Tripwire and Antimatter Games aren’t interested in describing why the Vietnam War was fought, only how it was fought: tunnels, traps, napalm, and loud ass helicopters splashing the tops of jungle trees. I flew one of those helicopters, a Huey, and nervously landed it—wobbling and skidding—in a cleared patch of jungle to unload a squad near a vital capture point. I took off while my troops ran, and then from somewhere in the brush a rocket-propelled grenade whizzed into the air, into my rotor. It was all flames and trees after that. The title of a ’70s war movie could have been overlaid on my wreckage right then.Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, the follow up to Rising Storm and the Red Orchestra series of realism-focused multiplayer FPSes, is mostly the tension part of the war movie. It’s a lot of slow, creeping movement, a lot of thinking about my positioning and the enemy’s positioning, and then a burst of action—automatic rifles and explosions and the part where a bunch of extras die. (You’re the extra.)And it isn’t strictly from an American perspective. As with the other games in the series, Antimatter (which is based in Cornwall), is not taking sides: this is all about weapons and tactics, a reenactment of war that cares only about how these very different armies won and lost and whether or not we can get into their heads and play out their movements.
