''7554: Glorious Memories Revived'' () is a
first-person shooter
First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
developed by
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
ese video game developer Emobi Games for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. It was released for Vietnamese markets on December 16, 2011.
The game is set during the
Franco-Vietnamese War
The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
from 1946 to 1954. The title is a reference to May 7, 1954, which was the date of the
Việt Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
's victory over France at the
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (french: Bataille de Diên Biên Phu ; vi, Chiến dịch Điện Biên Phủ, ) was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the Fr ...
.
Although the website is currently down, the game can still be downloaded from a
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
br>
capture
Gameplay
The player assumes the role of a
Việt Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
soldier during the
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
. Many gameplay features seen in contemporary FPS games such as ''
Call of Duty
''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter video game Media franchise, franchise published by Activision. Starting out in 2003, it first focused on games set in World War II. Over time, the series has seen games set in the midst of the Cold W ...
'' have been replicated in ''7554''.
The player can only carry up to two firearms plus a melee weapon and hand grenades. Different weapons and ammo can be picked up from fallen soldiers and other locations while fixed weapon emplacements can also be used. The heads-up display shows an ammo counter and a stance icon. The player can crouch and lie prone (but cannot move and shoot at the same time), and is able to scale low walls and other obstacles.
If the player sustains damage, the screen will gradually turn red and the sound of the character's heartbeat will increase in volume, indicating low
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
. As a result, players should find safe cover to crouch or lie prone to restore their health. A grenade icon shows the player the direction and proximity of grenades about to explode. They can also die if they are too close to any explosions. A number of AI non-player characters are also available to assist the player but they cannot be issued commands.
The weapons used in the game are based on actual weapons the Việt Minh used during the war. Some, including the
Arisaka rifle were sourced from Japanese armories captured after the Japanese surrender following
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Plot
Characters
The player-character initially assumes the role of Hoàng Đăng Bình, a Việt Minh soldier who gets caught up in the war. He is joined by heavy weapons specialist Nguyễn Thế Vinh, marksman Lưu Trọng Hà, and anti-aircraft specialist Hoàng Đăng An (who is also Bình's younger brother). Over the course of the game, the player perspective switches between each of the four men.
Story
The game begins with a historical exposition of French rule over Indochina from 1858 until the outbreak of the
Franco-Vietnamese War
The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
in 1946.
At the start of the game, Binh answers the Vietnamese leadership's call to arms against the French. He joins the defense of the Metropole Hanoi from French forces during the
Battle of Hanoi
On December 19, 1946, Viet Minh soldiers detonated explosives in Hanoi, and the ensuing battle, known as the Battle of Hanoi marked the opening salvo of the First Indochina War.
History
On September 14, 1946, France and the DRV had signed a ' ...
. As he links up with Hà and Vinh, the French wear down the defenses and assault the hotel at night. Vietnamese forces head to the mountains to launch a guerrilla war. Now part of the Việt Minh's 204th regiment in October 1950, Binh's team is assigned to attack a French fort astride
Route Coloniale 4 and rescue captured prisoners. The troops fight their way to the town of Đông Khê as French forces pull out. Vinh is later assigned to the 9th Infantry Regiment as it ambushes a French column out of Hòa Bình in December 1952. However, one of the tanks slips through the cordon and seemingly kills Binh. With his last breath, Binh asks Vinh to give him a letter to his family as Vinh later destroys the tank.
Several months later, in
late 1953, General
Võ Nguyên Giáp
Võ Nguyên Giáp (; 25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a Vietnamese general and communist politician who is regarded as having been one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century. He served as interior minister in President H ...
's assaults into Laos later results in Gen
Henri Navarre
Henri Eugène Navarre (31 July 189826 September 1983) was a French Army general. He fought during World War I, World War II and was the seventh and final commander of French Far East Expeditionary Corps during the First Indochina War. Navarre w ...
replacing
Raoul Salan
Raoul Albin Louis Salan (; 10 June 1899 – 3 July 1984) was a French Army general. He served as the fourth French commanding general during the First Indochina War. He was one of four retired generals who organized the 1961 Algiers Putsch op ...
and advocating a new defensive strategy. An joins the 148th regiment in the attack on Dien Bien Phu as the French launches Operation Castor. An later laments that Binh, who recovered to join an attack on Giang Mo, has not been heard from since he was relocated to a military hospital in the rear.
The Dien Bien Phu siege finally begins in March 1954 and An is reassigned to the 316th Division for the initial assault. French troops attack in an attempt to silence the 316th's artillery positions in a hill east of the camp, but are heavily repelled within hours; the hill is later named the "Hill of Medals." Vinh, meanwhile, is part of the attack force on
Beatrice; the success of the attack leads to the fall of
Gabrielle and
Ban Keo within days. An, who was present at the Hill of Medals, helps in the defense of Gabrielle against French airstrikes. Ha is with the 304th Division as part of sniper teams attacking Isabelle. Binh is assigned to a commando raid on a French airbase to disrupt air support missions to Dien Bien Phu. Vinh is part of the troops attacking Eliane 1 and participates in the brutal fighting over the hill (where he is either KIA or WIA after destroying a tank).
Binh returns to the Dien Bien Phu front on May 6 as the Việt Minh begin their
final assault, starting with a dynamite blast on Eliane 2. In the midst of the battle, Binh briefly reunites with Ha before heading back into action; Ha is later killed. During the final attack, Binh unexpectedly reunites with An and learns about their mother's death. Binh's team captures a French soldier and forces him to point out Col
Christian de Castries
Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries (11 August 1902 – 29 July 1991) was the French commander at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Biography
Christian de Castries was born into a distinguished military family, the House o ...
' command bunker; however, French troops open fire and An is hit in the process as he encourages his comrades to rush the bunker. Binh kills the soldiers and later holds An in his arms. An apologizes to Binh before he passes away (later on he is confirmed alive by the developer). Other soldiers start herding away French troops and a soldier raises the Vietnamese
Yellow Star flag over the bunker.
Development
Emobi Games started the project in October 2008 amidst relative secrecy. The development team used Havok's
Vision Engine 8 graphics engine, NVidia's
PhysX
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
Initially, video games supporting PhysX were meant to be accelerated by PhysX PPU (expansion cards designed by Ag ...
physics engine, and
Xaitment
xaitment is a German-based company that develops and sells artificial intelligence (AI) software to video game developers and simulation developers. The company was founded in 2004 by Dr. Andreas Gerber, and is a spin-off of the German Research Ce ...
's XaitMap and XaitControl AI programs to create the game. Despite the high system requirements such programs needed, the development team is reportedly optimizing the game to run on systems with much lower hardware configurations.
To lend authenticity to the game, Vietnam's cultural authorities provided the researchers with information on Việt Minh and French actions during the war.
A video depicting early gameplay footage was released on April 1, 2010, but was given little attention due to being
April Fool's Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...
. A trailer that confirmed the existence of the game was released on May 7, 2010. A demo video of the project, showing the siege of the
Hanoi Metropole Hotel in December 1946, was shown in September 2010. Another trailer was introduced in June 2011.
Release
The game was released for the Vietnamese market on December 16, 2011. It was later translated for Western release on July 20, 2012. The export version features the original Vietnamese audio track.
Reception
The game received mostly negative reviews.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
reported 2 mixed and 5 negative reviews. Chris Watters of
GameSpot
''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
graded the game at 3.5/10, stating that it lacks many hallmarks expected of modern-day first-person shooter video games.
In the Vietnamese market, the game received the 2012 Reader's Choice Award from ''
PC World
''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication.
It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...
Vietnam''.
References
External links
*
{{Portal bar, video games
2011 video games
First-person shooters
Cold War video games
Video games set in Vietnam
Vision (game engine) games
Windows games
Windows-only games
Video games developed in Vietnam
Video games using PhysX