Men of Valor
by Vivendi Universal
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Our Price: $0.70
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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary
Brand: Vivendi UniversalFormat: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2004-10-26
Platform: Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP
Model: 72245
Publisher: Vivendi Universal
Product features:
- First-person shooter set during the Vietnam War
- Includes major incidents from the conflict, such as the Tet Offensive
- 16 historical missions, from urban combat to dense jungle fighting
- Soundtrack includes rock classics from the late '60s
- Single- and multiplayer missions
Video Game Reviews of Men of Valor
Customer Review: Excellent game except for the checkpoints
Summary: 3 Stars
I found this game to be a pleasant surprise in terms of graphics, movement, weapons, story line, historical content, and atmosphere. I have a fairly high end system, so there were no video problems with everything set to max.
It is admittedly very linear. In an urban environment that is easily controlled without being annoyingly obvious, but in a jungle, you find yourself forced along a narrow route and sometimes can't duck behind a tree because it's outside your allowed path. On the other hand, I have no gripes with linear games. I find them more enjoyable, from a single player viewpoint, than open field games like STALKER and Fallout.
Where I really found the game frustrating was with the amount of time or distance you had to cover to get to the next checkpoint. The game doesn't allow you to save, so checkpoints are critical. It doesn't always tell you when you've hit a checkpoint and when it says "Saving Progress", that doesn't mean that you can quit the game and come back to that point later. It just means if you die, you will start from that point. I found myself going to the LOAD menu to verify the last save before quitting.
Also, if you die, you sometimes wind up having to restart from quite a distance back because of the infrequent checkpoints. If you happen to have low health, you might keep restarting just to die after only a few seconds, until you find a way to survive and restock you health. Of course, that's just a normal part of gaming, but this game goes through a scene where it shows and reads the letter describing your death. You can escape out of that screen and the stats screen that follows, but it's not quick. It reacts slowly and it fades to black. As a result, you repeatedly have to listen to the words "Dear Mr and Mrs. Roland Shepherd...". I found that annoying to the extreme.
On one mission, I didn't quite follow behind my squad like I was supposed to, so it missed the queue for the next step in the progress (planting claymores in the river). I finally restarted. That was a trivial problem, though.
Another minor irritation was that it would set your weapon to automatic whenever you restarted. Apparently it doesn't save your weapon status.
Finally, there are some places where the checkpoints happen before a cut scene. When you restart from that point, you have to listen to the cut scene whether you want to or not. I would have liked a way to escape out of the cut scenes.
In summary, I thought this game was really well done and compared very favorably with the COD and MOH series. I would have easily given it 4 stars if the checkpoints were closer together.
-Dave
Description of Men of Valor
Men of Valor is a historical shooter that recreates infantry combat during the Vietnam War. Follow new recruit Dean Shepard as he and his Marine squad fight through the jungles of Southeast Asia, during the 1960s.Shooter Games
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