Vietnam takes the Battlefield formula, takes out features, puts in a couple of small additions, and calls it a sequel.
With that said, Battlefield Vietnam fell well short of my expectations. Most of what I loved from 1942 had been thrown out. The well-balanced weapon sets gave way to weapon sets containing a fully automatic machine gun and a rocket launcher. The un-balanced weapon sets took away much of the choices when I realized that some weapon sets were just way more powerful than others. Who would choose a weapon set with an M-14 with grenades, when you could have an M-14 with a rocket launcher? Also, even though the single player in BF1942 was a mere after thought, the campaign still offered some rather entertaining battles. Instead of trying to expand on the single player, they trash it instead. There is a single player component in Vietnam, except there is no campaign and the enemy AI is even worse. If you didn’t already know the AI in BF1942 had the brain the size of a pea, somehow though DICE actually downgraded the AI. Now the AI reaches stupidity levels of Paris Hilton. I have seen an enemy troop stand right in front of me for a couple minutes and not shoot, is my character really that hot?
The next thing in my long list of flaws is the maps. In BF1942 there were exciting maps like Omaha beach and Stalingrad, in Vietnam there are maps like Hue, Reclaiming Hue, Quang Tri, and Quang Tri 1972. There are about fourteen maps in BF Vietnam, although in my mind there is only about seven. The only difference between Hue and Reclaiming Hue is that there is a speaker with some Vietnamese lady trying to convince the American troops to go back home. DICE also took two other maps: Quang Tri and Ho Chi Ming trail, changed them slightly, and slapped on another name. Even ignoring the fact that most of the maps seem very similar to other maps, most of the maps just aren’t balanced. The maps themselves have good size and have pretty good game play elements like well-placed vehicles and well-placed spawn points, but the problem is they aren’t balanced. There are maps where both teams start out with the same amount of tickets (points that go down with deaths and decrease when your side has less spawn points than the other side), although the Vietcong control five spawn points and the Americans control one. It is utterly frustrating to be the Americans in this situation because the second you spawn you are killed and its not too fun to be the Vietcong because all you are doing is just picking off each troop that spawns at that one spawn point.
While there are many flaws in BF Vietnam some of the small additions are nice to have. Probably the best addition is the music, when you get into a vehicle you can choose from a long list of songs, all of the songs are ones of the Vietnam time era, but you can also make your own custom soundtrack with whatever songs you want. While this isn’t realistic (when was the last time you saw a tank blasting seventies music), it add to the just-for-fun feeling of the Battlefield series. Another addition is the helicopters, while it does have some terrible physics; it is a nice new addition. Also you are able to use all the great weapons from the Vietnam War, which is expected from a game about the Vietnam War, but some of the weapons are just really fun to use (even if their not balanced).
Other than the fun seventies tunes, all the other sounds in BF Vietnam are just plain irritating. That Vietnamese lady in Reclaiming Hue that I mentioned earlier just really gets on your nerves (you can blow the speaker up, although it spawns again about a minute later), and the fact that the Vietcong actually talk in Vietnamese is just annoying. The American phrases are also annoying, and it doesn’t help at all to hear “we are getting wasted soldier, PULL BACK!!!” The graphics also are annoying; while annoying usually isn’t a word you would use to describe the look of a game it actually fits BF Vietnam quite well. The graphics are obviously a lot better than BF1942, the character models and gun models all look pretty good, with that said the view distance is terrible. If you are a sniper it is annoying, because the whole point of snipers is to take out guys from far away. At some maps you can barely see a guy that’s twenty feet ahead of you because of a weird fog that blocks your vision. While BF Vietnam doesn’t look terrible, it needed some polishing on the graphics.
While Battlefield Vietnam doesn’t live up to its predecessor, it does offer some entertaining multiplayer. I can’t recommend this game to everyone, but if you’re looking for a good multiplayer game, Battlefield Vietnam won’t deliver the experience in game play; it will offer a good multiplayer experience with fun.