By Kieron Gillen on April 30th, 2010 at 10:40 am.
News breaks that the latest Call of Duty game will be unveiled tonight on Gametrailers. It’s called Call of Duty: Vietnam, it’s being made by Treyarch and – er – that’s it. Vietnam based games have… well, they’ve traditionally not fared as well as other operational theatres. You have to kind of feel sorry for Treyarch operating under a double shadow – both the continuing high-level corporate drama of The Infinity Ward Wars and having to try and make a game that actually works out of a setting which has proved incredibly awkward to translate. I have to wish them luck, and hope they can do something to skew the numbers on the traditional “In World War II the average mark of the combat game was 82%… it Vietnam it was 49%” style gags. Which sounds like a cue for a song…
UPDATE: Except the news which break has broken! See here.
30/04/2010 at 10:45 CMaster says:
Why does nobody ever do Korea?
They could reuse all their WWII weapon assets etc, but in a new setting.
30/04/2010 at 13:42 int says:
Korea, yeah. I would love something ‘new’ on the war gaming front.
And what about The Great War? You know, that war everyone never talks about that happened before WW2?
Only WW1 games I can think of are Red Baron dog fighting games and a mod to HL2.
30/04/2010 at 17:20 westyfield says:
I demand a M*A*S*H game, now.
01/05/2010 at 03:03 Shadowcat says:
Rowan’s “MiG Alley” was awesome, FWIW.
30/04/2010 at 10:47 terry says:
I remember Vietcong as not being a bad game. It was pretty tense and had some nice ideas. It probably hasn’t dated all that well, however.
Other than that I can think of Platoon for the spectrum but I didn’t like that :-(
30/04/2010 at 10:49 terry says:
Oh yeah, there was a game based on 19 as well, but IIRC you never even left the training camp because the publisher went bust…
01/05/2010 at 03:05 Shadowcat says:
Vietcong was spectacularly good. Mostly. Sometimes it was hair-pullingly annoying. But mostly it was spectacularly good :)
30/04/2010 at 10:54 Magic H8 Ball says:
So it’s Vietnam after all huh.
Well, after torutre, killing PoWs and ripping of people’s limbs with M1919/burning them alive with the flamethrower they might just do Vietnam justice, flavor-wise.
On the other hand the structure of CoD games is horrendously linear. And that just doesn’t work with jungles.
On a side note, anyone here played Vietcong?
30/04/2010 at 10:55 Dum de dum dum dum says:
I have never played a game by Treyarch so can’t comment on the quality of their games. But in some of interviews I’ve seen with folks from that studio some of them come across as unoriginal and cocky. Lets hope we don’t end up with a game that rips off everything that’s cool at the moment without doing anything original.
BFV was great!
30/04/2010 at 11:00 Jonas says:
Well the jungle level in World at War (also by Treyarch) worked pretty well, so I’m pretty sure they could do it. Treyarch’s CoD games tend to be pretty well put together (they’re solid, if you will), they just lack that extra spark of inventiveness that Infinity Ward has/had.
30/04/2010 at 12:28 Alexander Norris says:
I just hope that for once in their lives they can get the multiplayer balance right, and if they don’t, that they’ll actually try to fix it this time around instead of flat out giving up to produce map packs (all of which we got for free on PC, admittedly, so their post-release support has been stellar, at least on World at War).
30/04/2010 at 11:15 HidesHisEyes says:
Battlefield: Vietnam was an absolutely fantastic game…
…If you were playing as the americans. The balancing was AWFUL though. The americans had superior guns, vehicles, everything. Had someone had the balls to set the game so that the vietnamese had twice as many players it could’ve been a great game.
30/04/2010 at 11:16 Antlia says:
If they do the jungles better than Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, it can be good (as good as a Call of Duty made by Treyarch can be).
30/04/2010 at 11:17 gulag says:
It’s a fantastic setting, but tough to build a game around.
Vietnam invokes so many shades of moral grey that making a ManFaceShoot game about it is a tough job. I hope Treyarch have the moxie to compose their own ‘No Russian’ moments, (Perhaps with more insight, but all of the same impact.), and tell a story that reflects the lessons that war taught. Best of luck getting that past the publishers suits.
I won’t hold my breath.
30/04/2010 at 11:24 makingloveloong says:
lol “treyarch”
They made the worst COD ever and now will make the second worst COD ever….
happy joy console fags
30/04/2010 at 11:37 Jimbo says:
A Vietnam game can work now. You know why? Because they’ve figured out how to model convincing trees and fire. I enjoyed the Vietcong games as much as the next man, but there was only so much they could do at the time.
On paper, Vietnam should be a brilliant choice for games. It has everything going for it – a great setting, great music, awesomer weapons than WW2, tons of material for them to reference (as CoD 1&2 did with WW2 movies), and so on.
Have the player switch between regular grunt work and MACV-SOG and they could be on to something.
30/04/2010 at 11:43 oceanclub says:
One wonders will they attempt to look for some “No Russian” style notoriety with a hugely controversial massacre level.
P.
30/04/2010 at 11:46 Network Crayon says:
Being that the Vietnamese sort of won(ish) the war in the end, id like be able to play on their side as opposed to just being another american soldier all the way through it.
having to crawl through jungle tunnels and sneak into american military bases would be great, it would work better with the single player letting you use the jungle to ambush american patrols and things, then giving you river boats and heli’s for when you play as the US.
but i doubt there’ll be a two sided war game ever.
30/04/2010 at 11:52 Jimbo says:
Vietcong 2 (I think it was 2) had a US and a VC campaign.
30/04/2010 at 13:00 Magic H8 Ball says:
As one of the reviewers put it… “you could just be marching through another European town with a lot more trees.” – something I have to stand by even though I liked WaW and consider it better than MW overall.
Also, I just noticed today is Reunification Day. Ooops.
30/04/2010 at 13:23 Unaco says:
Will there be a “No My Lai” level? Or, what about a “No Kent State University, Ohio” level?
I don’t think you can really make ‘Nam into a shooter in the CoD/MW style. Crouching in a damp fox-hole firing at an area of jungle 25 feet away from you. I suppose it’ll save time on enemy model animations, ‘cos you probably won’t see them (clearly) when they’re alive… just flashes in amongst the jungle. Only ‘Nam gaming experience I had that was any good was an OFP mod/map… It was heavily scripted, and involved a FMJ “Tet cease fire” style attack on your position (you couldn’t ‘win’, it was made that you would eventually be overwhelmed).
Oh, and Cannonfodder. Does that count?
30/04/2010 at 13:55 Muzman says:
I was thinking that they’d probably have to do a My Lai like thing since that’s kinda what COD does now. I’m not sure if they can do it so it’s not in extraordinarily poor taste. It might be an interesting ‘sequel’ to No Russian if you have to stop your own troops from massacre-ing a bunch of civilians some how (hard to imagine working that well. Shooter AI has never been that great at dealing with things any other way besides deadly force).
Mixing up the incidents at the front and back home, however, could be really something.
30/04/2010 at 14:31 EBass says:
You know Call of Duty has been treating familiar ground since the first one. I’m gonna say that CoD style combat is TOTALLY wrong for Vietnam, endlessly respawning enemies popping obviously in and out of cover, but if they actually make a break from what the series has been this could be very very good.
Vietcong was a bloody great game, its about time we had a follow up worthy of the name.
30/04/2010 at 18:19 GameOverMan says:
In order to be the complete Vietnam experience they should include a scene where a scantily clad local girl says “me so horny” and “me love you long time”.
30/04/2010 at 18:24 AndrewC says:
Yes, and the training mission lasts for half the bloody game.
30/04/2010 at 20:16 zeroy says:
News report FAIL. Its called Call Of Duty : Black Ops and Vietnam is not the main theater. Its Cold War with Vietnam Flashbacks.
http://www.callofduty.com/blackops/
30/04/2010 at 20:24 Jimbo says:
Thank you, Mr. Current Events.
30/04/2010 at 20:30 Vinraith says:
Irony, thy name is zeroy. I mean for pity’s sake, it’s the very next post, how’s it even possible to see this one without seeing that one?