When you finally get into the game you’ll be treated to a game that feels like nothing more than an addendum to BF1942. The game might have jungles, the language might be Vietnamese but all I’m seeing is World War II. I’ve been told on numerous occasions that the engine was rebuilt from the ground up but I find that hard to believe, especially since the crude architecture and relatively sparse terrain still remains. The only true addition to the engine is the underbrush which acts as cover for your troops. It’s pretty well done although it too is pretty basic and rudimentary. It’s thick but not too thick and it’s just too short. It properly conceals you if you’ve gone prone but anyone walking through it will still be exposed. Strangely enough, lying prone in the foliage will give you the ability to see through it while those who are looking from the outside won’t have the same advantage.
It appears that most of the emphasis has been taken off of the vehicles and has been placed on the ground infantry. While this is a more realistic way of attacking this conflict it’s also detrimental to the nature of the engine. DICE’s engine isn't exactly competent when it comes to handling intense foot-based combat. Those who played BF1942 have complained that the combat is sluggish and that the vehicles are the true wildcard that really sets the game apart. Well now you don’t have that luxury because vehicles are surprisingly underpowered. Sometimes troops can withstand direct hits from tanks, full speed collisions with jeeps and even mortar shells. This makes the vehicles far less imposing than they used to be. Back in my ’42 days my teammates and I used to scramble whenever a tank entered the vicinity. We’d have to scramble to scrounge up enough firepower to take the beast down and in the end it felt like an accomplishment. Now in ‘Nam I just disregard it because I know that one person can easily take it out and move on their merry way. Take into account that one of the Americans’ character classes is essentially a walking tank and you begin to realize just how pointless and useless these hunks of metal have become.
There’s inequality, there’s imbalance and then there’s what BFVietnam likes to call balance, well if you call giving one side of the conflict a walking death dealer balance. While the NVAs are playing with their caltrops and clunky rifles the Americans sport a character class that carries an M60 and a LAW anti-tank weapon at the same time. That’s right, you can carry a hulking 100 round machinegun
and a rocket launcher at the same time. Best of all? There’s absolutely no speed or maneuverability penalty that comes with this at all. Apparently no one on the QA noticed just how absolutely inane this was. To be honest this could have worked out well had the designers required you to be stationary and prone (with a hefty time delay between moving into the prone and standing position of course) in order to fire either of the weapons. Instead they opted to turn you into some sort of mega soldier who wields both of the weapons as if they were pistols. They didn’t even have the hindsight to limit the capacity of the rifle like the smart chaps behind the insanely popular
Desert Combat mod did. This means that you can fire off a full 100 round clip (read: murder an entire army) without any sort of stoppage.
There are other kits on the American side but this lethal combination essentially renders them useless. You have a rifle with a grenade launcher, an M16, an M16 with a scope, a sniper rifle, a shotgun and a few variations of the engineer kit. I can't help but feel that they missed out on a lot of prime opportunies. Who here has ever seen a 'Nam movie that didn't have some type of flamethrower in it? Some interesting new additions come in the form of a blowtorch that can be used to sabotage vehicles and the static mortar position, but when everyone on your side can be Rambo why bother with anything else?
Is there napalm? Yes. Is it any good? Not really. It’s probably the most overhyped and underwhelming facet of the game. Americans have access to it via fighter jet and launch it like its normal payload. While it’s kind of neat to see it streak across the landscape it’s pretty disappointing to see that it goes in a paper-thin line and lasts for all of about two seconds. Probably even more frustrating is the fact that it does absolutely nothing to scar or tarnish the landscape. Trees that were set ablaze seconds before magically heal themselves as everyone ignores the minor pyrotechnics display and gets back to their lives.
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