The general gist of the game is to create a clan-friendly, online friendly and generally fun and balanced multiplayer game. The idea is not, for example, to create a realistic historical simulation or accurate recreation of the events of the Vietnam War. It's important that you realise this from the outset because this game is NOTHING like what even a Generation X player will understand to have happened all those years ago, let alone what a vet might recall. There's no jungle (save a few sparsely placed trees) and the very real tactics of both the Vietcong (hiding, hitting from heavy cover, retreating unseen into the jungle) and the Americans (pasting the jungle with napalm, walking around with loud stereos on the shoulder...) are here in name only, if that. But that's OK, as that would likely have made for a poor gaming experience. Just don't expect it and you wont be disappointed when you don't find it.

Just like 1942, Vietnam is a first-person shooter. Before you spawn for the first time on a map (and, subsequently, each time you die) you need to select where you wish to appear once you enter the game and what character class you wish to be. The spawn points are dynamic - any key area of the map that your team currently holds will have one - and you need to decide the best point from the team's perspective. Do you want to appear near the front lines so you can immediately rejoin the battle? Perhaps back at your main base so you can grap a helicopter gunship and provide heavy support to your front line troops? Additionally, which character class best suits the current situation and your skillset? Heavy weapons fire support? Perhaps a sniper, or a medic. These options, taken typically many times over the course of a single map, are critical to the eventual success or failure of your team. Having players unskilled as pilots grabbing all the planes, for example, is a poor use of resources and will likely result in the loss of the map.

It is in character selection that one of the major problems of the game is first revealed. The Americans have the option of an M-60 toting heavy weapons / support class which is, well, unmatched. You can slaughter at any range (even "sniper" type distances - the gun is very accurate) and it doesn't take long to reload. In a nutshell, this weapon is way overpowered and results in everyone in the server trying to get one. Typically, a map is won by whichever team had the most M-60s. This is a poor balancing issue and is immediately obvious within an hour's play time - how did the developers, publisher and external testers miss this??

Multiplayer at LANs and online is fun. With a decent number of people and restrictions placed on the M-60, there is plenty of enjoyment to be had. The levels are, generally, richly detailed and very lush - making for an entertaining blast with your mates. However, a few key problems do almost irreparable damage to this mode:

• No support for small numbers of players
  If you have only 8 players or so (say, at a LAN), the "capture as many objectives as you can" style of gameplay makes for a ridiculously difficult experience for all and sundry. The simple inclusion of a "you must capture the objectives in this order" or "team A is defending, team B is attacking" type game mode (similar to Unreal Tournament's "Assault" gameplay mode) would have alleviated this.
  
• Scrub is not visible at long range
  For performance reasons, the grass and shrubbery is removed from your sight once it is a certain distance away. Makes sense, right? Why render something that is far enough away from you so as not to affect your experience? Because of the sniper, that's why. Don't bother hiding in scrub because you will be exposed to someone even a moderate distance away.
  
• BOT AI
  In order to help populate servers with few players on them (or, indeed, provide the single-player experience), the developers have included automated opponents and teammates for you to use - otherwise known as bots. Unfortunately, they suck. They will get in a jeep, for example, and head in the opposite direction they should be (like, away from the battle) and then crash the thing into a tree - where they will continue to drive it into the tree until, well, until someone kills them. Or, they might get in the gun seat of a vehicle and just sit there. The entire game. This almost completely destroys the singleplayer game experience and makes for some serious issues online if you can't front up the minimum of 16 players required for a "real" game.

Graphically, Vietnam is pretty impressive - if you have the hardware to crank it. On the review system, we had to turn everything down to the minimum setting, and even then occasional jerks or graphical lag are noticeable. On a nicely spec'ed system, however, it looks crash hot and skips along without losng a beat. It's just a shame a moderately well spec'ed box could hardly run it at all.

The game audio is ace. The vehicle, weapons and atmospheric stuff are cool but the music is absolutely fantastic. A brilliant collection of period music by real artists (EA spared no expense here) is good stuff, and would hardly be out of place on the Forrest Gump soundtrack; you'll feel like you're watching our of Tour of Duty or China Beach. You'll get plenty of time to listen to it, too, as unfortunately the levels take ages to load.