Battlefield Vietnam

Sam begins humming Brown Eyed Girl as the tanks roar into battle.

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The physics engine is also of the highest calibre. While there are rag doll effects to be enjoyed in explosions and kill shots, things never reach the level of over-the-top-ness that you see so often these days. So rather than firefights looking like a Jackie Chan film made on the moon the physics is used to accentuate the action rather than actually becoming the action. Drive one of the many wheeled and tracked vehicles around and you will feel convinced by their behaviour. The lighter vehicles will slip and slide when presented with awkward angles and slopes, while the heavier machines will take an age to get going but very little will stop them when going at full pelt. Except, bizarrely, for a foot high stack of sandbags. These omnipresent fortifications understandably stop the moped but why, when a soldier can jump over them, they present an insurmountable obstacle to a 30 ton tank is a bit of a mystery. Fortunately the same cannot be said of the barbed-wire which, while it will cut and injure a man, will got rolled over like a naive youth in an old-man's gambling den.

The various terrains have an authentic look to them, with the mud and grass in BFV for some reason evoking churned up battlefields better then any other title I can think of. The wide open levels, complete with rice paddies and bamboo huts, look just right and the urban levels quickly have you thinking of Full Metal Jacket. The jungle levels never completely convince, what with the foliage never getting impenetrably dense. Saying that, they provide more than enough cover to get the player paranoid and afraid as to what lays beyond the next bush or bamboo tree. The developers have cleverly doused each level with tufty bushes which look uncannily like a crouched solder at a distance, the sighting of which can induce panic when you are mortally wounded and down to a few bullets. The textures themselves are disappointing due to their low resolution, but with a little AA and AF turned on things look plenty fine. Unfortunately there's no option to do this in game, a criminal omission in this day and age. The highly detailed weapon models deserve a special mention. All of the guns look like they've been involved in real combat, with worn edges and rust streaks and some of the weapons having clips and rings which will bounce about as the player moves around.

The large scale of the maps rarely leaves the player too cut off from the fights, although there are a couple where you are more likely to find yourself trudging around isolated from the fission of combat. The use of the helos to ferry troops and even vehicles into combat is inspired by the tactics of the US and help to keep the battles flowing. And flow they will, like Imelda Marcos's tears when her shoe cupboard burnt up. It is not uncommon for battles to sashay around the maps like drunken spiders at a formal dance, with each side taking and losing objectives at a perilous pace. In the space of a few short minutes a seemingly sure thing quickly turns into a rout. The fluid and dynamic nature of the battles helps to prevent BFV from becoming stale and repetitive and even if you were to find the game's mechanics and gameplay eventually tiresome the unpredictable nature of your fellow combatants will always provide for some surprises. Yup, try an EA server or some other IP address flooded with morons and your enjoyment of the game will be sorely tested by the incompetent, the Rambo fetishists and the just plain stupid. Unless the pilot knows what they are doing clambering into a helo is an incredibly risky venture. If tactical cohesion is nowhere to be found then things become similar to most other team deathmatch games out there. However, get yourself onto a good server where the players play the game according to its strengths then things are totally different. So while you can have fun on the free-for-all servers the real joy is to be had when playing with skilled, patient and thoughtful players. The feeling of being part of a successful co-ordinated strike is near unsurpassable in online gaming, and the ease with which you can fool yourself into believing that this is real is a credit to all who worked on the game. It is very hard to just pop in for a couple of rounds of BFV as each game will entertain you with something new and unexpected, and when it fails to achieve this you will still have a great and immersive time recreating this unusually ghastly conflict. All thoughts of the horrors of war will be far from your mind as you concentrate on defending your camp from a wave of NVA with only 12 rounds of sniper ammo left and two clips for the pistol. Firing down death from the gunships is an exquisite feeling when both crew members are up to the task, and the satisfaction gained from dropping napalm onto an enemy base and seeing three or four new casualties attributed to your prowess is dangerously addictive.

To counter the cheating that is rampant online and near ruined the experience of the original Battlefield this sequel comes with built in Punkbuster support. While it doesn't guarantee an above board game, it certainly makes a positive difference to the proceedings. Which is more then can be said for the lame in-built server browser. Just steer clear of it and use a third party utility like All Seeing Eye. The net code is robust enough to ensure that the gameplay remains stable. Lag is an occasional problem but no more so really than with other online shooters. If you are having a LAN blast and can only get a few friends around don't worry as bots will fill out the numbers. And while the bots are still not the cleverest AI in the world they do enough to keep the game frantic and fun.

Apart from some loading times which are just the wrong side of too long and a nasty case of mouse lag which cropped up from time to time, my experiences with Battlefield Vietnam were wholly positive. The game will constantly delight you with little moments, be they manic, plucky and fear-filled fights to the death or the comedy antics of your team mates. Playing BFV is a lot of fun, and as I mentioned before but must repeat again, highly addictive. There's a lot to learn in this game. From controlling vehicles to forming cohesive squads and adapting tactics to the changing face of battle, there's always some aspect of the game that you know you could improve at. And as the waits for re-spawning tend to be less than fifteen seconds and you can choose just where on the battlefield you want to re-appear the pace of the game rarely drops to the point of disinterest. It may not be as innovative as its forebear but Battlefield Vietnam has polished the formula and brought it to a conflict sorely lacking in quality games. It's just a shame that in the real world too many of our leaders seem to think real war is as consequence-free as this game suggests.

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By Sam Gibson