Men of War: Vietnam

I've played enough squad-level tactics games to know when a title is genuinely hard versus just poorly designed, and Men of War: Vietnam sits uncomfortably close to that line the whole way through. The setup is real-time tactics, no base building, no resource drip, just small squads clawing through dense Southeast Asian jungle on two story campaigns totalling ten missions: one following Russian advisors and North Vietnamese soldiers, the other an American special ops unit led by Sergeant John Merrill. You manage per-soldier loadouts, swap between grenade types and fire modes mid-engagement, loot weapons from enemy corpses, and hop into direct control of any individual unit when the squad AI fails you, which it will. The signature mechanic that makes or breaks the whole experience is cover and flanking. Soldiers drop in a handful of bullets, so exposure equals death. The jungle canopy is dense enough that you can genuinely stage hit-and-run raids, melt back into the tree line, and reset. That same density will also eat your camera and hide your own troops from view, which is one of the most consistently reported complaints across every contemporary review. Events escalate faster than you can reposition the camera, and the first mission drops you mid-ambush with a Huey already tearing through your convoy before you have even located the move button. There is no tutorial. At all. Newcomers to the Men of War series are likely to hit a wall here and never recover. The two campaigns play slightly differently: the communist side leans harder on stealth and small-unit maneuver while the American campaign eventually scales up to larger engagements, including a standout mission that tasks you with flanking a fortified frontline before rolling in with tanks and infantry. Mission objectives vary enough, from capturing patrol boats to eliminating snipers and clearing bunkers, that the pacing doesn't completely flatline. Some individual missions can stretch to two hours of replaying the same fifty meters of jungle, so content length depends almost entirely on how many times you are willing to reload. The co-op option for up to four players is genuinely the recommended way to engage with the harder stretches, letting each player manage a portion of the squad rather than juggling everything at panic speed. On the technical side, the 2011 engine shows its age hard. Voice acting in both campaigns is poor, and the communist campaign in particular tips into unintentional comedy. AI behavior is inconsistent, with enemies occasionally resetting patrol routes mid-firefight regardless of what carnage you just inflicted nearby. The multiplayer beyond co-op was a documented mess at launch with persistent connection problems, and the online community never recovered from that. For a game tagged with PvP, do not buy this expecting any active competitive scene in 2025. What keeps it interesting for the right audience is the depth of per-unit control and the satisfaction of a plan actually executing cleanly: three soldiers in the brush with M60s holding the flank, a sniper picking off a mortar crew, and one guy slipping onto a patrol boat to hose down a whole encampment from the river. Those moments exist, and when they land, they feel earned in a way that scripted action games simply cannot replicate. Just go in knowing the story is forgettable, the voice acting is laughable, and the camera will betray you at the worst moment.

Fred · Scout Team

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