The game starts with a fabulous set of tutorials that go a long way to earning the game its R18 rating. The training sergeant, clearly a graduate of etiquette and manners college, displays a wonderfully colourful selection of phrases (although some of his proposed actions we are sure would be anatomically impossible). This hard, gritty tutorial really set the scene for the rest of the game with your fellow troopers employing the typical hard language you'd expect for men in combat. It works very well but don't have the speakers on full when your mum is over or you will spitting soap for a month!

The game itself screams authenticity with the single-player story starting you off almost right at the beginning of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. You are operating with a bunch of Special Forces who are supporting a team of friendly natives in the war against the Vietcong. You start with a limited amount of weapons and ammo. This would be one of our biggest bones of contention with the game: the lack of ammo you can carry can see you running very short on some missions.

Tip: As soon as you can pick up one of the Russian sub-machine guns, the Vietcong act as a handy re-supply resource. The drum-fed variety on single shot mode we found to be the best option.

You don't go it alone. When you go out into the jungle you command a combat team that typically contains a scout, a medic and a weapons specialist. These are just not cannon fodder but essential to successfully complete your missions. If you are injured your medic will come up to you and fix you up. To call in air strikes or artillery you need the radio man (this bit is quite cool - using a pop up map you can call in strikes to winkle out those hard to get targets. The draw back is that the map is tough to interpret and if you are not careful you can rain on your own parade). The scout is by far the most essential. By instructing him to move out he guides you through the mission. Athough the missions are relatively linear in nature, the scout is still essential in tracing the safest route and also at detecting nearby VC.

Where Purple Haze really shines is with its graphics. Authenticity has been a mantra for the development of this set of games. The team was the first and only to go to Vietnam and photographed terrain features and jungle and replicated these in the game. It really works well with the jungle giving you an almost claustrophobic feeling. It's down right scary in places, with you not being sure what's around the next tree let alone the next corner. The enemy blends in well with the terrain and is very hard to pick out. Often you will find yourself firing blind into likely hiding places just to suppress enemy fire our shooting at the slightest hint of movement. In one mission we left the field thinking we had killed 3 Vietcong but had final statistics of 10. We never found the bodies and this gives you some idea how well the terrain and its effects are replicated in the games.

Tip: When you are into a combat phase, rather than running in blindly take stock of the situation and try and pin-point all the sources of incoming fire. Look at the stances of your team - they will generally face the direction of fire.

Running through the jungle there are also some traps for the unwary. Usually these consist of mines and sharp spikes. So not only are you trying to spot the enemy but you have to keep an eye on the ground for trip wires and pits. Once spotted, and if there is no way to pass around them, you can disarm them. Be careful to discern what they are, though, as we got cocky and disarmed what we thought was a grenade trap to only stand up and be greeted by the pointy end of a spike trap - arrrgggghhh medic!

Tip: Watch your scout carefully, and follow in his footsteps. He will always avoid the traps, so if he climbs off the path or goes over rather then around, do exactly the same.

Game controls are similar to most FPS shooters that are on the market today, with a few of their own quirks; these can be changed to something more familiar through a well-laid interface. The menus are crisp and in play controls are smooth and functional. Targetting is tight with head shoots guaranteeing a kill and the body target area hard to score against. The enemy AI is very well put together with the VC ducking and diving all over the place to make targetting difficult. When overwhelmed they will retreat hoping to pull you into booby traps areas or simply shoot 'n' scoot.

The audio we have said is very earthy and gritty but in other aspects the sound is a bit of a let-down. We would have liked to see more background jungle sounds and more of a selection of the music and songs of the era.

The in-game graphics are nothing short of stunning. The action feels just like being in the real jungle and even the attacks on the fire base have all the confusion and visibility issues you would expect fighting in the dead of night. Well, that's our excuse for the friendlies that appeared on our kill sheet. What does let the game down a bit is some of the mission briefing animations. A lot of effort has been made to make this as authentic as possible, with your team lounging about jive-talking at each other. However, the animation of the mouths and faces has quite a comical rodent look.

Once you have been through the game's two sets of missions you can play the excellent quick mission setup where you play against bots. There is a good selection of maps and the more single-player missions you play the more you unlock. This is a great opportunity to have a quick blatt without the tension in the main game or to hone your skills before going onto the multiplayer servers. Because the game has not had the popularity it deserves there is a limited amount of servers (and none we could find in NZ) and this is a shame as the game excels in this department as well. With tight maps and heaps of options it is a good multiplayer experience.