Battlefield: Vietnam

[Lynx7725]

Just like to check -- anyone playing? I got the game 2 days back, haven't had the opportunity to go online yet, but the basic gameplay in single player seems fairly okay.

The graphics definitely looks better and the terrain much busier, but the gameplay is very similar to BF1942 (i.e. biggest infantry guns with the most accuracy wins). One major area is that tanks are fairly ineffective now -- good and bad.

Haven't tried the choppers yet; I'm more of a ground-level person myself.

[Nightbat]

Got it, Love it!

more jungle gives you more depth in gameplay

got it saturday, been playing for 16 hours online already

Choppers are easier to fly

if you loose a strategic base you're in trouble

don't like the jeeps though, at least in DC you had MG's and rocketlaunchers

[Lynx7725]

more jungle gives you more depth in gameplay

[..]

if you loose a strategic base you're in trouble

don't like the jeeps though, at least in DC you had MG's and rocketlaunchers

Not too sure about the jungle giving more depth.. I think it's a nice change, at least no more snipers from the Omaha Wall. And it seems like snipers get toned down quite severely for this version.

But at the same time, the jungle.. is irritating.

I'm not sure about online -- it's sure to be tougher -- but at least in single player it's not so difficult if you lose a strategic base. Well, the AI can't seem to hit the broad side of the barn, so normally an RPG/ LAW in a cluster works well.

As for the jeep.. the 2nd position can fire his weapon, so simply put a M60 gunner there; it's almost as good. Coupled with the M.U.T.T., the US jeep is actually quite interesting.

[magicsp00n]

I've played quite a bit with some buddies from work. The gameplay requires more strategy than 1942; the terrain is much hillier and dense, so there's a lot of hiding and sneaking. I've had enemy players literally walk over me and not see me.

The vehicles seem to have more powerful weapons but weaker armor, so it's more possible for an infantry unit to have a chance.

I don't know if I prefer it to 1942, but it's a nice change of pace.

[VF19]

Ive gotten so many knife kills so far, it isnt right. i usually sneak around with an m16 scoped, and stealth kill as much as possible. ive become very good at it lately.

[Batou]

Got it the other day and I can't get enough of it. I put down BF1942 a while ago, but this has definitely sucked me back in. It seems more like a really good mod of the original than a real sequel, though.

I like some of the smaller changes - how you capture a control point faster when there are other friendlies in it's radius ... the air lift (very neat) ... firing from out the side door of helicopters ...

[VF19]

Oh, and you can ride shotgun on that scooter. Seriously, my buddy drove while I picked off helicopters.

[Ladic]

Am I the only one who find the game a little Lagish compared to the BF1942? I even bought a new vid card recently, Ati radeon 9600xt 128mb.

[ComicKaze]

I hear there's no rain. What's Nam without rain?

[JsARCLIGHT]

I hear there's no rain. What's Nam without rain?

Well considering the game is nothing like the actual war something trivial like rain is not an issue. I might be the only one who thinks the makers of this game made a bad choice of Vietnam as the subject matter for this game. Heck, even most of the "missions" they picked to base the game off of were not one or two day engagements but month and year long campaigns that never ever saw anything akin to a "stand up fight".

But I digress, my bashing this thing would only upset people I think so I will just say this and be gone:

Like new opened copy of BF:VN for sale or trade, never been fired only dropped once.

[VF19]

Am I the only one who find the game a little Lagish compared to the BF1942? I even bought a new vid card recently, Ati radeon 9600xt 128mb.

The game isnt lagish, its your settings. this game looks beautiful on medium graphics settings and 800X600X32. Thata what I have it running on, and almost no lag. Also, defrag your hard drive a couple times, that helps alot.

[Mechwarrior]

Bought it ,played it, its ok as far as diffrent vehicles, but Dessert Combat mod is still the one I prefer. Have not had a chance to play the release one of the jetpack yet, is that any good?

[Batou]

Am I the only one who find the game a little Lagish compared to the BF1942? I even bought a new vid card recently, Ati radeon 9600xt 128mb.

The game isnt lagish, its your settings. this game looks beautiful on medium graphics settings and 800X600X32. Thata what I have it running on, and almost no lag. Also, defrag your hard drive a couple times, that helps alot.

I don't know ... I think the renderer needs some tweaking. I have a Radeon 9700 Pro and this is the first game yet that it's had a problem with so far - I can't get it playable until I turn it down to 'medium'. I've run graphics demos up the wazoo (including the Doom 3 "demo" that was leaked) - all of them 100x more busy in the rendering dept - and I ran them like there was no tomorrow.

I'm sure it will get better, but the rendering engine seems a little unoptimized. At least for ATI cards (bastards ... we don't all use nVidia, damn it!)

[bsu legato]

I hear that the M60/LAW class is ridiculously overpowered. Is this true, or is it somewhat balanced out by the other classes?

[Lynx7725]

I hear that the M60/LAW class is ridiculously overpowered. Is this true, or is it somewhat balanced out by the other classes?

The M60/ LAW is a good balance, but if the player don't know how to use the M60 properly and just spray-and-pray, it's fairly useless. In a game where tanks occassionally pops up, having the LAW as a backup anti-tank weapon gives this particular combination added flexibility.

The Viet-Cong equivalent, the RPG/ assault rifle combination is pretty much the same, and the rifle feels more accurate than the M60. Me, I rather go for accuracy over firepower, but the M60 is appealing for its ability to suppress.

I think it balances out on both sides, but expect a lot of RPGs and LAWs rocketing towards each other.

The SVD is an excellent weapon, accurate and kills with single head shots. I love that weapon!

Tried my hands at heli flying. tricky, lots of things to look out for, but I can now land on the dinky little floating base with a little bit work.

[Ladic]

Am I the only one who find the game a little Lagish compared to the BF1942? I even bought a new vid card recently, Ati radeon 9600xt 128mb.

The game isnt lagish, its your settings. this game looks beautiful on medium graphics settings and 800X600X32. Thata what I have it running on, and almost no lag. Also, defrag your hard drive a couple times, that helps alot.

I play on midium/low settings and 800x600 16bit and I have some lag.

BF1942 I could play 1024x728 32bit, medium settings and ran fine.

[isamu]

Seems everywhere I go people are dissapointed with this game. Check out this guy's angry review....

Battlefield Vietnam

Click pictures for 1920x1440 shots

My system specs:

Intel P4 3.2GHz HyperThreading

ATi Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB

1GB RAM

RAID 0 (2x Wester Digital Raptors [10,000RPM SATA] - 100Mbps average)

This is a view of one of the maps. It looks good in this resized 640x480 shot, but when you click the full-res, you can start to see the faults.

An example of the terrible 'folliage' in the game. What is this? I don't know, either. It's terrible whatever it is.

Here's an example of the map meter. If this was an enemy's flag position, it would display how much time I have to take it. They dumbed this part down, somehow. Read the text below for more.

Here's an example of the terrible grass, which goes transparent when you duck in it, but the guy standing around you can't see you at all.

And here's your view when you duck in the grass. It looks so frakking bad.

I shouldn't even need to point out what's wrong here. Do the DICE guys have eyes?

Here is an example of the texture quality in Vietnam. Now, I believe Vietnam is using higher-res terrain than UT2K4, but UT2K4 seems to have better graphic designers than DICE. This is terrible.

The character models look pretty good. They're impressive, compared to the old game.

The trees look worse than N64's Majora's Mask. Honestly, they do. Find a shot of Majora's Mask trees, and compare. Vietnam's are terrible, especially for a god damn PC game.

Here's something retarded I noticed. Notice these rocks? Yeah, they look like crap. But watch what happens when you duck...

The game has ZERO LIGHTING. There is NONE. Proof: I was shooting this gun in a dark room. In most games, the walls would light up. Not so in Vietnam. Must be an engine so next-gen, my graphic card and computer can't handle it.

My points on the game:

1. The much-talked about bump-mapping by the DICE guys is not noticeable. They use it to make low-res textures seem higher res. But did these idiots maybe forget that using a bump-map requires more passes than just using a single, higher-res texture? My guess is that they saved all their assets at 256x256, and didn't want to spend time recreating them.

2. Shooting your gun at walls used to leave bullet marks, little black dots. In Vietnam, you can't do that on any surface. I tried wood, metal, vehicles, etc. None of them left the marks you'd expect. How could they miss this?

3. The water is terrible. It looks worse than the last games. It now looks like a huge plastic tarp that someone is moving up and down to create waves. It looks very fake. It looks so out of place. How could they let this go?

4. The folliage is the worst I've ever seen in a game. The grass looks super-low res. It's poorly designed. When you duck in the grass, the grass around you becomes transparent, so you can see anyone coming up to you. Yet, the guy coming up to you has no idea you're there. This is unfair, it's practically cheating. The guy in the grass should have the same limited vision as the guy just walking around. So frakking stupid.

5. Physics of the planes feels... so odd. I remember with the original BF, it took me a while to master the plane. When I go into Vietnam, the planes practically fly themselves. I hit the ground multiple times, on purpose, and my plane didn't blow up. Even with the helicopters. I purposely made a bad landing, a landing which would have blown up the copter in the original BF mods. I survived. The copter had 0 damage. It's far too easy now.

6. When you capture an enemy's point (their flag), a circular meter appears (see pics) showing you how much time you have left before the spot becomes yours. In the original, there was never an indication of when the flag would become yours. Why did they decide, all of a sudden, to make things easier by showing you how much time you have? Before it was a challenge, somewhat. Now it's frakking simpleton bullshit.

7. The sounds. What the frakk happened? I have a Creative Audigy 2 GAMER soundcard. The problems have nothing to do with my sound card. The sound effects, even ones taken from the original, now sound muffled, and low-quality. The original had great sound. You could hear your team mates shooting, even miles away. I told someone I've been playing with for a while that I could hear her shooting when I was a mile or so away. In Vietnam, you do not hear teammates shooting their weapons unless you're within 2 ft. And when you do get close, the sound effect is frakking terrible. It doesn't sound real at all. The only sound effects that are good: When your bullet casings fall to the ground (which has its own faults: why would bullet shells make a clink sound falling on sand?), and when a plane flies overhead. That's honestly it.

8. The character animations are frakking hideous. Watch a character shoot a machine gun. It looks like he's milking a cow, or a bull, I don't know. It looks so wrong, so bad. Original BF had better animations.

9. Draw distance seems worse. The trees far in the background sitting in front of the sky, semi transparent, look TERRIBLE. These trees should not be popping in. In fact, nothing should be. This engine is 10 years old. My frakking computer can handle it without all the fog. It's just insanely ugly.

10. The game does NOT support anti-aliasing NOR anisotropic filtering. When I enabled it on my Radeon 9700 Pro (which, incidently, "most" of the development team use), the AA caused textures to flash different colors of the rainbow, and it caused my weapon and hand to flicker and actually disappear many times. With Anisotropic filtering enabled, the bump-mapped surfaces started to show little black dots. Character faces have little black dots as well.

11. Also, the game has no frakking lighting! You're in a dark room, fire your weapon, you expect the surrounding walls and floor to light up (you know, like in real life). Nothing happens. It stays dark. There is NO lighting in this game. None. You can look, but you won't find. Terrible.

12. I guess the only good thing are the character models. They definitely look 10x better than the originals. Too bad the animations ruin it.

Now here's food for thought: EA knows all of this. How do I know? THEY AREN'T RELEASING A DEMO. The problem for EA happens to be UT2K4. The demo came out, showed the game was god damn good. 1.5 million people thought so within the first day.

EA knows this game isn't going to please the masses, it isn't going to please BF fans. So what do they do? They don't release a demo so that users can complain about all this crap, and instead RELEASE THE GAME next to UT2K4. So people are going to buy this game based on name alone, without realizing just how bad it really is.

I know most fags responses will be "wait for the patch". frakk you, and frakk EA. Release a god damn game without errors. UT2K4 will come out and I don't see how it will need a patch immediately. Vietnam needs a patch NOW. I don't see how it'll fix it though. Unless the patch includes new textures, new terrain models, new character animations... die EA. frakking die.

My map for UT2K3 looks better than all of Vietnam combined. Crooked Forest!

http://www.chasingradium.com/images/crooked-done-2.jpg

http://www.chasingradium.com/images/crooked-done-3.jpg

http://www.chasingradium.com/images/crooked-done-4.jpg

Wow talk about really hating a title

[twich]

I cant even play this game....it says that it needs at least a GeForce 3 video card with 64MB of ram....I have a GeForce 2 with 64MB of Ram......it says it does NOT support earlier chip sets....WTF? Well, I still have Desert Combat.....guess I will still play that

I am kinda disappointed with this.

Larry

[bsu legato]

Soldner: Secret Wars will be better.

Or possibly even Joint Operations

Edited March 24, 2004 by bsu legato

[JsARCLIGHT]

Anyone else notice that a few of their guns are mirrored? The ejector on the M16 is on the wrong side along with everything else, it is "mirrored". Did anyone else also notice the rust on the M16 while we are at it? M16's are made of aluminum, which doesn't rust... why are there rust pocks all over it?

Edit to add: heh heh heh, my copy of Far Cry shipped today... looks like I'll be able to get angry at another PC game this week! Cross fingers and hope it is better than this game... there's no place like home!... there's no place like home!... there's no place like home!

Edited March 24, 2004 by JsARCLIGHT