The film Platoon featured a squad of five soldiers on their mission for the US Army in Vietnam. In this action game based around the film, you take control of these five guys in turn, with the chance to switch between them as they each take one of the 3 hits that would kill them. The game recreates each of the sections of the film, starting with a side-scrolling journey through the jungle, with paths to cross both horizontally and vertically, and the ability to jump or duck hazards. You will need to blow up a bridge and then locate a village, which contains a torch, a map and a trap-door. The enemy has booby-trapped the area and are launching airstrikes, so the danger is not all from enemy ground soldiers.
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I commend them for having the self restraint to just make a Commando clone. Instead it's a side scrolling shooter with vertically stacked levels and a few extra features thrown in like a morale system and some subpar first person shooter segments. Still, all of these gameplay choices are clearly an effort to do something more interesting than the bare minimum, and for the most part it works.
Platoon is based on the movie from 1986 (never seen). I have vague memories of playing this at another kid's house back then, but it's basically the best sidescrolling Vietnam War simulator you could ask for on the NES. Wandering around lost in the jungle, constantly harassed by respawning Viet Cong, getting blown up by explosive traps, what more could you ask for?
Control for the most part is pretty okay, but unfortunately they do that shit where Up on the dpad is jump and it uses the same input to enter paths that go up from your position, resulting in accidental walks upward when you intended to jump over something. You can also use grenades by pressing A, but it takes your character an entire life sentence to actually throw the things and half the time the enemy will clothesline your ass beforehand.
The respawning enemies are honestly the worst thing about the first part of the game. The confusing map layout I can get around by a trip to GameFAQs, but there's nothing I can do about a guy who decides to spawn in from the top of the screen and conveniently dropkicks me out of the air while I'm jumping over tripwire explosives that are a one-hit kill.
Few people got past that part. There's actually three other portions afterwards that are significantly different in terms of gameplay. The stage after the first is this whack first-person maze shit where you need absolute crackshot firing to kill people you meet along the way. The third is basically standard shooting gallery shit. The last one is a top-down version of the first stage, where snipers with the slowest moving bullets of all time make some attempt at tripping you up as you shoot other dudes and move onto the final boss fight against a guy in a bunker. I didn't actually make it to these last two, I just watched a longplay on youtube.
blown up by mine hidden behind foreground bush
YOU'RE HISTORY
Control for the most part is pretty okay, but unfortunately they do that shit where Up on the dpad is jump and it uses the same input to enter paths that go up from your position, resulting in accidental walks upward when you intended to jump over something. You can also use grenades by pressing A, but it takes your character an entire life sentence to actually throw the things and half the time the enemy will clothesline your ass beforehand.
The respawning enemies are honestly the worst thing about the first part of the game. The confusing map layout I can get around by a trip to GameFAQs, but there's nothing I can do about a guy who decides to spawn in from the top of the screen and conveniently dropkicks me out of the air while I'm jumping over tripwire explosives that are a one-hit kill.
Few people got past that part. There's actually three other portions afterwards that are significantly different in terms of gameplay. The stage after the first is this whack first-person maze shit where you need absolute crackshot firing to kill people you meet along the way. The third is basically standard shooting gallery shit. The last one is a top-down version of the first stage, where snipers with the slowest moving bullets of all time make some attempt at tripping you up as you shoot other dudes and move onto the final boss fight against a guy in a bunker. I didn't actually make it to these last two, I just watched a longplay on youtube.
blown up by mine hidden behind foreground bush
YOU'RE HISTORY
2D side scrolling soldier walky shooting game.
it's super confusing with it's weird map structure.
it's super confusing with it's weird map structure.