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Green Berets
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Graphics & Sound:
Naturally being a 'total conversion' of Myth II is going to confine Green Berets to looking like, well Myth II . If you don't know what Myth II looks like, well here's a basic rundown: Your camera angle is a top-down, third person view. In this view, you see basically two things - they are the terrain, and the characters you control. The terrain in Green Berets is beautiful, ranging from sharp, craggy mountains to thick vegetation. The swamps of Southeast Asia are menacing enough to even well traversed soldiers. Thick, muddy waters snake between the watery vegetation, slowing down travel and making you a sluggish target to the VC's well-trained eyes. The jungles are visibly thicker in some areas, with dragonflies flying lazily around your head. Rice paddies are in some of the levels, and while rice paddies aren't the most dynamic in the world of rendered graphics, they are still nice rice paddies. Take-Two Interactive did a bang-up job of making the terrain around you look really good. The characters look good as well, with each of the units being easily distinguishable from each of its respective comrades. I do believe that the individual units could look a little better, but hey, it's still good enough to be stunning. Probably the best part of the characters' graphics, is their 'shot' and 'death' animations. The blood looks like blood, while turning blood off will leave little, glittering stars dancing out of a wound. Probably my favorite thing to do is launch the grenade launcher. Not only does it leave rich explosions burning on the terrain, it also turns any enemy in range into a pile, and I do mean 'pile,' of bones, blood, and fragments if you will. From the enemy VC's swinging machetes, to the innocent workers in the paddies, my eyes were well pleased with what they saw in Green Berets . The sound in GB is the trusty sidekick to the heroic visuals. Many games have made great 'war sounds,' and Green Berets is no different. The shots being fired are heard relative to the position of the gunman. The explosions were so loud that my speakers were shaking on the desk. The here-and-there sound of the jungle set the stage to seem like I was actually fighting in a jungle, and it never got monotonous. The music was eerie; as well it should be, providing a well-earned cherry on this aural dessert. |
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Gameplay:
Take-Two Interactive has you as a small squad of green berets, in the middle of a hostile jungle. Your goal is to survive 10 missions any way you can muster. You control a small group of merry men, and must carefully travel the jungles, killing before you are killed. Be wary though, as VC snipers, kamikazes, and trained soldiers will all look to take you out. There is a Tutorial for everyone needing to get used to the controls and basic gameplay. The camera angles are perhaps what I had the biggest concern with. You move your mouse cursor to the various edges to the screen, and it will rotate the game map accordingly. Of course, by the time someone started shooting at me, I had skewed the camera angles so bad that I couldn't tell if I was in the jungles of SE Asia still or on a tie-dyed shirt. It is almost overly frustrating learning the minute quirks of the camera system. Another gripe against it is my men would see an enemy soldier and just fire into the various terrains instead of trying to get a better shot. You could literally spend hours just having a VC on one side of a mountain, shooting the mountain, and your soldier shooting the other side. It looked as if both soldiers had found a fun way to mine for gold. An antithesis to the aforementioned sentence was that sometimes my men would be pelted with bullets, and not fire back. Still though, Green Berets is a good enough game to stick with if you're a fan of these types of games, especially Myth II . There are various options you can control like difficulty setting, to the little twinkly stars that come out if you don't like blood. Basically though, the Main Mode of the game is seeing how far you can survive with your squad. The thing I liked immensely about Green Berets was the further each soldier of your group survived, the better he got at things. You are awarded a star for every kill you make, so when you have enough stars amassed, your respectable soldier gains in accuracy, power, health, etc. It pays to really practice a rationale of conservatism, so your berets will gain in effectiveness.
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Difficulty:
There are five difficulty levels, which are all distinct from each other. Anyone can waltz through the easiest, but only the toughest of combat-hardened players will be able to survive Legendary Mode. The game does allow you to save whenever thankfully, as you'll spend hours persevering to a spot just up ahead, only to find you walked into the middle of an ambush. Again, I say this with Paul Revere type of importance; save often. The camera angles turned difficult into frustration bordering on insanity for me. This is probably due to the fact that I lack any substantial coordination that an ordinary second grader would have. Still though, the camera angles could have been tweaked a little, to be a tad more 'followable.' With the understood knowledge that the camera angles were my very bane, the AI is definitely customizable with the different difficulty levels. This makes for a challenge for any gamer, no matter what their skill may be.
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Game Mechanics:
The game loads fairly rapidly, which is always bonus in my busy book. The manual is very informative, and very well it should be, as you will definitely be on the severe end of a handicap if you dont read the manual. The controls are simple to learn, with their learning curve being nothing too exorbitant. Riot Rundown: Unfortunately, the camera angles harassed me to no end. Any other controls were easy to learn, and even more fun to put into practice once I got the hang of things. The graphics are good, but its obvious that a little tweaking could have been done. These are all minor quirks in a well thought out game. Its nice that you get a copy of Myth II when you purchase Green Berets . If you are a fan of Myth II , then there's no question as to if you should get this game. If you are a strategy type of fan, then Green Berets is probably right up your bowling lane. It takes a lot of patience to excel at this game, but in the end its all worth it. |
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-Sydney Riot, GameVortex Communications AKA Will Grigoratos |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 95/98/ME. Pentium II 200 MHz or higher. 64 MB minimum RAM. 500 MB free hard drive space. 4x speed CD ROM drive. DirectX 7 Compatible 4 MB 16 bit High Color Video Card. DirectX 7 Compatible sound, with Microsoft compatible Keyboard and Mouse |
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Test System:
Windows 98. Celeron 433 MHz. 128 MB RAM. 30 gigs free hard drive space. 48x speed CD ROM drive. Direct X 8 installed. Microsoft compatible keyboard and mouse |
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