Battlefield Vietnam
The answer, in short, is mixed and a little confused. I don't like Vietnam as much as I liked 1942. That isn't to say the game isn't fun. It is. But some of the maps don't seem as focused, there are some balancing issues that are seriously perplexing to me, and while the graphic improvements are certainly appreciated and the game looks good, this game seems more like an impressive mod or an expansion than an entirely new game. And of course, as you might expect, there are also some mistakes, bugs and issues here as well, which for the most part are small, but can cause some problems. On the other hand, the addition of helicopters that have some fairly intuitive controls, moveable spawn points, and traps are all pretty cool. I guess what I'm saying is that the game is good. It's definitely still fun. It just isn't the bombshell that 1942 was.
The Landscape of War
One of the major differences to Vietnam as opposed to 1942 is a graphical one at first glance, but really makes a huge and obvious difference to gameplay. Vietnam is a lush and heavily vegetated area of the world. A lot of the actual war didn't actually take place in the jungle, but it was certainly a different arena than US forces had ever been in before. Likewise, Battlefield Vietnam is one of the first games we've seen that really tries to take advantage of this kind of dense cover in a multiplayer arena. Obviously now we've got Far Cry and Joint Operations waiting in the wings that manage to do foliage a little bit better, but Vietnam has done a good job creating the very tense atmosphere that this kind of setting brings. When you start getting pegged from "somewhere" in the undergrowth, things immediately get pretty hairy.
They also get frustrating. Using a lot of undergrowth is an interesting mess. It's fun and brings a new dimension to Battlefield, but it also means you're going to be dying a lot from some unknown location before you ever have a chance to get out of the way. Sure, it's war. Sure it's Vietnam. I know, I know... and I'm actually not really knocking the game for it, I'm just warning all of you that are thinking to buy the game. No matter how good you are, there will be some frustrating moments of getting killed by hidden foes several times in a row before you can ever get a shot off.
The foliage also brings another issue with it. One of the complaints some players had about Battlefield 1942, including myself at times, is that it was too easy to sneak around the front of battle and capture a flag in the back of the fight, right when one side seems to have wrapped it up. In some ways, this is pretty exciting because there's always a new fight somewhere and each of the matches seems more like a struggle. But it also can make you feel like you're running laps. The foliage only makes this easier, even on maps that otherwise would have been pretty focused along one or two paths.The maps themselves are actually fairly varied and interesting; although I'm not sure all of them are focused enough in certain areas. I found myself wandering without seeing any enemies much of the time simply because people were all walking in different directions apart from each other. Maps in 1942 seemed a bit more focused in the fact that there were always areas you could find the fights. These chokepoints created by the landscape really added to the excitement and tension. Some of the maps in Vietnam are open to travel, including one of the city maps, Hue, which is another easy map to sneak around and capture a flag in the back.
At the same time, Hue is an interesting map for a couple of reasons. First off, it actually acts like a city and various buildings will allow players to set up sniping points and provides a real urban combat feel. What's especially cool is that Hue is visited twice. First the city is intact as both the North and South Vietnamese race to take the city. Secondly, the city is in ruins as the North holds it and the South try to retake it. Even though the city layout is the same, buildings have been destroyed so the landscape itself is much different and spawn points have been moved around. I really like these two takes on one particular map even if I still think both are a bit large for what should be an arena for constant combat like Stalingrad and Berlin were in 1942.