The levels are a mix of urban and jungle themes, featuring historical areas like Khe Sahn, and Ia Drang (made famous in Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers). When you are on the ground the size felt just right, but when you are in the air they feel much too small as it’s easy to go out of bounds quickly, especially with the jet fighters. The new maps are smaller and tighter, so you won’t have to look too hard for a fight.
The maps take full advantage of the new engine and I’ve found them to be a tremendous improvement over the 1942 levels, which felt too large and suffered from flow problems. This can be frustrating as frequently you’ll come under fire and not have a clue where you are being attacked from, but it does do an excellent job at capturing the feel of the Vietnamese jungle. In addition to looking good, the foliage also allows you to hide in it, making it hard for other people to see you. While the battlegrounds in 1942 were sparse and barren, the Battlefield Vietnam maps are filled with lush vegetation and foliage. The new engine allows for pixel-shaded goodness and highly detailed terrain, including tons of foliage. Early screenshots left me fearing EA simply re-hashed the Battlefield 1942 engine, and I was happy to see that wasn’t the case.
The Americans seem a tad overpowered, but a lot of the NVA weapons are more subtle – like booby traps – that are going to require some time to learn how to use effectively.īattlefield Vietnam sports a completely re-designed graphic engine. The NVA equivalent kit just has an RPG and a shotgun, which is more balanced. This one kit carries both the most powerful anti-personnel weapon in the game, as well as a potent anti-vehicle weapon it’s a one-stop shop for death and destruction. If that combination isn’t bad enough, the M60 can be fired from a standing position and has a rate of fire that is significantly faster than the prototype (the real one needs to be fired prone, and is actually a two-person weapon). The American heavy assault kit comes with both the M60 machine gun and the LAWs rocket, sparking memories of Rambo. One of the big problems in the game is with the weapons assigned to some of soldier classes. Speaking of fiery death, the Americans also have access to the F-4 phantom which allows you to drop Napalm, but it’s not as effective as the real stuff with a small blast radius that lasts only a few seconds it would have been much more effective lasting longer and affecting a greater area. In the wrong hands though, the helicopters can become airborne fiery instruments of death. It’s time well spent since being able to get a squad to a control point quickly and safely will help your team be successful. A word of caution though: while it’s easy to get these birds in the air, keeping them there and getting anything accomplished – like hovering, attacking, airlifting tanks and landing – is going to take some serious practice. The Battlefield 1942 flight engine wasn’t designed for rotary-winged planes, but the Battlefield Vietnam engine is designed with them in mind making the helicopters much easier to fly. I know, I know, Desert Combat, the popular Battlefield 1942 mod, had choppers, but those ‘copters were too dang hard to fly. In Battlefield 1942 it was easy for one person to take key control points, but now how many teammates are nearby affects the speed one is taken while one person can still take a CP, a squad is going to take it quicker.īattlefield Vietnam has a ton of era specific tanks and jets, but the big vehicle addition is the helicopters. The more control points you own, the faster the other team loses their tickets. You can lose tickets by either re-spawning after a death or not controlling enough control points. The most common game-mode is Conquest, where each team is given a certain amount of tickets and if your team’s tickets reach zero, you lose. There is a single player mode, but the bots are mental midgets and are only good for target practice - any meaningful game-time is going to be spent online playing other people.įor those new to the series, let me do a quick recap. Battlefield Vietnam continues the team-based motif from 1942 with the Americans and the South Vietnamese against the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong. If you were expecting another revolution here you’re going to be disappointed this one’s about evolution, not revolution. How do you add enough new features to call it a full game, while not making radical changes to what made it so successful in the first place? Battlefield Vietnam does an excellent job at bringing some new ideas to the table while preserving the “Battlefield” feel. When you have a game that revolutionized a genre like Battlefield 1942 did creating a sequel is a balancing act.