14 DAY TRIAL // Vietnam '65 does not aim for complete historical accuracy, but the title from Every Single Soldier will be of interest to military buffs because its core mechanics show one of the main strategies that the United States of America used during the conflict.
A lot of thinkers and generals active during the period were convinced that their best option of securing the population and the territory of South Vietnam was to keep Vietcong forces as far away from villages as possible and implement programs to win hearts and minds.
On the ground, it was hard to implement this strategy because of the major problems that the United States forces had with intel, force deployment and political support at home.
The North Vietnamese and their sympathizers were also more resourceful than initially expected and had a greater motivation when it came to winning the conflict even if they failed to succeed in most battles.
After the Vietnam War ended, a number of historians have re-evaluated the approach and decided that it would have been unable to deliver a victory in Vietnam even if it worked well on the ground.
Vietnam '65 translates the hearts and minds strategy into very clear gameplay mechanics and makes gamers feel the difficulties faced by the military commanders of the era.
Political Support, Hearts & Minds, and decay
The goal of the game is to visit enough villages and to kill enough Vietcong and NVA soldiers to keep the Hearts & Minds value of the population in the area above 50.
It's simple to envision a strategy that can deliver the result, but Vietnam '65 models how hard it is, even for a mighty army like that of the United States, to achieve it.
The main difficulty is that the terrain and the craftiness of the enemy make it hard to find information on where they are operating.
They also have a tendency to slip into the forest as soon as an engagement force is moving their way.
Logistics becomes suffocating, Political Support at home is constantly declining when clear victories are not achieved, and the whole effort feels like it's not worth it.
Which is exactly what many leaders in the United States felt during the Vietnam War period, even when their military was doing its best to try and achieve a sort of victory.
There are many historical games that aim to parallel history, but Vietnam '65 is one of the few that manage to make gamers feel it.
