We've all seen the movies and footage of how the Vietnam War was reported on and protested against. The mass demonstrations and the grainy footage of Dan Rather in an army uniform, all gave us a good idea the reaction to the war, but we really never found out how it was fought. There was no equivalent to the World War II "Victory at Sea" documentaries chronicling the actual fighting and the lives of the soldiers. After playing Battlefield Vietnam, the game gives as accurate an image as can be given about the actual fighting that occurred. You can skulk through the jungle terrain as a Viet Cong foot solider or lay waste to the countryside dropping napalm bombs from an F-4 Phantom. You can set booby traps on an American chopper so that the next soldier to enter it sets the explosive off, or use a scoped M-16 to pick off the communist aggressors from a distance. About the only thing they didn't include in the game is the defoliation chemical Agent Orange, but still, the atmosphere just comes across as that authentic.

Battlefield Vietnam essentially takes over where its predecessor, Battlefield 1942, left off; the format of the game is virtually identical. You play a nameless soldier in one of the biggest wars the world has seen. You pick your side, American or Viet Cong, and class (foot soldier, engineer, heavy weapons or scout), and then you're thrown into battle and the action develops on its own as players encounter each other and engage in small-scale firefights all over the map. Players can also spice up the game by piloting fighter jets, using them to bomb ground targets or shoot enemy aircraft out of the sky. This is almost always a surprise to ground units, and nothing is worse than reveling in victory over a vanquished foe when a lumbering F-4 sidles up and napalms you into oblivion.

A big improvement you'll see in Battlefield Vietnam is the new weapons. On the US side, the Tommy gun has been replaced by the M-16, and the BAR is now the M-60. Your sidearm will now be either a 9mm pistol or a .357 magnum. On the Viet Cong side, the main assault rifle is the Soviet-made AK-47, which can be backed up by the RPD for heavy assault. The Viet Cong definitely have more devious weapons, which fit in with their role as the underdog in this war. Viet Cong engineers can lay booby traps on enemy vehicles so that whenever someone enters the vehicle, the trap detonates. They also have nasty mines called "Bouncing Bettys," anti-personnel mines that spring out of the ground when triggered to about torso level and detonate. This can take out a cluster of soldiers if you're not careful. By their nature, booby traps and Bouncing Bettys are hard to detect, so you have to keep your eyes peeled.

One huge difference in play between Battlefields 1942 and Vietnam is the use of helicopters. Helicopters changed the way that war was fought, and it will also change the way you play this game. There is an arsenal of death waiting to be unleashed if the pilot has enough skill to use a helicopter's full potential. Drawbacks of the chopper include vulnerability to any passing jets and ground-based missile attacks. For someone on the ground, an attacking chopper is a formidable nemesis. If the chopper is persistent, you can't run forever; eventually it will find and kill you. You have to either be a heavy weapons soldier or hope a nearby ally is one, otherwise you'll experience death from above.

A particularly shrewd move on the part of the developers was getting permission to use actual Vietnam-era music in the game itself. Whenever you enter a vehicle (except jets, they make too much noise I guess), you can press a key to bring a music list up. You have around fifteen songs on this list to choose from to play on the vehicle's radio. You can rock on to Edwin Starr's "War," or Jefferson Airplane's "Don't You Want Somebody to Love". One song is near and dear to every Vietnam aficionado because of its prominent appearance in the movie "Apocalypse Now", Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". Nothing beats leading a charging tank platoon into battle with this song blasting around you. Enjoy the music with caution, however. By playing the radio, everyone around you knows exactly where you are, because they can hear the music as well. This makes any enemy tank-killer's job that much easier.

Like any other game, though, this one does have its flaws. I was a little frustrated with the Viet Cong's booby traps; there doesn't seem to be a way to disarm them. The only way I've found is to blow up the vehicle and wait for a new one to respawn, which is frustrating if you need to use a vehicle and you don't feel like blowing it up. I was also confused about the purpose of the game's single-player mode. It only serves as a warm-up to multiplayer action, and I had to wonder what the point was of playing the missions through as a single player. The same maps are made available in this mode; the only difference is that the ally bots are more obedient than actual human teammates. Maybe this mode makes the game more appealing to players without broadband, but not too much so.

After all the bullets have been fired, Battlefield Vietnam is a more than worthy successor to Battlefield 1942. Vietnam has all the great play elements 1942 had, and the addition of more varied aircraft such as attack choppers coupled with more technologically advanced weapons provide enough spice to make the games distinct. If you love your war shoot-'em-ups - you know who you are - this game will become a treasured piece of your game collection.