gameSlave

BattleField Vietnam Review.

Sound

One of the reasons for my excitement before playing Battlefield Vietnam was the new and quite novel feature of having working radios in the vehicles, I really though this would be fun, I was wrong, very wrong. It's probably one of the most annoying features in any FPS game ever.

Let me explain.

The music itself is excellent, lots of quality tracks were chosen to be on the soundtrack. It's fairly obvious that everyone who drives any vehicle is going to play with radio, at least for a while. And indeed, that's exactly what happens, this perhaps shouldn't be an issue, but it is, a big one. It's almost impossible to distinguish one track being played from another that's half way across the map at times. Perhaps this is just me being picky.

The game would also appear to have some silly sound mixing issues, some sounds are just too loud while other are almost inaudible. I've even had a huey hovering over my head and I was more or less unable to hear the rotors for the music in a jeep down the road, crazy.

You can imagine how quickly the music got turned off in the menu. Unfortunately turning it off doesn't appear to stop another very annoying issue with the music, every time someone starts "Surfin Bird" on their radio, anywhere on the map, I hear the 1st half a bar at full volume, it drives me mad. I've tried just about every driver combination and setting possible to get rid of it or improve the mixing / culling issues, nothing helped.

If your'e lucky to get a game where no-one is playing music, then you can actually hear the other sounds properly, however, there are other issues.


More Aircraft.

Sound is very important in an FPS game, in certain situations, being able to hear your opponent is far more important than being able to see him. If a game has a well written sound engine, you should almost be able to frag your enemy with your eyes closed. This brings me to another issue in bf:v. You simply can't hear people walking or running until they are right next to you, and considering that 99 times out of a hundred they are moving through thick undergrowth that should be making all sorts of rustling noises, it's just plain crazy. Also, it's more of less impossible to hear your own footsteps either. These issue alone, pretty much ruin the game for me, and unfortunately, we're not even close to being finished.

Again, I suspect that the sound system is bugged and may work ok on some systems, some reviewers seem to suggest it does, if so, fine. But, it certainly does not work properly or sound even remotely good on headphones, and what self respecting fps gamer doesn't have their sound so loud that headphones are essential? There is simply no way I could use 5.1 speakers without sound proofing this room and I'd probably still annoy the neighbours.

Still, there are some good things about the sound system, the weapon sounds are clean, crisp and seem authentic when compared to movies I've seen about the Vietnam conflict, no problems there.

Ambient sounds out in the jungle just seem to be there if you know what I mean, they don't seem to be coming form any particular direction, or change in volume from differnet areas of the map. Quite fankly, the insect sounds are just annoying.

Artillery and tank shells, seem dull and lifeless, I'm no audiophile, so perhaps explaining why isn't that simple. Suffice to say, they just sound 'wrong'.

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