Reader Reviews

Battlefield Vietnam (PC)

by Scitzoid Pingu

Drop your [cooks] and grab your socks! It's time to get with the program and kill some damn dinks or GIs, depending on your persuasion. As a picky gamer, I normally hate FPS games. They're boring and same-ish, but Battlefield 1942 was different. It was much more than the usual run of the mill FPS and the online gaming experience was fantastic. Needless to say I got hooked very quickly (with the help of Peej and others). So I've been waiting with bated breath for BF Vietnam to be released. So here it is! I even got Peej to hand deliver it to my desk, result! I was even lucky enough to get the copy that had all three disks in it, Peej had to take his back as it had two copies of disk 2.

I installed it at work (P4 with GeForce2 GTS 32MB) and dived straight in. Now I'd heard all the talk about the music being special and I wasn't disappointed. Groovy sixties tunes wail out of the speakers throughout the game. The "White Rabbit" mix that accompanies the menus is especially catchy; I was tapping the desk and clicking my pen all afternoon. You can even play tunes when you get in a vehicle. I can't stop playing "Ride of the Valkyries" when flying a chopper.

The visual appearance of the menu system is different to BF1942, it has a more raw style that reminds me of the underground comic style that was prevalent at the time and it fits well with the music, all adding to the mood.

But all this is academic, what's important is the gaming experience. It has to live up to BF1942 and then take it to a new level. My GTS card at work could handle 1942, but suffered from serious slowdown when the action got heavy in BF Vietnam (I can feel an upgrade coming on); so I had to wait till I got home to try it on my 128Mb GeForce4 Ti. Admittedly, the minimum spec is a 64Mb GeForce3 or equivalent, so I'm quite pleased that it worked at all on my work machine.

The troop/spawn point selection screen was a little confusing at first, you now choose one of four main troop categories and then select which weapon combinations you want for that unit. You can also change your body style and head style for that individual touch.

Once you get in to the action, the first thing you notice is the amount of vegetation populating the maps. The upside is lots of places to hide; the down side is that it can be damn difficult to spot the enemy with bullets and tracer fire zipping around you from all directions. I guess this all adds to the realism, as I started shooting first and asking questions later.

There are lots of places to hide and lay traps or ambush, the rolling log traps are hilarious. I won't mention names but I fell about laughing when someone stood in front of a log trap and tried to work out how to set it off. Needless to say, you have to shoot at the support stick in the middle. But, er, you're meant to do it from behind...

You have a greater choice of weapons and I've had a go with most of them but always end up returning to the M60. When playing the bots in single-player mode, it's hard to resist going on a Rambo style rampage!

The flight mode is much improved, the choppers are easier to fly and you have a wide choice on both sides. It is still difficult to hit the side of a barn with a chopper without practice, but if it were easy we'd have an army of nineteen year-olds [n-n-n-n-nineteen? -Tom] flying military hardware. Oh wait. I just described US pilots. Bad example! And to put an end to the speculation, the Huey Cobra gunships are in the game, though they are only found on a few of the maps.

The dogfights are ace. F4's with heat seekers battling with the Mig's is very addictive. I can foresee a large number of budding Chuck Yeager's appearing and being spawn camping smacktards. The server admins are going to have a hard time keeping them under control.