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Battlefield Vietnam
System: Windows
Company: EA Games
Price: $39.99
Play enough first-person shooter games and it's the little things that start to make all the difference.
Battlefield Vietnam is EA's next step in its Battlefield franchise, which follows the successful Battlefield 1942 series of games. Vietnam, for the most part, feels just about the same as 1942, though it boasts an all new graphics engine, and the game interface is a little different.
But there are two key differences, one subtle, one a little gruesome.
The gruesome addition is reality. In Battlefield 1942, your soldier had a superhuman ability to take three, four, even five bullets before keeling over dead. No more. Two if you're lucky. Three if you've got a higher power looking after you. You die a lot faster in Vietnam, though conversely, the single player missions last longer than the older game. So cover and maneuver are much more important if you want to stay in the game, but death does not mean the game passes you by.
But hands down, the best thing about Battlefield Vietnam is - really - the music. This doesn't make sense until you realize that the makers of Battlefield Vietnam have gone a long way to putting this game in historical context.
The load screens, instead of just being a boring old progress bar showing how much of each level has been loaded, have these wonderful little boxes of historical context about the Vietnam War. The screens include information about how Vietnam was the first televised war, cultural differences between the Vietnamese and the West, and how Vietnam was the dawn of helicopter assault and rapid deployment of helicopter-based infantry.
Along with that context is music. When you first bring up the game, the title music is Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son (released in 1969). The first screen has Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit (released in 1967) in the background.
During the game, you can turn on the radio in any vehicle you climb into and tune in 25 songs from the Vietnam era. For instance, one morning I was singing along to Martha and the Vandellas' Nowhere to Run while wiping out an infantry squad with my Huey gunship helicopter.
For kids who think of Deep Purple's Hush as Mom and Dad rock, the game will allow users to plug in their own MP3s and play them through the radio (though, if you ask me, there's something wrong with blaring Korn while fighting the Viet Cong).
For me, born a month before Saigon fell in 1975, this historical context is a wonderful, if subtle, addition to a great, but not groundbreaking, first-person shooter game. If you're a shooter fan, this one is worth the money.
- MATTHEW WAITE, Times staff writer