Karma works in strange and mysterious ways. Many years ago, I was filling my car with gasoline when a young woman asked if I would purchase cigarettes for her. She would pay me to do so, and even provided a suitable sob story as to why she "needed" them. My initial response was "no." As she pleaded, I started chanting "no" until she stormed away. This can be likened, with startling similarity, to my experience with Conflict: Vietnam. Much like the young woman knew that I had the power to buy her cigarettes, Conflict: Vietnam has the ability to provide entertainment, and just as I crushed her dreams of underage smoking, poor AI and clunky controls destroyed my hopes of enjoying this recreation of the morally ambiguous war.

Your squad consists of four members: Staff Sergeant Frank Wier, Corporal Bruce Lesh, Corporal Will Shafer and Private Harold Kahler. You can take control of any character at any point, with the AI taking control of the other three. After each mission, you're given the opportunity to upgrade your character's stats, much like a role-playing game.

Developer Pivotal did a wonderful job of recreating the Vietnam atmosphere. Not only are the levels lush and detailed, but they're also filled with hiding spots for the Vietcong. Tensions run high, as an ambush can happen at any moment. Conflict: Vietnam also features surprisingly believable voice work, which really helps to aids in the immersion factor. They even licensed several musical groups from the Vietnam era, including The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Nowhere To Run and Going' Up The Country.

The Conflict series first originated on the PC, where the standard 101/102 key keyboard means developers generally don't worry about running out of buttons. However, the Xbox game pad is a different story. With only 12 buttons, two analog sticks and a D-Pad, a bit of ingenuity was required to give players full control over their squad. Pivotal's solution to this problem requires players to hold down the L trigger while issuing commands. While this allows for advanced control over your entire squadron, the command buttons are laid out in a seemingly random order. This wouldn't be so bad if there was some type of on-screen menu that allowed you to choose commands, a la Rainbow Six 3. Instead, you're forced to memorize a series of unintuitive button presses in order to effectively manage your squad. In order to send a squad mate crawling ahead of your current position, you have to first pull the left trigger, hit white, press B, choose the soldier, direct him where to go, and then hit B once again. There were also several instances in which I intended to order my troops to stop but forgot to pull the command trigger first, and instead threw a grenade into my squadron.

Likewise, aiming is also broken. Conflict: Vietnam allows players to choose between third person auto-aim, third person manual aim, and a first person mode. Both forms of manual aiming are so overly sensitive that it becomes nearly impossible to quickly and accurately target your foes, while the auto-aim does its job almost too well, often locking on to enemies before you've detected them. It doesn't help that the first person mode is mostly obscured by the weapon sights, which would render it useless if the sensitive aiming hadn't already done so.

Another issue lies with the save system that only allows you to save twice per level. Though it's understandable that Pivotal didn't want players saving after every firefight, two saves per level is very restricting and hampers the overall enjoyment of the game, especially if you happen to accidentally toss a grenade into your squadron instead of commanding them forward.

Your squad mates aren't exactly the brightest either. They're more than willing to go and get themselves all shot up, and by the time you've called them back they're often in need of immediate medical attention, or worse, laying gutshot in the middle of the battlefield. You need to keep them on a tight leash, and it's very difficult to quickly issue detailed commands due to the aforementioned command system.

The Xbox version of Conflict: Vietnam supports two and four player multiplayer, though it does not include Xbox Live play. This is a baffling omission, as online multiplayer lends itself perfectly to the cooperative nature of this game.

Just like the young woman I mentioned earlier, I kept pestering Conflict: Vietnam, only I was hoping for fun, not cigarettes. No matter how hard I tried though, I was still faced with the same stonewall denial. Conflict: Vietnam isn't the worst shooter ever, but that's no reason to give it a go. If you're a huge fan of Vietnam games or the Conflict series, give it a shot, otherwise, there are much better games out there.