Men of Valor

made by the same guys as Medal of honor: Allied assault (legendary game)
this one is set in vietnam and has all the things you could imagine you would see in a vietnam game.
the graphics for 2004 are decent for the time, not as good as something like Far Cry or Half Life of the same year, but not bad.
but really you play these games for the raw FPS combat mechanics, so how are they?
well its incredibly tough thats for sure. if you dont constantly duck behind cover, which is usually a flimsy tree or tiny boulder, your health will frantically drop to zero before you can think
its almost like the game is designed badly, or just plain glitched, because sometimes you barely take any damage at all from shots, and others you go from 100% to 0% in the blink of an eye. FREQUENTLY.

now thats not so bad is it? just get gud? well no, you see when you die, it takes you back to the last save. there is no auto saves or quick saves. just very infrequent checkpoints. so you die TONS and have to replay the same section TONS. this is the biggest fault of the game. theres nothing challenging or fun about accomplishing an entire firefight segment FLAWLESSLY, running around the field, taking a corner, and IMMEDIATELY going from 100% hp to 0% from an enemy hidden in a tree, then having to do the whole section again.

for all I bitch about quicksaves this game really makes me wish I had some just to prevent myself the pain from redoing that shit.
so how is the gunplay though? well basically you can hipfire which obviously sucks, and the 'Precision aim' system where you hold ironsights and have fluid leaning left and right, which feels pretty nice and is essential to get in those sweet spots for cover. you cannot move once in aim mode.

you'll do a lot of finding a tiny object to crouch behind, nervously scanning the entire environment for many seconds, firing, then moving to next cover. if you do not play methodically and monotonously you are risking losing dozens of minutes of progress. dozens. even if you take every precation, you still run that risk and it happens FREQUENTLY to something you barely noticed or saw coming.

all in all its a decent FPS game of the time, the vietnam theme is ok, the story is nothing to talk about, neither the writing, but the core fps mechanics are there and feels satisfying, just not when you have to do the same section you've done flawlessly 6 times in a row before you can progress..

6.5/10