(Updated January 30, 2003)
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The Taxman (33 KB)
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The Taxman - new unreviewed edition (4,474 KB)
Who better than SEB Nam Pack team member Ebud could you get to produce a great SEB Nam Pack mission! The Taxman has a great story line, great mission play and the great ambiance of packing your weapon on an overcast morning somewhere in the backwaters of Vietnam.
Mr. Tu' Phan is your target today, ladies and gentlemen. He's a Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI) collaborator, forcefully collecting taxes from South Vietnamese hamlet dwellers not far from the North Vietnamese border. Here's a little introduction to the VCI with a link to the full article:
The VCI was an elaborate, sophisticated, secret enemy network existed in Vietnam that tried to impose its authority on the people through terror and threat. The VCI network provided the political control and direction of the enemy's war within the villages and hamlets.
- from Flight Of The Phoenix, by Colonel William Wilson, U.S. Army (retired)
If you've glanced at the article, you'll see that Ebud's mission is no fairy tale. These things did happen. And here's your chance to reenact some of that very tragic and nasty era. You'll be landing onshore, northwest of the village where Tu' Phan is reported to be staying in. Keep your eyes peeled for NVA patrols on the way. And watch the time. Tu' Phan has other villages to plummet, you know. Stealth is of the essence because, if you're spotted and word gets back to Tu' Phan and his body guards, he will waste no time in making an exit.
I personally managed to get to the village unnoticed, with my squad given the order to hold fire. After my mates and I spotted about a dozen Charlies, I gave the open fire order. Wow! My ears still hurt from the MGs. What a battle! And we managed to take out Tu' Phan, too, in the melee. Just one problem: I forgot I had to extract and didn't pay enough notice to the radio messages coming up on the screen's lower left corner. It was bye-bye Charlie - for me, that is.
Ebud, if you're reading this, I'll add half a star to this review if you can add voices to go along with those radio messages. Also, it is not clear from the briefing where the gunship support radio call should be employed - at the target area or at the extraction area? I think sentence or two about using the Huey gunship support should be added to the briefing.
The Taxman includes well produced, to the point, cutscenes, a savegame radio call and a lot of replay value. The new, unreviewed edition of the mission, is even more intense, contains many changes and tweaks and adds a lot of voice acting to the mission.
Officially, this mission is still in it's beta stages. However, this looks like an almost final rendition, so why should you suffer waiting any longer? Besides, you know I'm usually good at replacing copies of MOM mission with corrected versions, as they become available. So dig in!