The Wargamer

Introduction

The three Huey gunships fly in formation just a few feet above the calm, murky water. While the choppers prepare to go weapons-hot, loudspeakers blare the opening notes of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Just as the music reaches its crescendo, the gunships unleash a deadly hail of machine-gun fire and rockets on the village below. No, this is not a scene from Apocalypse Now but an actual battle from EA/DICE's Battlefield Vietnam. Building on their highly successful Battlefield 1942, the folks at EA/DICE have improved the graphics engine, in addition to adding new classes, weapons and vehicles. Throw in an immersive soundtrack and you have all the makings of another successful Battlefield title. 

Presentation and Plot

One of the most popular First-Person Shooters (FPS) these days is Battlefield 1942, where players can fight in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II. Battlefield Vietnam takes the Battlefield series to a new locale and focuses on that Southeast Asian conflict during the sixties and early seventies. Players have the choice of playing United States, ARVN, Viet Cong or NVA forces. Virtual soldiers can compete on a wide variety of maps that range from dense jungle to villages and cities. Just as in its predecessor, the goal of the game is to capture and hold objectives while killing the enemy. The game's interface and soundtrack successfully propels the player back in time to the sixties and totally immerses them in the Vietnam era.

Installation and Technical Issues

Battlefield Vietnam comes on 3 CD's and takes up about 1.4GB of hard drive space. During installation, the user has the choice of installing Punkbuster (anti-cheat software), DirectX 9.0b, updated NVidia video drivers and automatic game update software. Some players, including me, have experienced lock ups with the game that required a full reboot of the system. In those cases, the recommended solution on a number of fan sites is to not install the auto updater. Unfortunately a quick pass through the EA support website made no mention of the problem. I'm not sure if spending more time searching for key words would have yielded any better results, but the solution worked for me. A video card that supports DirectX 9.0 is highly recommend since the new graphics engine really takes advantage of the new features. The game also has some issues regarding sound and clipping. The sound sometimes cut out on me during gameplay. This could be chalked up to a Soundblaster Live! issue but I experienced no such problems when playing the latest version of Battlefield 1942 so, again, I'm not sure what the issue was. Battlefield Vietnam also has some video clipping issues. Very often players are gunned downed through the corners of concrete buildings or solid walls, which can be very annoying when trying to ambush enemies.

Documentation

The documentation for Battlefield Vietnam consists of a paltry 12-page manual. This is small even by FPS standards. The original Battlefield 1942 manual and its subsequent expansions at least documented and explained weapons, vehicles and maps. This is not so with the Battlefield Vietnam manual. It basically consists of an installation section, keyboard commands, a brief description of the engineer kits and a short summary about airlifts. The last four pages are dedicated to game credits and warranty. It would have been nice if EA/DICE had included more information as in their past manuals. Much of the information lacking in the manual can be found on the game's website, but it seems almost negligent to not include the information with the game itself.