Battlefield Vietnam
Fighting Charlie could be entertaining, but all the fun
in this multiplayer game is AWOL
B
attlefield 1942 is one of the Maximum PC editors’ all-time favorite
games, so it’s a crying shame that the sequel, Battlefield Vietnam ,
fails to recapture the magic of the original.
EA Games obviously made an effort at simulating action-packed combat
in the Southeast Asian jungle. Battlefield Vietnam features plenty of ground
cover, thickets of trees, and lots of boggy swamps to lurk in while you wait
for the enemy. Unfortunately, the safety you perceive from the dense veg-
etation is a deadly illusion—literally. It doesn’t provide any cover at all. All
of the game’s grass and underbrush can be made to disappear by turning
down a single detail setting. We would have preferred to see low-detail
undergrowth instead of no undergrowth at all at the lowest visual-detail set-
ting. This way, people with performance PCs wouldn’t be needlessly penal-
ized, and the grass would at least provide a modicum of protection. After all,
what’s the point of ground combat in Vietnam if you can’t hide in the foliage?
But let’s face it: You don’t play a Battlefield game for the infantry
combat. You play to decimate your opponents in planes, tanks, and auto-
mobiles. In this regard, BF Vietnam is much more enjoyable, with loads
of added vehicles, including patrol boats, amphibious APCs, and even
scooters. It’s finally possible to ride shotgun in a ground vehicle, although
firing handheld weapons from a moving vehicle is a waste of ammunition.
Firing weapons out of moving aircraft, on the other hand, can be extremely
deadly, so long as Charlie isn’t around to shoot you down with SA-7s.
Choppers first appeared in the Desert Combat mod, but the helicopters
in BF Vietnam are much easier to control, and much more useful. In addi-
tion to ferrying troops and serving as mobile gunships, some helicopters
also come with a tow-cable, which lets you carry ground vehicles and even
mobile spawn points to any
position on the map.
There are certainly things
about BF Vietnam to get excited
about, so we hold out hope that
the problems we experienced
will be fixed in the first patch.
For the time being, however, the
game is good, but not great.Love the realistic in-vehicle radio, and the new
vehicles kick ass.G.I. CAMOBLACK PAJAMAS
Some classes are badly overpowered. Where’s
the realistic foliage?
$40, http://www.eagames.comMAXIMUMPC VERDICT 8
Even the mighty Huey gunship is easy prey for a passing
MI-24. Don’t linger too long over a hot zone, or your shark-
toothed chopper will become a smoldering pile of wreckage.—WILL SMITHReviews
JUNE 2004 MAXIMUMPC 95