I've gone ahead and played this game using DOS Box. Although I enjoy the game enough to keep playing it, I have several critiques and a few questions.

But first, I will give credit where credit is due and point out the things that I really liked about this game.

One thing which this game does very well and which many modern day infantry games or sims don't do particularly well is support. In the real world if a four-man squad of SEALS were to encounter heavy resistance they wouldn't rely on their personal superiority to the enemy to try and defeat the enemy all by themselves; in reality they would call in support if they had that option. Most games simply don't implement that. For example, in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down little birds will eventually show up at scripted moment and fire their miniguns at the same exact spots each time you play through the level but they don't really stick around to support you and you can't call for them; the emphasis of the game is actually on the player to be skillful enough to go through dozens of disposable Somalis all by him or herself. In SEAL Team, though, the player may call in support choppers, swift boats, and (I believe) airstrikes at will. The player can in fact designate a location on the level map where he wants the attack to occur and can call upon any and all support units available for help. This is a major component in the game as the SEAL team quickly runs out of ammunition and loses the ability to attack enemies if multiple Vietcong fighters engage them especially at long range. Not surprisingly, helicopter gunships with M60s and rockets are also a lot more effective at killing the enemy than four men with rifles who are going for shots at a range of 60+ meters. The superior firepower provided by the support units is balanced by the fact that using them destroys the player's element of surprise and makes it extremely difficult to capture, rather than kill, the enemy thereafter. Also, the helicopter gunships eventually run out of ammunition; I'm not sure how realistic that is since I'm sure in reality they carry enormous amounts but it prevents the player from overusing the support resources at non-crucial times. I think that this reliance on support and the flexibility the player has to call in the support whenever he needs it is both realistic and also a very innovative aspect of this game.

Another positive aspect of the game is that it has implemented a suppression fire effect. Basically, if a lot of lead comes towards the SEAL team actions in progress are interrupted and the team is negatively affected besides for any casualties that may result. The SEAL team may also attempt to suppress the Vietcong by using a full-magazine-discharge fire setting but this is limited in usefulness by the speed at which it makes the team run entirely out of ammunition. Not enough games in my opinion have implemented suppression fire well. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down did so clumsily where certain enemies would start a "suppressed" animation and not attack you if you fired a lot in their general direction but on the other hand certain enemies were immune to suppression. America's Army has handled suppression very well with its "combat effectiveness meter". However, I think SEAL Team has done a very solid implementation of suppression fire and certainly it's probably the best job implementing suppression fire that anyone had done back in 1993.

SEAL team has also got the advantages (for 1993) of objective-based gameplay. It's difficult to kill all the enemies in most levels to the point that it's actually much more practical to accomplish the objectives with a minimum of fighting and get out. Since the player can call in support units to extract the team and specify exactly where he wants extraction to occur this adds another level of strategy. How can the player go about the mission objectives and achieve an extraction as quickly as possible immediately afterwards? Extra fighting is usually undesirable because of limited ammunition and also because dead SEALs are permanently removed from your roster which is another nice touch for '93. In fact, if the SEAL team takes too many casualties an Emergency Extraction automatically occurs where helicopters immediately move to the team's location. The fighting continues until the 'copters get there at which point the scenario ends and whomever died in the fighting is removed from the game.


Now, it's time to talk about the things that I don't like about this game.

In the first place, there's the age-old issue of pathfinding. It doesn't happen often but sometimes the SEAL team gets stuck behind a tree and is too befuddled to follow the pointman. That's never good.

In Campaign mode the campaign ends if the pointman is KIA but not if anyone else is. This is a little weird. I can think of a couple possible reasons for this but I don't personally like it.

In my opinion the mechanic for capturing Vietcong is a bit weird. In order to capture someone you have to sneak your team very close to him (like 5 meters) and when he sees you he will surrender. You hit the "s" button to hand signal a search and your team captures him. If he sees you when you're a little too far away he wastes you with his AK. I figure that this is the best they could implement with the technology at the time.

The SEAL team blows through their ammunition *very* quickly. I suppose that's pretty in character for the Vietnam War but I wonder if the rate isn't a little bit exaggerated to make the game more challenging. On the first mission of the game I ended up giving each man about 500 rounds of 5.56 ammo and they were capable of blowing entirely through that whole supply in a mission which lasted under 30 minutes. The accuracy for this kind of discharge is like 10%.

The game lets you stand upright, crouch, or go prone, but the implementation is slightly surreal. Basically, being prone is the best, because you're hardest to see and shoot the most accurately. In real life being prone is best at long range but at close range (i.e. fighting around some huts) you probably don't want to be prone as it makes you very un-agile. The game doesn't seem to have implemented taking cover behind objects like trees, though, or things like room-clearing with frag grenades and team tactics, and so basically there's literally no reason you would want to be anything but prone when enemies are near. If you try to stand up to run behind a hut in my experience you quickly get shot and killed whereas if you lie prone beside the hut it takes a very long time for your guy to get killed even if he is being fired upon. Essentially, mobility on foot is almost entirely a liability in this game and the only reason you'd ever go upright is if you wanted to travel across the map more quickly due to impatience.

The wounding system is weird, as well. If you're prone it takes quite a lot of hits to kill you (I guess they're assumed to be grazes or riccohets to the limbs or something) but if you're upright you die much more quickly. Either way I think that each man on your team can take more abuse than is realistic IMO, considering that there was no real good armor in 'Nam. (The game is set in 'Nam.)

Lastly, there are a few strange historical mistakes. The manual says the M16 is a M16A1, which is correct. However, in the game they call it M16A2 which didn't exist in 'Nam, and it also shoots full auto. There also seems to be some confusion on the part of the authors about what "semi automatic" means. Basically, the authors think that "single shot" -> "semi automatic", "semi-automatic" -> "controlled bursts", and that "automatic" means blowing your entire magazine suppressively.