I thought I'd be the last one to defend this forgotten shooter, mostly because when I first played it back in the day I also rage quit just a few missions in but having beaten the GOG release now I must say that the game is a lot better than it first appears. Men of Valor attempted to transfer the Medal of Honor experience to the Vietnam War, so it's a comparably linear scripted shooter with almost non-stop action and a bodycount that measures in the thousands, with fanfares and everything. However, Men of Valor also tried a few original things, both in terms of mechanics and content. The problem is that many of these things are half-assed and clash with the Allied Assault style core with all its cheesy heroism. Wounds need to be bandaged to limit the amount of damage you take, which sadly boils down to holding down the F key without any serious restrictions. Supplies are mostly recovered from dead bodies but the game doesn't force you to actually look at the corpses or surprise you with personal trinkets and propaganda items like in Vietcong. The guerrilla style warfare of the VC is reflected by enemies storming at you from the forests which are not accessible to you but enemies are still easily gunned down by the dozens so this fails to convey the horror of this kind of combat. And yet, I still really enjoyed the game. Using cover is a must and a solid leaning mechanic makes it work really well. There's tons of dense foliage that enemies can see through but MoV makes up for it by having the crosshair turn red when aiming at an enemy, so the jungle combat is really fair and frankly some of the best I have seen. The biggest problem is that the game is quite monotonous. All levels are simple tunnels, there's an utter lack of calm atmospheric or truly spectacular moments and frankly the scripted sequences feel much cheaper than in Allied Assault. However, once you've gotten the hang of it it's a really solid and fun shooter in an underused setting.
