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| Air Conflicts: Vietnam Free Download |
Air Conflicts: Vietnam is a pick-up-and-play
dogfighting game set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. The best moments
are spent weaving through the skies trying to establish an elusive missile
lock, taking down an enemy MiG with Sidewinders or short-range cannon. Flight
controls are responsive and forgiving, jet fighters feel appropriately zippy,
and helicopter steering is easy to master. Most vehicles are durable enough on
standard difficulty to survive a few mistakes, and the enemy AI isn't bad at all. The thrill of conducting your F4
Phantom through a series of death-defying acrobatics at supersonic speed is
largely mitigated by the fear of slamming into an arbitrary invisible wall in
the air. Map boundaries force fighters to veer off after only a few seconds of
straight flight, a limitation which can be exploited against the AI. When I
needed to take down an enemy fighter, I learned I could hedge him against the
edge of the play area, forcing him to turn and guaranteeing he would fly
straight into my waiting guns.
Single-player
missions allow you to switch between the cockpits of different squadron
aircraft on the fly. It's a shame the limited and repetitive mission design
didn't take better advantage of this feature. Most outings are some variant of
moving from waypoint to waypoint and performing a simple bombing or landing
task. Outside of dogfights, the long campaign got boring quickly, and the
standalone single-player scenarios were no better.
Transport
helicopter missions are particularly tedious. Most landing scenarios switched
me to an on-rails shooting segment from the door-gunner's perspective and
played out like a terribly executed arcade light-gun game. A few hours in, I
found myself dreading the sight of a Huey Iroquois or Chinook on my carrier
deck. Spotting and prioritizing dangerous targets relies on replay and
memorization more than skill and reaction time. At
least the selection of aircraft is impressive, and decently rendered when
viewed up close. Most of the iconic fighters, bombers, and choppers of the era
make appearances, and the planes have well-enough defined speed and flight
characteristics to feel distinct from one another. Only American aircraft are
available in single-player, though several Soviet planes are unlocked for multiplayer
as you make your way through the campaign. Of course, most enemies appear as
distant outlined squares in your targeting HUD.
Just don’t look down, because the terrain is ghastly –
particularly on the console versions. Foliage and hills manifest with a jarring
pop-in, and textures look like something out of the original PlayStation era.
The whole atmosphere feels abstract and sterile, hardly befitting the grime of
the Vietnam war (and there’s a tedious and limited soundtrack behind it all).
The framerate stutters every now and then, but the hiccups rarely interfere
with combat. I encountered a more severe technical glitch in one mission which
arbitrarily disabled a near-essential HUD feature, a mishap which turned what
should have been five minutes of routine flight into a half hour of
frustration. Graphics are better defined on the PC, but remained unimpressive,
and any benefits there are completely canceled out by a crashing bug which
disabled my input devices and forced me to manually power down my computer.
Multiplayer
is actually quite smooth should you be fortunate enough to locate other human
beings playing online, a situation I arranged only with some difficulty. The
mode choices are fairly limited and the arena ridiculously claustrophobic, which
took away from what would otherwise have been an enjoyable enough
pick-up-and-play experience. I did appreciate the inclusion of an airborne
variant of Capture the Flag, a creative idea in theory if somewhat wanting in
its execution.
Move controls
are nominally supported on PS3, but my experience with them was dissatisfying.
Move is manipulated upright like a flight stick, but button mapping did not
match the functions outlined in the manual and some tasks were simply
impossible. The whole system felt tacked on.
There’s no hope for having something to say about
the war, either. It's obvious that English wasn't the first language of the
writers, and localization is sketchy. Some sentences are just a little off,
feeling like they've been run through a Google translate filter. A particularly
angry monologue tinged with righteous indignation made a hilariously awkward
comparison between the merits of a war on trees and the a war on communism.
Initial
release date: November 26, 2013
Developer: Games Farm
Publisher: bitComposer
Interactive
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox
360, Microsoft Windows
