The biggest, most gigantic flaw of this game is the inability to save. The player cannot initiate game saves at any time. The game, like a lot of console games, works on the principle of checkpoints, and herein lays the flaw. The inability to save takes a game that could have been one of the most awesome shooters of the year and turns it into a frustrating waste of time and money.

When will game developers learn that the ability to save the game at any point is one of the features most demanded by players? In visiting the online communities for Men of Valor, as a player, not in researching this article, the lack of a save feature was the single largest complaint of other players.

Several patches have already been released, but it seems the developers are unwilling listen to their customer community and issue a patch for game saves. In addition, the community itself seems to have pretty much abandoned the game. Generally, by the time a game has been out a few months a plethora of walkthroughs, cheat lists, and trainers can be found. Men of Valor has none of this.

I was only able to find one walkthrough, and that was the published and for-purchase Prima Strategy Guide, not a user-created text walkthrough. I've stated before that I like cheats, they make the game more fun, but with Men of Valor there are no cheats. None. Not a one.

Trainer programs that make up for the lack of cheats are sadly missing as well. I was able to find two trainers, one for unlimited ammo, and one for both unlimited ammo and unlimited health. The problem is, I couldn't get the two-function trainer to work with v1.0 of Men of Valor and had to apply the v1.2 patch, nullifying the unlimited health feature.

I did come across a health cheat in one of the community boards, but it required editing of the checkpoint save files and was rather limited in usage, being disabled as soon as you search a body for equipment.

So why all the focus on cheats? Well, sometimes it's just fun to be able to blast indiscriminately and without consequence. Sometimes, they're actually needed to get past difficult game sections. With Men of Valor, the latter is definitely the case. As a matter of fact, I don't know how some players could get past certain portions of this game without using cheats.

When you combine the lack of any save feature, the difficulty of some sections of the game, and the lack of usable cheats, Men of Valor was a big disappointment. Even more disappointing is that I based my decision to buy this game on the demo I played. It's really sad when the demo is more fun than the full game. What's even more sad is when a game ceases to be fun and becomes nothing but frustrating.

When compared to other FPS games, like Far Cry, which I covered in the September 2004 issue of Computing Unplugged Magazine, see http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200409/00001312001.html, the enemy AI in Men of Valor is pathetic. In Far Cry, the enemy used intelligent squad tactics, shouting orders to one another in an attempt to flank the player. The enemies in Men of Valor lamely spawn from predetermined sites and blindly rush oncoming fire. Somehow, I don't think this was a tactic successfully employed by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.