Platoon Demo

The war in Vietnam may not receive as much attention as the second World War does, but it was certainly every bit as violent and destructive. Moreover, the video games industry took a stab at it a few times over the years and there have been many worthy titles to depict the intense jungle skirmishes. However, there haven't been any strategy games to feature it, which is why the title at hand should worth a shot, especially of you are a fan of computer simulated battles.

Platoon is a top-down strategy game that sports the title of being the first modern RTS video game to feature the Vietnam war, which is not exactly a praise-worthy feat, but novelty always has a way of getting to you. Hence, although the mechanics and the gameplay elements are not very original by themselves, the fact that they depict this actual conflict is interesting and you can certainly get into the atmosphere pretty quickly.

To keep you invested in the action, the game even features a story and a few main characters to tie the events with each other, starting with the general whose role you play. In order to prove yourself and make your country proud by defeating the enemy, you must coordinate the troops under your control to the best of your ability and accomplish the tasks you are given from up top, whether it's to eliminate a specific objective, or just cross an area without getting killed.

The mechanics are basically the very same you can find in any other RTT/RTS of this kind, which means that you can use the mouse to perform every action available. However, regardless of how simple they might be and how often they are used, Platoon manages to get them wrong, somehow, since everything feels unnatural and weird when you move the units around, starting with the fact that you cannot even tell when you have selected the troops.

Moreover, although there are multiple unit types and vehicles that can be used in battle, they take forever to point in the right direction and there is always a bit of lag between commands, which quickly becomes quite annoying. Fortunately, the graphics are very good for its time, especially since the engine is in full 3D and you can zoom, rotate and pan the camera any way you like out on the battlefield.

Platoon starts from a few very good ideas and you can clearly see that the intentions are more than commendable. However, the design flaws and the variety of small annoyances do a great job at ruining everything, thus making the game very difficult to enjoy properly.