The biggest challenge for Pivotal must have been using a retooled Conflict engine and jamming the Deserf Storm experience (where there's a lot of sand and no trees) into Vietnam (where there are a lot of trees and no sand).

The game is now more attuned to realise that you're unlikely to send Cherry the medic to heal a grumpy Vietcong sniper, and so saves you some fiddly tapping by automatically knowing that you want to deliver bloody death - so bloody death comes a lot more swiftly. A mere depression of the right mouse button, a selection of a squad member and a look in the right direction will do the majority of your dirty work. The command system itself has been pretty streamlined since Conflict's Iraqi efforts and there's a lot less keyboard tapping. Aimed to land somewhere between the painstaking command structure of games like Rainbow Six and the stand by that burning car and pull the trigger' approach of EA's fun-packed Freedom Fighters, this Conflict epistle allows you to switch between the roles of heavy gunner, sniper, light gunner and medic while issuing all manner of snipe that chap', heal that soldier', blow up that gun emplacement' orders.

In an extensive play of some early code, we became thoroughly embroiled in the game's tale of four Vietnam stereotypes trapped behind enemy lines: the green rookie, the had-enough-of-this-shit veteran, the hick and the black guy, fighting their way through the undergrowth in the knowledge that the raging Tet offensive has cut off the chances of any airlift rescue.

Conflict vietnam xbox