Developer: Ocean Publisher: Sunsoft Release: 12/88 Genre: Action
Platoon was one of the most impenetrable games I tried to play back in the day. In the days where it was common to borrow games without the instruction manual I had no clue what to do, where to go, or how to do it. Needless to say I never made it passed the first level. Coming back to it now it is still just as frustrating and even more so now that I have seen the rest of the game. This is not a good game, which is par for the course from Ocean software.
The film follows an army volunteer during the Vietnam War and had a strong anti-war message. It would have been easy to create a generic Contra style action game but it would go against what the movie tried to portray. The game attempts to incorporate some of the film’s questioning about the morality of the war in a ham fisted way. The NES version of Platoon is a port of the computer game from Europe. I am not sure how accurate it is to the original vision but I can tell you that the game is an ambitious but frustrating mess.
Each of Platoon’s four levels is a different genre and none of them are good. More than likely you will spend the majority of your time in the first level. Here the game resembles a side-scroller. The goal of this stage is to find the explosives somewhere within the jungle to blow up a bridge leading to the Viet Cong village and find the tunnel to escape. This is easier said than done. The forest is a maze of identical corridors and passageways and is absolutely massive. Trying to navigate without drawing a map is near impossible. Even with a map it is still easy to get lost due to the way the jungle’s design. You also have to contend with a ton of other issues that make playing the game a chore.
The controls are stiff and very slow. If you do not shoot the second you see an enemy soldier chances are you will take a hit. Nearly every action needs consideration due to what feels like input lag. Soldiers spawn infinitely and have a nasty habit of dropping out of trees and foxholes suddenly. It feels incredibly cheap and is an issue that permeates the rest of the game as well. If you locate the village before finding the explosives it is instant death. And as one last fuck you the houses in the village have rando traps with no advance warning. If you can somehow tolerate this part it gets somewhat better.
Stage two is a first person maze as you search for flares and a compass. There is an auto-map to track your progress as you search rooms for items. I’ll give the game credit; the scrolling is smooth compared to similar titles on the NES that tried something similar Platoon makes exploration feel natural. Enemy soldiers appear randomly and infinitely and you must be quick on the draw lest you take hits. Your exploration is tempered by limited ammo and unless you want to spend more time than necessary searching for more it is best to move as fast as possible. This is the one tolerable element of the game and the one the least issues.
For the third level Platoon becomes a shooting gallery. You must take out encroaching soldiers in the cover of darkness using the flares you found previously. The light is brief as you slowly move your cross hairs to their position. Technically you can locate them using nothing but their silhouettes but it is only a matter of time before you die. The problem with this stage is that it drags on longer than it should. There is no skill to it, just the slow pain of waiting for the invisible clock to wind down and it is over. This had the potential to be the best part of the game but is a tedious mess instead.
The finale has a lot in common with the base sections of Contra. You navigate one final maze using the compass to locate Sergeant Barnes and take him out before time runs out. Maybe I am dumb but the compass was near useless in guiding me and it felt like I stumbled on the last boss by accident. The timer is strict the level is simply not fun. But that applies to nearly the entire game.
In Closing
Platoon is a bad game on nearly every level. I have nothing good to say about it. I respect the attempt to recreate scenes from the movie but every attempt falls flat on its face. It is a feat in itself to span four genres and none of them are good. Throw this in the pile of bad licensed games on the NES.
