Let me begin by saying, no, it's not an expansion pack, I repeat, NOT AN EXPANSION PACK for Battlefield 1942. Battlefield Vietnam, though it bears more similarities to Battlefield 1942 than just its name, is an entirely new stand-alone game and Battlefield 1942 is not required to play.
Now that we've cleared that up, you may have noticed that military themed first-person shooters are everywhere these days. Given the flood of titles and expansion packs that have been released in this area lately, one has to wonder how many such games the market can support. I couldn't help marvelling at the ad for Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault on the back of the Battlefield Vietnam CD case.
Subsequently, your first impression of Battlefield Vietnam is likely to be one of deja vu. Battlefield 1942 players will find most of the features and game modes they are familiar with in a very immersive jungle setting. If you haven't played BF 1942, the appeal of the game, in a nutshell, is that you can commandeer a wide variety of vehicles, including tanks, ships, and planes, on the front line. For the most part, this is accomplished with a very simple set of standard FPS controls which minimize the learning curve.
Battlefield Vietnam does not stray from this successful formula. It effectively takes the vehicular warfare we love from '42 into the chopper-filled skies of Vietnam, but it doesn't attempt anything as revolutionary as its predecessor did.
What's New
One thing you're likely to notice right away is the music. EA has licensed a bunch of popular protest songs from the Vietnam era, which go a long way toward recreating the atmosphere. Sound in the game is very well done, from the authenticy of the gun shots and helicopter chops to the ability to blast the soundtrack from vehicles in the game. No reviewer yet has failed to mention that approaching the battle in a Huey pumping out "The Ride of the Valkyries" is somewhere up there with, say, free beer.
The graphics have also been stepped up a notch. There is plenty of jungle vegetation to hide in and the terrain of Vietnam is well replicated. Models are a little smoother, the pixel-shaded surfaces are nice if your system is up to it, and explosions are more spectacular than ever. Even reloading your weapon is a treat, as the animations for this are now probably as accurate as those in America's Army.
Of course, better graphics means slower graphics. It may be more stable than BF 1942 was when it was released, but it would appear that there is still a significant amount of optimizing to be done. Prepare to do some tweaking to get acceptable performance with the detail cranked up.
It wouldn't be the Vietnam War without helicopters, and there are a variety of these available to both sides. Some of them have the ability to airlift other vehicles into combat, although this requires some rather precise flying which I have yet to witness in action. I was able to do it on an empty server, but the helicopter controls seem overly sensitive even with a joystick, and you'll see plenty of players having a difficult enough time just staying in the air while under fire, never mind trying to drop a tank gently on the ground.
The basic classes of soldier, bazooka/heat-seeking missle man, engineer, and sniper remain, but the beloved medic is noticeably missing in action! On the other hand, because each class now gets to choose from two primary weapon kits, you actually have more options than BF 1942 offered. There is also bit more variety to the weaponry available to the two sides and, although it's a little too early to say for sure, I suspect there are lingering balance issues. The M60/LAW combination seems particularly lethal at this point. As you can imagine, there is a lot of air power in the game, but there appears to be anti-air mechanisms capable of keeping the role of infantry interesting.
Battlefield Vietnam has a new "Evolution" mode which allows scores to be carried over a pair of historically related maps. Though at least one map has objectives, Objective mode, featured in the Secret Weapons expansion, is gone, perhaps because everyone plays Conquest anyway.
Many subtle improvements have been made to the game over BF 1942. Your weapon remains available in many of Battlefield Vietnam's vehicles, which can make being a passenger a lot more fun. The command point capture timer is more sophisticated, allowing a group of soldiers to capture a command point more quickly than a lone wolf. VC engineers can move special tunnel entrance spawn points around the map, making for some great covert strategy gameplay.
To top it all off, there is a (beta) map editor and mod kit included.
What's Old
If your Internet connection goes down one day and you decide to try single-player mode, you'll discover the same weak (often downright bewildered) AI used in BF 1942. Battlefield Vietnam doesn't even pretend to offer a compelling single-player campaign, so if you're not into online play, pass on this one.
Despite the beefy new graphics, fog is still used in abundance to limit your viewing distance. It's a small annoyance, but you really notice it after playing games with minimal or no fog, especially when flying.
Joystick support remains at an absolute minimum. At the very least I would have expected separate options for planes and helicopters, but no such luck. I'm aware that a lot of people don't use joysticks, and employ no controllers other than mouse and keyboard, yet in game with air vehicles as a central feature, there is really no excuse for such poor controller support.
Maps are quite well thought out and present some interesting scenarios, all modeled loosely on battles that took place during the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, you can still fly across them in less than 30 seconds in a jet, so the familiar "out of bounds" warning is never far off. The slower moving choppers are better suited to maps this size.
The Bottom Line
I don't know if it's the appeal of Vietnam era or what, but gamers certainly haven't waited for the reviews to come out before running to the store and buying Battlefield Vietnam. Two weeks after its release it already has more players that BF 1942 and enough servers to make the in-game browser slightly dysfunctional.
What is here will be excellent in a patch or two. I'm slightly disappointed by what isn't here. For an entirely new game Battlefield Vietnam doesn't really try to do anything new. Surely FPS developers haven't completely exhausted the possibilities when it comes to things like multiplayer game modes? Some games have had integrated voice communication for a long time now, and given that Unreal Tournament 2004 has it, it doesn't seem like too much to ask. How about a favorites list and a buddy tracker in the server browser? I know we have the technology.
Minor omissions aside, Battlefield Vietnam does excel in the only area that really counts - it's undeniably fun. Whether you're spraying an enemy base with machine gun fire from the back of a chopper or sneaking around in the brush with your sniper rifle, the excitement is relentless. Not even the impending release of Doom 3 will keep people out of this jungle.
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