Battlefield Vietnam

There aren’t too many games out there that have quite the following Battlefield has. Battlefield 1942 did an amazing job creating a believable war experience, allowing players to pilot aircraft, drive landside vehicles such as tanks and jeeps, or command the seas with enormous battleships and submarines. With Battlefield 1942 being such a great game, and a huge success, it wasn’t surprising to hear that another would be coming out. This time the Battlefield universe has been taken into the jungle during the Vietnam War in the appropriately titled Battlefield Vietnam, brought to us by DICE and EA.

Upon starting the game, you’ll notice right away that things have changed. The new menu interface is a bit more stylized than 1942’s menus, and right away it’s apparent that the whole game looks better. There is no longer a single player campaign mode, only instant battle. This makes it pretty obvious that Battlefield Vietnam is made for multiplayer, which comes as no surprise since that was what made the original so popular. Available multiplayer modes include Conquest, Co-op Conquest, and Evolution.

Conquest is the typical Battlefield mode of play, where you and your team mates try and capture as many spawn points and hold them until one side’s tickets are all used up (with tickets being the number of times a team is allowed to spawn a dead player). Co-op Conquest includes bots into the previous mode, in case you don’t have enough human players to make it interesting. Evolution mode is somewhat like the old campaign mode from 1942; it lines up related maps so that when one is finished the next one loads with the amount of tickets you left off with on the last map. It sort of emulates important battles that were fought in Vietnam in the right order.

The best way to experience Vietnam is definitely online, since playing with bots is not very satisfying. In fact, it’s just plain frustrating at times. First of all, their patterns are pretty predictable. They will take the most obvious path between spawn points, making it really easy to stay in one spot and mow them down. Even though the bots are predictable, they are sometimes godlike in battle: they will pick you out in a large-scale battle, they will see you even while hidden in deep foliage, and they will kill from seemingly impossible locations. They’ll also grab all the vehicles and proceed to drive them in circles, away from battle, or any other stupid and useless way you can think of, making your friendly bots more of an annoyance than any sort of help.

Well, now that the bad stuff is out of the way, on to what makes the game so great. First off, the load screens are much more entertaining - music from the era plays as historical facts are displayed for you to read along with pictures. Different subjects such as what’s going on back home, the terrain, or the vehicles you are using add background and depth to the combat that ensues.

New to the Battlefield series are the helicopters that can be found in just about any map in Battlefield Vietnam. While there were helicopters in the widely popular Desert Combat modification, Vietnam does a better job with the controls and implementation. They’re still pretty tough to control at first, but gamers that keep at it can turn the helicopters into an unstoppable death-machine. The choppers aren’t meant for just combat, either - they can also be used to airlift very important hardware across large distances pretty quick. Tanks and boats no longer have to travel for ages to get to battle. Some maps even feature little outhouse-looking items that serve as mobile spawn points. Choppers can pick these up and drop them off wherever they want, allowing players to spawn behind enemy lines.

Many of the planes have had overhauls, such as the F-4 “MIG Killers” and their heat-seeking missiles. They also come equipped with napalm, which if used correctly can wipe out an entire base of infantry. They are also much faster than the planes in Battlefield 1942 (as they should be) but players of the Desert Combat mod should easily be able to cope.

Other additions to the gameplay include new weapons. Each side has a whole new selection of weapons that were used in the Vietnam War. Before you spawn into battle you are able to choose your occupation (just like Battlefield 1942), but this time there are only four occupations: Assault, Anti-Armor, Engineer, and Sniper. Each class has two different weapon sets, so there are six possible weapon sets per side per map. Different maps have different sets of weapons fit for that terrain, so the gameplay varies quite a bit between maps.

Aside from the typical assault rifles, sniper rifles, etc., there are a good number of new weapons. The M16’s for the U.S. have grenade launchers as a secondary fire, good for clearing groups of enemies. One of the anti-armor sets for U.S. includes a bazooka and an M60, probably the best gun offered in the game. Aside from its slow reload times, it can clear the jungle of soldiers as well as take down choppers. The Vietnamese now have heat-seeking missiles, allowing a few soldiers the ability to take an enemy chopper or plane down in a matter of seconds. The Engineers on either side now have very effective ways to booby trap and sabotage as well, but I’ll leave that up to you to find out when you play.

Players will instantly feel comfortable with the controls and gameplay of Vietnam. In fact, not much has changed at all. Aside from the change in environment, graphics, and sound, it is very much like the Desert Combat mod. For those very few of you that have never played Desert Combat, there will be many changes, but for the majority that has, it’s really just a change of location. This is not a bad thing at all, but for some it may not be enough. There aren’t many maps right away, but new ones are coming out rapidly. The ones that are included are nice and varied, including smaller, linear maps and big, open maps. Almost every map is covered in beautiful jungle, allowing for tons of cover. It’s a sniper’s heaven.

The graphics do an excellent job of capturing the Vietnam terrain. Straw huts and bamboo litter the terrain while shallow rivers cut through the dense jungle. This is the first game where I actually felt like I was fighting in a jungle (aside from Far Cry, of course). From the vehicles to the player models to the trees and ferns it all looks amazing. It’s so detailed that if you’re close enough to another soldier, you can actually see their mouth move when they shout one of the many pre-recorded commands, such as “enemy spotted” or “requesting a pickup.”

The sound has been updated, too. Now, bullets whizzing by dangerously close sound extremely realistic. You can actually hear them tearing through the leaves all around you. Explosions, gun fire, chopper blades, and radio chatter all add to the feel of jungle combat. Vehicles even have built in radios now, so when someone hops in they can hit “0” and a list of the available songs pops up. All the songs are from the appropriate time period, and when you start playing it all surrounding players can hear it coming from your vehicle. There’s even a Doppler effect, so if someone zooms by in a jeep while blaring their music, it actually sounds like they zoomed by with music blaring. If you aren’t into the provided music, there’s folder where you can drop your own MP3’s and they’ll show up instead of the included songs. The only downside to this is that you can’t share the love; no one around you will hear your personal tunes.

Battlefield Vietnam is a wonderful game, and definitely lives up to its name, but it doesn’t offer much as far as new content goes. It sounds like a lot when it’s listed here, but when you actually play it, it just feels like a better looking Desert Combat. This is still a good thing, though, and I encourage anyone and everyone to give this game a shot. Whether you played the original Battlefield 1942 or not, you’re bound to have fun with Battlefield Vietnam. This game should not be missed, as it’s likely to be just as popular, if not more so than its predecessor.     

Gameplay: 8.5
Vietnam doesn’t offer too much more than Battlefield 1942 did, but what it does offer adds a whole new dimension to the game. All the new weapons, aircraft, and landside vehicles fit the time period and are well equipped for battle. The addition of helicopters really expands on the tactics and the way battles are fought.

Graphics: 9.5 
If there was one thing that was improved, it was the graphics. Even though it is one of the deepest and largest first-person shooters, it managed to be one of the best looking as well. All the in-game models are incredibly detailed, and the plant-life is so dense it actually appears as if you are wading through waste-high ferns. Even out where there is no action, you’ll still see things like chopper crashes, huts, and stray boats. DICE really went all out and added so much detail to an already great looking game.

Sound: 9
While some of the things soldiers say can get redundant, everything else is top notch. The sounds of bullets ripping through leaves and choppers hovering overhead thrusts players into the battle, and hearing old 60’s war songs projecting across the jungle from a tank is just plain cool.

Difficulty: Medium
While the bots’ patterns can be very predictable, they’ll also sometimes kill you from places where you can’t even see them. It’s especially frustrating to be hiding in the densest part of the jungle and still be sniped from 300 yards away by a bot that shouldn’t have been able to see you. At the same time, you can mostly stay in one spot along the most common path and kill handfuls of bots at a time.

Concept: 8.6 
Not too many games have been based on Vietnam (at least not as many as there have been for WWII), so it was the most likely war to do the sequel of Battlefield on. Plus, Vietnam offers great terrain and gameplay options (booby traps). They could even continue this trend with the next few sequels; maybe a Battlefield Iraq and then a Battlefield Mars…

Multiplayer: 9.6
Quite possibly one of the best first-person shooters to play online, the Battlefield series is a favorite of many. There is still your fair share of “smacktards” and team killers, but when you find that good server and play for hours, there’s nothing like it. Playing this game with other humans is definitely the way to go, and provides hours of entertainment.

Overall: 9
Battlefield Vietnam isn’t a huge step forward, but it is an improvement in a lot of areas. Not much was wrong with the series previously, but more maps and modes would have been nice. With or without more maps and modes, Battlefield Vietnam will be just as popular as the original was, as it should be. Vietnam offers a different style of combat than Battlefield 1942 did, and the people that don’t like it will be the minority. If you’re a fan of video games at all, you should pick this one up.