Operation: Vietnam (DS)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.5 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Joe Dodson
• Reviewed on: 09/06/2007
• Released on: 08/20/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Operation: Vietnam (DS) Review

Operation: Vietnam is an econo-priced, handheld shoot-'em-up set during the American occupation of Vietnam. But despite its dark and morally ambiguous historical setting, the game is a vanilla overhead shooter in which four commandos capture sacred relics for woebegone Vietnamese peasants and do battle with giant Vietcong megatanks. So, no, playing this game does not count as studying for a history class.

But it does contain a dark secret... Operation: Vietnam lets you use only the stylus to change soldiers or issue commands. You control your selected soldier with the D pad, the face buttons, and nothing else. Even worse, both movement and the direction of your gun are bound to the pad. So if you want to aim at an enemy, you have to run toward him. Brilliant!

It's not as dumb as it sounds, and you'll eventually learn to work with the extremely limited control scheme, but it's still a missed opportunity. Instead of using the stylus to target and eliminate foes, you use it to take control of any of the four grunts, as well as to order the others to stay put, defend you, or search and destroy. For the first several levels of the game, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you control the sniper, because he can kill anything before he's even seen. He can also detect mines, which comes in pretty handy.

But the game gets hard once you get into Hue City, and from that moment forward you'll have to be a lot more conservative. Figuring out which combinations of guys can handle which assortments of enemies is most of the fun to be had in Operation: Vietnam, aside from methodically cleaning all the enemies off the map with the sniper. But you don't always get to use him in missions, so you better familiarize yourself with the other guys and their abilities.

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