The retro version of Call of DutyPlatoon was a very successful movie which attempted to cover the horrors of war, written from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran. As a film, audiences and critics alike ate it up, and it even received a few awards to its name. The games had a similar reaction on the home computers of the time, such as the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, but the main question remains: is this NES version of Platoon worth playing? To be honest, I don't know who thought Platoon was prime game material in the first place, considering that it's meant to teach about the horrors of war. Does that sound like it translates very well into a game where you run around shooting people? It really doesn't.
To start with, the graphics are suitably dark, but they don't make very good use of the NES color palette, with lots of brown, green, and yellow everywhere. I know wars aren't meant to be colorful, but you could at least try to make your game look appealing to the eye. There isn't much effort put into the environments, either, which causes everything to look very same-y after a while. Oddly enough, almost every computer version of the game makes far better use of color than this NES version does, despite running on inferior hardware. Don't ask me how that works.
The soundtrack isn't terrible, but it's very repetitive. None of the game's music tracks are very long, meaning that you have to listen to them loop over and over again, even though they weren't fun to listen to the first time! The sound effects are very similar, as you'll be hearing the exact same hit, bullet, and explosion sounds for the entire game, and they get repetitive after the first few times you hear them. Again, the developers managed to make something inferior on more powerful hardware: the Commodore 64 version has much better and much less repetitive music, and it even has digitized speech for your soldiers when they're hit! Now that's a massive step up. How do they make superior products with inferior hardware and then botch the ports to more powerful hardware? The world may never know.
The gameplay is difficult to describe, mainly because it changes drastically between levels. One level's a sidescroller, one level's top-down, and two levels are in first-person...only problem is, none of them are executed particularly well.
Level one is a jungle maze that's full of dead ends where there's no way to know where you're supposed to go. Of all the levels to start a game off with, why a maze? It's such a terrible choice that even the enemies don't want to be there, considering the way they suicidally charge at you without firing their weapons. This level wouldn't have any challenge at all if it weren't for the crippled controls screwing you up! For some unknown reason, you have to push UP to jump. It's really easy to jump when you want to go up, and you're totally helpless in mid-air. You'd think they would make the A button jump, but it throws useless grenades instead. The grenades are so slow that you'll get hit by the time you finish throwing them!
Later in the first level, you have to look around for items, and there's a few items that are booby-trapped with explosives. There's no way to see which objects are trapped, so why are they there? It's not a challenge that you can defeat with skill, it's just a guessing game that you have to get lucky on! But once you get through that, the next level is in first-person and has you wandering through mazelike tunnels while you shoot enemies that appear in front of you with no warning.
It's a lot harder than it sounds, since your crosshair swings back and forth like your character's drunk. If you're holding up to move forward like a normal person, you'll move the crosshair up by accident every time you see an enemy, and that makes it nearly impossible to actually shoot them before they hit you! What is it with the controls being so badly thought out? Did they actually playtest this tunnel level? Instead of playing like a normal person, you just have to tap up to avoid throwing your aim off for every enemy. Why do I have to do that?
Your objective is to find a bunch of flares and a compass, which are used in the next two levels, and get out of the tunnels. Only problem is, they're completely useless in the next two levels, but the game won't let you leave without them, so you just have to wander around like an idiot again and explore every room until you can find all the items you need. None of the rooms are marked, so you just have to search everything in every room until you find what you need, and you'll find a lot of ammo and health that you might not even need.
Oh, did I forget to mention that you can run out of ammo? There's an ammo counter in every level, and it's really inconsistent - in some levels, it'll never run out unless you just sit there firing your gun for minutes on end, and it'll run out with alarming speed in other levels. If you run out, you might as well just get an instant Game Over, since you're completely defenseless without bullets. Why even have an ammo limit at all? Can you think of a single decent NES shooting game where you can run out of ammo and become defenseless? I didn't think so.
Level three is pretty much the easiest level in video game history. All you have to do is shoot the guys coming at you in the dark. It seems like they were supposed to be really hard to see, but you can see them pretty clearly against the background because they obscure parts of it. It seems like you're supposed to use the flares to see the enemies better, but I couldn't even figure out how to do it! I tried every button combination I could think of, but nothing seemed to work. Why even bother? It's not like you even need the flares anyway. If I didn't need them, then why did the game make me collect a bunch of them?!
Level four is probably one of the worst ideas for a level I've heard in a long time - a maze where everything looks exactly the same with a four-minute time limit! How do they expect you to know where you're supposed to go when everything looks exactly the same? The compass doesn't help either - it just points wherever it feels like pointing! What's the point of a compass that doesn't even work? Why did I have to collect it if it doesn't help at all?!
I ended up having to look up the solution on the Internet, which is pretty bad considering that this game came out way before the Internet was popular. You're just supposed to alternate between left and right, although I don't know how you would figure that out when everything looks the same, never mind the fact that it's hard to even survive with all the mines, barbed wire, and bullets in your way! To top it all off, the final boss is the easiest thing in this game - all he does is shoot slow bullets at you while tossing a grenade every so often. All you have to do is chuck a few grenades at him, and he's done for.
Wait, I just thought of something...the dull colors, the mindless shooting, the armies of suicidal grunts...this game is the inspiration for Call of Duty. Think about it. The palette is dull and composed mostly of brown, yellow, and green...just like Call of Duty. Most of the enemies are mindless, suicidal grunts that are just there to shoot a few bullets and die...just like Call of Duty. Health is easy to regenerate in the two levels that let you regenerate it...just like Call of Duty. The gameplay is comprised mostly of running through corridors and mindlessly shooting enemies...just like Call of Duty! I finally get it now! This is basically what it would be like if Call of Duty were on the original NES! A soulless warfare game that tries to differentiate its gameplay, but fails to make anything interesting. I honestly wish they had just stuck to one type of gameplay and focused on making that gameplay polished and fun to play.
Honestly, I can't really recommend this game. It's an interesting idea, but the execution was not done very well. The first-person gameplay is frustrating because of poor aiming, the sidescrolling gameplay in the first level is frustrating because of crippled controls, and the top-down gameplay of the final level is frustrating because of the massive storm of gunfire and obstacles in your way while you're trying to navigate a maze! There isn't a single level of this game that stands out in any positive way. The graphics and sound are subpar, and the game's way too short - once you figure out where you're supposed to go, you could easily beat this game in less than 30 minutes. The best thing I can say about it is that it isn't being milked every year like Call of Duty is.
Final Rating: 4 invisible booby-traps out of 10
Graphics
5 Sound
5 Addictive
4 Depth
5 Difficulty
7
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