Taking every Vietnam film cliche wrapping it up in their Men of War franchise and offering it to gamers could be a risky gambit for the Russian developer and publisher. But they are doing it nonetheless. I managed to get some eyes on time with the game while at GamesCom and here’s what I saw.

The game takes the standard squad-based tactics you know and love from the Men of War series and uses that in the low visibility environment that soldiers faced during the Vietnam war. It’s still the same top-down sort of view and you can still zoom in to take control of a single member of your squad when you need to. The squads are far smaller than other games in the series and you’ll generally have 6-7 members utilizing a more stealth-oriented type of team. Each of the members will of course have their own special skills like machine gun, sniper rifle, explosives, etc.

The real twist in the game is that you can play as the Viet Cong, who are being aided by Soviet military specialists who are acting as consultants. As the VC you can also lay mines in the jungle to keep your enemy off-balance. The game is all about jungle warfare and not always being able to see your enemies. That means that hearing became a very important sense and this has been incorporated into the game as well. The AI has the ability to ’hear’ combat and react to it. They are using a mixture of scripted AI which will generally be in a specific area, as well as some learning AI which, we’re told can move about more freely. Because of this, during the demo, someone remarked ’hey, you’re being attacked,’ as if it were a surprise. Not so much a surprise as it was just not the standard place for that AI squad to be. They had moved into a position and heard the enemy approaching and opened fire it seemed.