements: Windows, 700MHz Processor, 128MB RAM, 1GB HDD, 16MB 3D Accelerator 8X CD-ROM, Copy of Vietcong
Overall Rating: 71%
Date Published: Wednesday, March 17th, 2004 Download Link: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Thể loại: chiến thuật.
Phát triển & phát hành: MicroProse (EU, US).
Ra mắt: 12/1986.
Hệ máy: Commodore 64, PC.
Lực lượng US Đặc biệt đóng đồn ở khu đồi núi Nui Pek (Tây Nguyên)
Vietnam, trong vai trung sỹ Douglas lãnh đạo tiểu đội A-216 với những
nhân vật quen thuộc Hornster, Defort, Crocker và Bronson. Nhóm làm các
nhiệm vụ như: vượt bãi mìn thâm nhập phá hoại trận địa pháo, tìm giải
cứu phi công.., đối đầu với lực lượng vũ trang Vietcong và quân đội
chính qui Bắc Vietnam. VC: Fist Alpha thực chất là một patch cập nhật
cho Vietcong. Game có nhiều nhân vật mới, khí tài và vũ khí (vd: M-14,
mìn Claymore, súng máy Degtarev DPL-2 của Nga…). Thêm một số nhiệm vụ mở
rộng trong cả phần chơi đơn cũng như chơi mạng (multiplayer), ở mục
chơi này người chơi có thể theo phe US hay bên lính VC.
Hi vọng mọi người nhiệt tình ủng hộ
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