REVIEWER'S NOTE:

Even though it's not our standard practice, the reviewed game version was updated with patch v1.13 (also called Easy Mod patch, incidentally the latest one available at the time of writing this review, which has added a save function during missions and AI to own soldiers), NOT the original out-of-the-box version. This has improved the gameplay score by much, and it's just a pity that Strategy First hasn't included those features in the original out-of-the-box version, as it was the main reason that scores in other reviews of the game have been much lower. I would recommend everyone to upgrade to this patch version to get the maximum out of the game.

Introduction:

Platoon the movie (directed by Oliver Stone), was one of the most realistic, shocking and thoughtful war movies ever seen on the big screen. Now, Strategy First, Monte Cristo Games and Digital Reality have teamed up to bring all the realism of the movie to the small screen... Platoon the game is a 3D tactical squad-based RTS, loosely based on the MGM license of its "big brother" (I'm saying loosely because even though some situations in it will be familiar to those that have seen the movie, the bulk of the missions is not connected to the movie's storyline). A few months ago I was lucky to preview this same game, and was rather intrigued by it. So did Digital Reality manage to make a game worthy of the movie?

Graphics:

Starting from the intro movie, the graphics in Platoon really outshine most if not all other isometric RTS games out there. The intro movie (parts of which you could see here) is done very, very well, if not for some slightly unrealistic movement of its main character... It certainly managed to put me into the game's spirit. Digital Reality has managed to recreate the atmosphere and ambiance of the 'Nam by looking through thousands of photos and applying them to the game. All locations look authentic, genuine, and may I even say, lifelike. The jungles are rendered in beautiful 3D, and even if you zoom in pretty close to them will still look like jungles, not just a random arrangement of pixels like in so many other 3D games. Furthermore, the leaves on the trees and bushes move with the 'wind', contributing even more to the realism. The terrain is variable, looking different in different places... Grass, mud, rice paddies, scorched by bombshells earth, everything is there. The temples, houses and everything surrounding them, such as sculptures, rice pots and more also look great. Same thing can be said for buildings in the American camps, as well as chopper landing zones and pretty much everything else in the game. To tell you the truth, I don't have even a single complaint about the game's environments .

Since the game allows you to control tanks and APCs and see or interact with choppers, trucks and other vehicles, I'd have to mention them as well. They all seem to be very detailed, with a pretty large amount of polygons put into them. There is also a large variety of weapons in the game, all of them authentic to the ones actually used in Vietnam. Upon zooming you can with certainty say "yep, that's an M60 machine gun alright". The soldiers and any other characters in the game are fairly well done, with different uniforms available, and you being able to see the differences of soldiers' uniforms, height, weight, skin color and more. Same can be said about the VCs, however there's less variety between them for the simple reason that you'll mostly see them dead :) . Probably my only complaint in this section of the review would be that the character models look slightly bland on full zoom-in, but it's not an option that you'll be using much.

The character animation itself deserves a separate praise, as it's very smooth and realistic. Not only your characters can take different postures, such as lying prone, standing up and running, but for every posture they have a different animation for such things as moving, shooting and so on. Yet another great thing is that when your soldiers are left in one place, they don't stand like dummies without any movement like in 90% of other strategy games - they actually make small movements while standing (just like any normal person that you'd put to stand at one place for a long time), look around in a different variety of ways, check their weapons and apparently take some time to talk to each other. It actually does create an additional feeling of jungle warfare, where your soldiers have to be alert all the time.

The angle and zoom controls are very easy to master, and the included tutorial is great help for that too. The graphics are also very scalable, which means that almost anyone on an older computer will be able to enjoy the game at a slight quality reduction cost.

Sound:

The music in Platoon is top notch. There is a huge variety of it - and it changes according to situations you are in. For example, when you are attacked, a high-tempo track is playing, while when you are exploring the jungles a suspenseful melody plays. Most of the instruments that were used to make it are authentic, Vietnamese instruments. The game's composer is BAFTA award winning Tamás Kreiner, and that should already say something. Check out this sample, which includes one complete music track from the game in order to fully appreciate it.

The in-game sounds are very varied and well made as well. As someone that spent countless hours watching war flicks and playing the love of my life Counter Strike, I could pretty much hear the difference between an AK, an M16 and an M60, and the gun sounds in this game get my official approval. There are also different variations for fast fire or slow rates of fire, and even slightly different sounds for single shots for every weapon. Apart of that, there are authentic-sounding sounds for different vehicles used in the game. And of course, there are plenty of varied background "ambient" sounds, such as rain falling down, crickets chirping, water running down the river and more. All that immerses you into the game even more, and obviously Digital Extremes has spent a lot of time working on this areas.

The game also features voiceovers for all different characters and soldier types. Those are, unfortunately a mixed bag. While most of the characters are very well cast (with some of them having authentic Southern USA and so on accents which makes you believe even more that those are Americans and not a bunch of Scottish people that someone sent by accident to Vietnam), say things that would probably be appropriate on the battlefield, and sometimes even make you smile while listening to some of their debauchery, there are some pretty bad moments as well. For example, some of the main hero, Lt. Lionsdale's phrases sound as if they were made by a different actor... I did manage to hear at least three responses/quotes made by him after being commanded to make an action that didn't sound like him at all - and it does happen to some other characters as well. Seeing that most other voice acting is stellar, I'd have to assume that some of the voiceovers were added after the original ones were recorded, by a different voice talent of course. There are also some occasional "attempting-to-be-funny-but-completely-not-funny" or just plain stupid phrases in the game, and some pretty bad attempts at faking Southern USA accents too.

Singleplayer:

In singleplayer, Platoon gives you full control over your soldiers in your, well, platoon. Being authentic, you have in your selection the original units, equipped with weapons authentic for the Vietnam War era. Excerpt from game preview: "the Americans use M16's, M60 heavy machine guns, RPGs, grenades, claymores and more. There are some Sherman tanks in there in the later missions, and even air and artillery strikes that you can call for. The NVA on the other side have access to AKs, RPGs and mines, as well as bunkers and more. The NVA also have the numerous superiority at all times, and usually wait patiently for your soldiers to appear in front of them to start shooting. The units that you might command in the game include tanks, riflemen, machine gunners, grenadiers, snipers, commandos and medics - all corresponding to the real units that were used in the war."

The game in itself, is a tactical combat strategy. This means that you will not be producing any new units during the game, and there is no resource management. Your only 'resource', so to say, are your men and their lives, which I should say can be wasted away rather quickly if you don't pay attention to the battlefield. Platoon includes 12 missions with different goals, such as securing a certain area, looking for VC scouts in an area, eliminating or rescuing a certain character and more. The missions are rather varied, and take on average anywhere between 1 hour to two hours to complete. Once you finish a mission in campaign setting, you can replay it over and over again from the Scenario menu. There are three different difficulty options, varying from easy to hard, so depending on your mastery of similar games you'll always be able to choose a challenging level. Even the 'easy' mode, however is not so easy after all. A lot of thinking and/or game saving will still be required in order to finish the missions. Speaking about the game saving, it was implemented in the latest patch, v1.13. Prior to that it wasn't in the game, and all you could do was pause the game at any time by pressing spacebar and give your soldiers new orders while paused. This was a major drawback to the game which has influenced many reviews of it to the bad side. As well, prior to it your soldiers would not retaliate when under fire, which while possibly being realistic from the point of view of giving you FULL command over your platoon, wasn't particularly enjoyed by players who had to watch their soldiers stand around without taking any action like dummies, while taking heavy fire. Thankfully this has been fixed, and it's great to see that Digital Reality heard the complaints and implemented those two features, even though many players would prefer to have them out of the box.

Like I've said before in the graphics section of the review, the environments are very authentic to the jungles of Vietnam, and really give you a feeling that you are walking along your men somewhere in there. What this means gameplaywise, is that it will be very hard spotting an enemy in the jungles, and often when you will spot them it will be too late, as your team will become annihilated by VCs, cleverly hiding themselves in the densest corner of the jungle. The cover plays a big role in the game, just like in the Close Combat series. Walking around in the open will most certainly mean death, so you will have to find ways to go undetected through the jungle and possibly sneak up on the VCs while they do not see you. Every type of terrain has a cover bonus as well, which reflects on the probability of your soldiers being hit by a bullet. There are also different stances that your soldiers can take, which vary between lying prone on the ground, standing or running. They are very important to use to your advantage as well, as while you are lying prone or crawling you have less chance of being hit or detected, while at the same time running allows you to move faster on the map, but makes more noise than just walking, and will increase the chance of VCs hearing which side you are coming from and opening fire. Therefore you've got to play smart all the time, as otherwise your soldiers will die, and you will eventually lose. Another authentic feature of the game is the stamina bar; after running for too long your soldiers will start going at a slow pace unless they stop and rest for a bit, which added to the realism value of the game.

Speaking of the soldiers, they (once again, like in Close Combat) are divided into different squads, such as riflemen, machine gunners, and so on, and cannot be separated from the squad. Which means that you will have to command the whole squad to do an action. While at certain points it does pose an inconvenience of being unable to command only one soldier to go ahead and scout, it does reflect the reality of the war where soldiers had to go together in teams without being separated, as after all the jungles of Vietnam weren't the safest place to be. However, you do have some 'single' soldiers, that are not connected to any squads, but they are usually the key units in the game. One of them is Lieutenant Lionsdale, who is the commander of the entire platoon. His loss means that the game is over, and you'll have to start the mission over again. There are other ones as well, such as snipers who as we know never work together with anyone, or demolition experts (who are the only ones that can detect traps and landmines, by the way). The enemy AI itself isn't too shabby, even though it might've been a bit better in several situations, such as for example falling back while being attacked by a bigger force, but I guess that would be too much to ask for.

One of the illogical things I have noticed in the game is that sometimes, while clicking on a soldier whose skin color appears to be black, his status/name bar displays you a white colored soldier, and vice versa. While it's not crucial to the gameplay, it does look a bit weird. The only other drawback, well, not a drawback but a minor annoyance that I've found in the game, is that some of the mission briefing screens contain grammar or orthographic errors, and some of the phrases there do not sound like they were written by a native English speaking person (this wasn't changed since the RC1 beta that I've previewed a few months ago) - example. But I guess that could be tolerated, since the game was written by Hungarian developers, and this once again has no real influence over the gameplay.

Multiplayer:

Platoon offers multiplayer games over the Internet or LAN. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to try it, but it seems fun and not too laggy, even though the game did drop me out occasionally while playing it with a friend. The other downside is that only 4 multiplayer maps are included. Bummer.

Conclusion:

Overall, Platoon is a very well thought through and executed game. Its shining points include challenging gameplay, gorgeous graphics, awesome soundtrack and overall well done voiceovers. After introduction of the "Easy Mod" patch the game became much better than it was out of the box and no noticeable flaws remain in it. I would recommend it with clear conscience to any tactical RTS fan. If you like tactical RTS games or are interested in the Vietnam era from the squad strategy point of view, Platoon is a must have in your collection.