14 DAY TRIAL // Call of Duty: Black Ops is the new first person shooter from developer Treyarch and publisher Activision Blizzard, allowing the player to experience the covert ops conflicts between the United States and Russia during the era of the Cold War.
As soon as the people at Treyarch said that Vietnam would feature in Call of Duty: Black Ops it was pretty clear that the developers at some point would include the songs that are associated, in the mind of gamers, with the conflict in South East Asia.
And, no sooner than the main character arrives in Vietnam, in his quest to track down a vicious Russian would be terrorist, Creedence Clearwater Revival kicks in with “Fortunate Son”, a track I can distinctly remember as also being one of the main ones used in Battlefield: Vietnam, the game created by DICE and published by Electronic Arts in 2004 that also explored the main battles of the conflict but without offering a narrative to tie them all together.
Reminding some players of the Battlefield game set in Vietnam might not be a very good move on Black Ops' part because the Khe Sahn level of the game could be argued to be the poorest in terms of design, even if it delivers quite a bit of adrenalin as the player needs to fight his way to the top of a hill while under constant assault from Viet Cong forces.
The level seems designed despite the possibilities of the Vietnam setting.
It would have made much more sense to set the battle in a city like Hue, one which was captured and recaptured a few times by both sides, with a lot of ruined buildings serving as natural stop points for the player and with a few competing paths leading to the overall objective.
But Tryearch chose to create another level where pushing forward is the only idea that works for the player even if the horde of Vietnamese descending from the hill practically asks the player to stand his ground and take out as many as possible to hold the front.