However, that support only reaches your starting base at the eastern-most part of the game map from there on, it’s your job (or duty) to expand across Ia Drang all the while planning and creating a logistics network that will keep units supplied, safe, and able to intervene wherever and whenever is necessary. As long as your soldiers perform, they get more support.
Vietnam’65, then, uses PPs as a way to represent the centrality of logistics in the Vietnam War (and in any war, really). In this way, the developers cleverly linked battlefield actions with the politicians who control the purse strings. Destroying enemy units gains you PPs while losing units does the opposite. through a system of “Political Support Points" (PP), a type of currency that represents political support for your military operations and can be used to call in reinforcements, supply and move troops, and in general to take any action on the battlefield. ESS brilliantly depicts the umbilical cord of your troops to both the invisible headquarters in the rear and the politicians in Washington D.C. Yet, no war can be fought in complete isolation because if a country is fighting a prolonged war, it requires strong logistics management and, therefore, a strong and uninterrupted link to the “homeland." Otherwise, when the bullets and food’s gone, so are the soldiers. The procedurally-generated valley becomes your sole focus, creating in that way the sense of isolation felt by many troops during the period as this war wasn’t fought on organized fronts, many soldiers found themselves isolated in forward bases in the middle of jungle and surrounded by enemies. The personal part is enchanced by the player’s ability to change units’ names (my TouchArcade Green Beret Company fought valiantly but, ultimately, made the ultimate sacrifice by walking into an ambush and then stepping on a mine). What I will say is that the game’s overall take on warfare does make for a convincing framework onto which the importance of COIN operations can be demonstrated, so in that sense, the game’s overall philosophy works.īy situating the whole game solely in this one valley and focusing on a handful of villages and troops, Vietnam ’65 depicts the war as local and personal. As tempting as it is to get deeper into the idealogical underpinnings of Vietnam ’65, most gamers who’ll experience the game don’t really care as much about them. Now, this system reveals a pretty interesting ideological take on warfare according to Vietnam ’65, the South Vietnamese have no strong national or ideological leanings and can be swayed easily by whoever shows the greatest military might. As you help the villagers feel safer, their “Hearts and Minds" level rises and, in return, they offer more intel about enemy positions. To do so, you need to win the support of the many villages in the valley by eradicating the “enemy" presence while not losing too many troops yourself. Your overall goal is to “pacify" the Ia Drang valley which is threatened by Vietcong (VC) guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). However, before I had to chance to get to it, the developer announced that he was working on some important improvements, so I decided to wait until the game was updated, which it was a few days ago.Īs the game’s title “hints" at, you get to experience Vietnam in 1965, the year when American military presence ramped up and the war started taking the form it would have for the coming years. I was very interested in Vietnam ’65 when it came out a couple of months back. The turn-based strategy game, published by Slitherine, depicts warfare differently than most other wargames, putting emphasis on logistics and winning “hearts and minds," rather than on large scale tactics, and doing so brilliantly. army depart from its WWII tactics of fighting across wide European fronts against a similarly-organized fighting machine instead, it forced American troops to fight a counter-insurgency (COIN) war, the kind of war that Every Single Soldier‘s (ESS) Vietnam ’65 ($9.99) attempts to creatively depict on your tablets. In terms of warfare, Vietnam demanded that the U.S. For Americans, sending over soldiers to fight in Vietnam was like sending them off to fight on Mars, such were the differences in the way each country was imagined and represented.
The Vietnam War was a war like no other – and that includes the current conflicts. It’s hard to find a word that evokes as many connotations of hell, destruction, anger, and failure as the word “Vietnam" does for the collective American psyche. “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…" -Sun Tzu.
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