I have a serious love/hate relationship with this game.
This is definitely one of the more unique shooters that I've played in quite a while. It's like if Battlefield and Verdun fucked and had a bastard child. That's the best way I could describe this game in a nutshell.
It's a 64 player FPS that has large scale open battles of attrition where the core gameplay is centered around teamwork, coordination, precision, and making slow and methodical movements rather than your standard fast paced Call of Duty clone where your bragging rights come from how many kills you can get in a single round and without dying from using up all your dopamine shots.
One half of this game I absolutely love and am addicted to but the other half can be a frustrating and exhausting endurance, and I will get into that. So I'll start off with what I love about this game.
[ đŁđĽđ˘đŚ ]
The atmosphere that this game presents to me is just spot on. Even more so than Battlefield, Rising Storm 2 Vietnam makes me feel like I'm actually in the middle of a fuckin' war, the immersion is quite intoxicating. Playing this with friends makes the experience even better.
The role playing that people do in this game is just funny as shit. I love loading into a match just to see the people on the Vietnamese team calling the Americans racial white people slurs. Some may find it fucked up, I think it's hilarious.
I play on the American team and people start blasting ACDC, Paint it Blank, Fortunate Son, and other 1960s songs in the voice chat. It's funny, but sometimes it can get annoying and you'll end up muting whoever is doing it.
I look in the game chat and I see people saying stupid shit like "Knock knock, I'm here to burn down your crops and steal your wife."
I think people take this game too seriously lol.
The people who play this game can either make or break the entire game, hence why I have mixed feelings about it.
Regardless, despite some occasional toxicity, the community is very dedicated to this game. They have no tolerance for people who cheat, team kill on purpose, or don't do what their roles require them to do.
If that does happen, everyone just vote kicks. And every single time that person gets removed.
This is not your typical game where you rush into choke points and effortlessly dispatch a group of enemies in rapid succession.
This is a much more realistic game where you have to work with your squadmates by moving together as a team, recon enemy locations, call in some air support, and inch your way towards an objective, because being alone is not what you want to be, because it's very easy for you do die in this game.
Just like in Verdun, if you take even a single bullet, depending on where you took the hit, you'd be lucky if you survived it. If you shoot someone even once in their vitals, like their head, heart, or lungs, they will drop. It also depends on the gun, but most of the time you will die in one or two shots.
If you do manage to survive getting shot, you start bleeding out thus your vision starts blurring. Then you have to spend a good 10 seconds wrapping up your wound, and you only get one bandage. To get another one you have to get one at a resupply.
If you get shot in the leg you move like 90% slower for a few seconds which gives the enemy time to finish you off, which is already bad enough that the standard sprinting speed is a bit slow. It's even slower while you're crouched. But it does help when you want to run but need to take cover at the same time.
Also, there is no traditional ammo counter in this game, instead the game just shows how many magazines you have, and when you reload a new mag, you get a brief indicator that relatively shows how much ammo is in the mag you just put in the gun. There is no such thing as reserve ammunition traditionally like in most other games.
Here is a tip. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but there are times where your HUD will just disappear so you can see things like your squad mates, your mag counter, and the damage range your gun is set to. If this happens, just push the T key.
Some guns in this game have pretty hefty recoil, combine this with bullet velocity and even bullet spread, and it requires you to shoot in single or short bursts at medium to long range, but crouching and proning also gives you extra accuracy.
But you also have to worry about suppression and the stamina of your soldier. If you sprint for a duration of time, your soldier can get tired, which results in more gun sway. And if you get suppressed by enemy gunfire your gun will sway as well, and if an enemy gets a near hit on you, your soldier can flinch which can put your aim off.
That's why there's also a mechanic where you can hold your breath to stop guns swaying for a brief moment.
So despite only needing a couple bullets to kill someone, you still need to have good aim and pay attention to these other mechanics. The gunplay in this game is insanely satisfying. The hit registration is very good, and there is something orgasmic about getting those insane longshot kills, it just feels so goddamn good.
My longest shot was 225m with an AK47. It was the luckiest shot I ever pulled off. I saw a very faint moving dot in the distance, so I just took a shot for the hell of it, and somehow I killed someone with a single bullet, I got really excited over it lol. But then, I did it again, but at 210m, in the same match. But, those were the only two times out of approximately 80 hours of play time that I pulled off longshots that far with a gun that isnât a sniper rifle.
Every gun feels good to use minus a few exceptions. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, some of my all time favorites are in this game.
The game has a server browser where you can choose where you want to play. Most people just play Territories which is like Operations from Battlefield 1 where you have to capture all objectives in a sector in order to keep pushing forward until you have captured every sector on the map.
Going back to the weapons, the American soldiers get the standard M16 (AR), M60 (LMG), M1 Garand (Rifle), M2 Carbine (AR), but also get the Grease Gun (SMG), Flamethrower, M14 (Rifle), M37 (Shotgun), XM21 (Marksman), M40 (Sniper), CAR-15 CommandoXM177 (AR), M1911 (Pistol), and finally the M1917 revolver.
Sadly the Australians got the shaft when it comes to the weapon department. The majority of the guns they have at their disposal are the American ones. They only have a few weapons exclusive to their team, if you're excluding variants. But, they are pretty damn good.
They get two different variants of the FN-FAL, and two SMGS, the Owen and the F1.
The FN-FAL has a hefty kick to it but the one shot kill range is ridiculous. The Owen is not that great, it's weak in terms of power and damage range, but the F1 is fucking awesome. The high rate of fire and low recoil makes it so fun to use, it reminds me of the M1918 Automatico from Battlefield 1.
But the Vietnamese, HOLY FUCK! These guys got sucked off during development.
The Vietnamese have the best weaponry in the game, there is no contest for me. They get guns such as the fucking MP40 (SMG), PPSh-41 (SMG), AK47 (AR), SKS (Marksman), MAT-49 (SMG), IZH-58 (Shotgun), RPD (LMG), DP-28 (LMG), Mosin Nagant (Sniper), SVD (Sniper), M1 Carbine (Rifle), TT-33 (Pistol), and the PM (Pistol).
I mean, do I need to explain this? How can I say no to the MP40, PPSh, SKS, RPD, DP28, and a goddamn Mosin Nagant? These are my favorite guns in history. If a game has a PPSh or a Mosin Nagant in it, I swear to God I will use it lol. Although sadly in this game the PPSh does not get a drum magazine, but itâs still fucking awesome. It dispatches enemies so quickly. The sound of it, hell, the sound of the MP40 and MAT-49 as well, theyâre fucking orgasmic.
It actually makes me feel bad for the other factions, they get shit nowhere near as good. You would think that the Vietnamese would be overpowered because of this right? Well, the developers did a good job of balancing the gunplay. Because of the ridiculous time to kill, a certain gun doesnât feel more OP than another one. Any gun can be good as long as you know how to use it, minus a couple of exceptions.
cough The Owen..
cough The Grease Gun..
However, if you want to use a specific gun, you have to be in a specific role. The game has a role system, hence where one half of the teamwork comes in. Every role is designed for a specific purpose.
There are a total of 8 roles, the Vietnamese for example get these:
Guerilla
Scout
Machine Gunner
Sniper
Sapper
RPG
Radioman
Commander
If you want to use the Mosin Nagant for example, you have to be in the Sniper role, the DP-28 requires the Machine Gunner role, the PPSh is in the Sapper role, so on and so forth. There is another catch however. Each role only has a certain number of player spaces, 2 or 3. So there is a chance that every role can fill up, in which you get stuck with the default Guerilla class along with the majority of the team. Iâm assuming this is for balancing purposes. Imagine 20, even 10 people running around with M60s or flamethrowers, that would be fucking madness.
I actually have quite a problem with the role system and Iâll get into that but, on one hand the roles are meant so that your team can work together to fulfill specific needs. If you need your teammates to plant some surprise traps in some trenches or some tunnels, the Sapper can do so. If you want some air support, the Radioman rubs over to the Commander and gives them coordinates to call in an airstrike.
Snipers can take out long range targets, Scouts can pinpoint enemy locations. If your team is under heavy fire from a helicopter, a quick RPG can take care of it, that is if you have someone who actually knows how to use the damn thingâŚ
..Oh. Ohhh.
Yeah.. Now hereâs where I get into the issues I have with this game. Iâll start with the roles.
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The role system can either make or break an entire match if your team isnât really competent enough to fill out their duty. There are times where your teammates will just take a role only because of the weaponry, and you know what, I do that too sometimes with the Sapper and the Machine Gunner classes, but this can be a problem because there are times where we need that RPG or that Radioman but theyâre not doing what theyâre supposed to.
The absolute worst example I can think of is when I play on the map Resort as the Americans. Oh my fucking god, it is an absolute shitshow. It seems like more than half of the people who play this game donât know how to fly a helicopter. Either that or theyâre massively trolling.
There is a helicopter pilot role on certain maps, and the issue is that only the people in that role are able to get in the helicopter and fly it. No one else. So if you have someone who doesnât know how to fly, or they do know how to fly and just wanna fuck around, you will be subjected to the same cycle of getting into a heli, waiting 30 seconds or more to get to where you need to go, only for the pilot to fucking crash and kill everyone on board, including you.
This is how one of my matches went in particular:
I spawn in, get in the heli, and as soon as the pilot gets to the beach he makes a force landing, but he lands too hard and he blows all of us up, then I respawn, I get in a heli again, and guess what? It happens again. This shit has happened so often that it was actually impossible for my teammates to get out of the spawn base because there were no helicopters, because the pilots kept crashing them, either that or they got shot down.
This got infuriating. It's even worse than it led to a shitload of toxicity and arguing in the chat. It got so bad that the enemy team actually felt pity for us and they said âyou know what? Weâll let you capture the beach.â
And they actually retreated and let us capture the first fucking point, all so that we didnât have to keep getting into helis with people who donât know how to fly the damn things. And itâs not like the game doesnât teach you how to do it, there are tutorials that you can do, along with the shooting range and whatnot, so why donât people just practice??
If you donât know how to fly, then why the fuck would you take the Pilot role? Well like I said, either youâre an idiot, or youâre a troll, and a shitty one at that. To be fair, there is a kick system where your team votes to kick someone out of the role and have someone else take it.
But, during that match, I donât think anyone knew how to fly, even the veteran players that have been playing for a while. I didnât know how to fly either, but thatâs only because I was a new player at the time, and Iâd rather let someone else fly than me, since well, flying works differently in every game.
I am an ace pilot in GTA games but I canât fly for shit in Battlefield games. But yeah, there are times where your team just does not communicate. There can be times where your team desperately needs an airstrike but either the Radioman or the Commander donât work together to call that shit in. Speaking of airstrikes, they can actually break the entire game because of the baffling respawn system, and Iâm gonna get into that.
There are two spawn points on each map, but you can get an extra one if youâre Vietnamese and a squadmate builds a tunnel for you to spawn on. But for some reason, and I still donât understand how this shit works, sometimes I die but it doesnât bring me back to the respawn screen, instead I just respawn instantaneously and then I get shot down again. Why does this happen? Is it a bug or a feature? If so itâs not really explained.
There have been numerous times where I am on the Vietnamese team and the enemy team calls in a napalm strike right? First of all, napalm is the most broken shit in the game for numerous reasons. The moment you even get near it your soldier will explode into a ball of flames. Napalm is instant death, no questions asked.
Secondly, because of this random respawning nonsense, many scenarios like this can happen:
The enemy calls in the napalm strike, it comes down and it kills you
You respawn instantly, the napalm kills you a second time after spawning
You respawn again uncontrollably, the napalm kills you a third time
You respawn yet again, and guess what? You die a FOURTH time to that one napalm strike
And FINALLY you get put back in the respawn screen.
Would you believe that I have had this instant respawn bullshit with napalm happen to me, not just one, or twice, or even thrice, but at least EIGHT times?
Hell, even when itâs not an airstrike, there are times where I get shot and killed, then the game force respawns me and I die again immediately. What the fuck is that about? Because of this, itâs so easy for the Commander to just rack up over 100, hell, even 200 kills by calling in airstrikes because the game just forces the enemies to respawn and they die over, and over, and over again. The kill feed just gets LOADED with the Commander's name on it.
Imagine how much free XP you get as a Commander, and all you have to do is just point at your screen, press a single button, and watch as the entire enemy team just gets BOMBARDED. It's unbalanced as fuck.
Speaking of dying over and over, death itself can also be quite infuriating at times. But of course there will be that one guy who will say the same copy and paste question "It's war, what do you expect?"
I get that this is meant to be a hardcore realistic type of game, but there is a point where the realism can get in the way of the player's enjoyment of the game.
There are a shitload of times where you will die but you have absolutely no control over it. You'll be in the middle of running to your teammates or an objective and you either get shot from out of nowhere, or you die from something like a grenade or an airstrike.
The farthest that I've ever been shot was at 310m. I am not joking. It honestly pissed me off. The absolute insane ranges that people can shoot you from but you can't see them at all, it happens way too often in this game.
There are so many times where I get shot and I'm just sitting there like "where the hell did I get shot from??" There are so many places where enemies could be hiding because the maps are so large.
Everywhere I go I am at risk of getting shot. Unlike a more casual fast faced shooter like Call of Duty or Battlefield, camping is a viable strategy in this game because death is so easy to come by at any given moment.
It does get frustrating where I'm just casually minding my own business, and then out of nowhere, BAP
I get hit by an explosion, or I get one shot killed from over 100m by some guy proning in a bush or sitting on top of a cliff or something. It happens so often. Sometimes it can suck the fun out of a match.
Sometimes it just can be an endless cycle of death, and it gets tiring after a while. Matches for me can go like this:
I spawn, I die
I respawn, I die
I respawn again, I die again
I can go on deathstreaks because I just can't counter the enemy. And having to rely on teammates just to help me out but can't do so just adds the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
Some of the maps in this game are very one sided. A few of the worst examples being Firebase (as the Vietnamese), Resort (as the Americans), and Hill 937 (as the Americans).
Firebase is shit because the majority of the map is just a plain open area with almost no places to take cover. There are times where I immediately die right after I get out of the respawn screen because it's so easy to get shot in the open.
But the Americans get most of the trenches and also have other places to hide out in.
Hill 937 sucks as an American because the whole map is just rocky mountains that are beige and brown colored, but the American soldiers all wear green, so you stick out like a sore thumb. Plus, the Vietnamese get trenches and bunkers to hide out in and shoot you from.
And Resort? Well, I don't need to explain again why that map sucks as an American.
The lag in this game can also get pretty ridiculous at times. I don't know how it happens, maybe it's cause of the servers that I play in, but there are times where I jump into a server that says it has 50 ping or slightly more, but then I load into the match and I get over 100 ping, which is not a good ping to have if you live in the United States.
I played this morning on a 70 ping server and my ping went up to 180, almost 200, and I had to leave it, cause I can't play if I'm lagging like crazy.
So with everything I went over, this is why I both love and hate this game at the same time. On one hand the game is an immersive, intense, strategy provoking, and satisfying war game with an incredible choice of guns and excellent feedback.
And the other is a laborious, frustrating, and sometimes very one sided battle with a few very shitty maps where death is impossible to avoid and getting killstreaks is insanely hard unless you either hardcore camp, or you are a Commander calling in airstrikes, and you get shitty teammates that don't know how to play the game because they just skip the tutorials and just jump right into the matchmaking.
It's brutally difficult trying to get positive K/Ds in this game, even if you are a person who has been playing FPS games for a long time.
But obviously this game is not for everyone. And that's the point right? It's meant for people who love more niche hardcore games if they're sick of any games made by Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard, EA, etc
I enjoy this game for the most part, but there are times I get burnt out from playing it. But it's more fun when I'm playing with Discord friends, they can make the experience less painful.
The thing about games like this is that my opinions are subjective. This review is just based on how I feel about the game. Everything that I have experienced in this game may never have happened to you. If you have never played this game but you love these types of games, then I recommend giving it a try, see what you think about it, and then having your own thoughts about it.
When the game isn't on sale it's only $20, which is a steal in my opinion, and if you don't like it then that's what Steam refunds are for. The power of Steam. If I had to pay $30 or more, and I didn't have friends to play with, then yeah, I'd probably rank it a bit lower.
I have 80 hours spent on this game but I don't mind spending another 40 or so. I recommend bringing some friends with you, especially those who know Vietnamese and American stereotyping lol.
What would make me give this game a higher score would be if it had a story mode. Something like Call Of Duty World at War with 4 player online Co-Op. That would be fucking amazing. But as it stands, it's a mostly good game with glaring blemishes that could be fixed up in the future.
7/10
This is definitely one of the more unique shooters that I've played in quite a while. It's like if Battlefield and Verdun fucked and had a bastard child. That's the best way I could describe this game in a nutshell.
It's a 64 player FPS that has large scale open battles of attrition where the core gameplay is centered around teamwork, coordination, precision, and making slow and methodical movements rather than your standard fast paced Call of Duty clone where your bragging rights come from how many kills you can get in a single round and without dying from using up all your dopamine shots.
One half of this game I absolutely love and am addicted to but the other half can be a frustrating and exhausting endurance, and I will get into that. So I'll start off with what I love about this game.
[ đŁđĽđ˘đŚ ]
The atmosphere that this game presents to me is just spot on. Even more so than Battlefield, Rising Storm 2 Vietnam makes me feel like I'm actually in the middle of a fuckin' war, the immersion is quite intoxicating. Playing this with friends makes the experience even better.
The role playing that people do in this game is just funny as shit. I love loading into a match just to see the people on the Vietnamese team calling the Americans racial white people slurs. Some may find it fucked up, I think it's hilarious.
I play on the American team and people start blasting ACDC, Paint it Blank, Fortunate Son, and other 1960s songs in the voice chat. It's funny, but sometimes it can get annoying and you'll end up muting whoever is doing it.
I look in the game chat and I see people saying stupid shit like "Knock knock, I'm here to burn down your crops and steal your wife."
I think people take this game too seriously lol.
The people who play this game can either make or break the entire game, hence why I have mixed feelings about it.
Regardless, despite some occasional toxicity, the community is very dedicated to this game. They have no tolerance for people who cheat, team kill on purpose, or don't do what their roles require them to do.
If that does happen, everyone just vote kicks. And every single time that person gets removed.
This is not your typical game where you rush into choke points and effortlessly dispatch a group of enemies in rapid succession.
This is a much more realistic game where you have to work with your squadmates by moving together as a team, recon enemy locations, call in some air support, and inch your way towards an objective, because being alone is not what you want to be, because it's very easy for you do die in this game.
Just like in Verdun, if you take even a single bullet, depending on where you took the hit, you'd be lucky if you survived it. If you shoot someone even once in their vitals, like their head, heart, or lungs, they will drop. It also depends on the gun, but most of the time you will die in one or two shots.
If you do manage to survive getting shot, you start bleeding out thus your vision starts blurring. Then you have to spend a good 10 seconds wrapping up your wound, and you only get one bandage. To get another one you have to get one at a resupply.
If you get shot in the leg you move like 90% slower for a few seconds which gives the enemy time to finish you off, which is already bad enough that the standard sprinting speed is a bit slow. It's even slower while you're crouched. But it does help when you want to run but need to take cover at the same time.
Also, there is no traditional ammo counter in this game, instead the game just shows how many magazines you have, and when you reload a new mag, you get a brief indicator that relatively shows how much ammo is in the mag you just put in the gun. There is no such thing as reserve ammunition traditionally like in most other games.
Here is a tip. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but there are times where your HUD will just disappear so you can see things like your squad mates, your mag counter, and the damage range your gun is set to. If this happens, just push the T key.
Some guns in this game have pretty hefty recoil, combine this with bullet velocity and even bullet spread, and it requires you to shoot in single or short bursts at medium to long range, but crouching and proning also gives you extra accuracy.
But you also have to worry about suppression and the stamina of your soldier. If you sprint for a duration of time, your soldier can get tired, which results in more gun sway. And if you get suppressed by enemy gunfire your gun will sway as well, and if an enemy gets a near hit on you, your soldier can flinch which can put your aim off.
That's why there's also a mechanic where you can hold your breath to stop guns swaying for a brief moment.
So despite only needing a couple bullets to kill someone, you still need to have good aim and pay attention to these other mechanics. The gunplay in this game is insanely satisfying. The hit registration is very good, and there is something orgasmic about getting those insane longshot kills, it just feels so goddamn good.
My longest shot was 225m with an AK47. It was the luckiest shot I ever pulled off. I saw a very faint moving dot in the distance, so I just took a shot for the hell of it, and somehow I killed someone with a single bullet, I got really excited over it lol. But then, I did it again, but at 210m, in the same match. But, those were the only two times out of approximately 80 hours of play time that I pulled off longshots that far with a gun that isnât a sniper rifle.
Every gun feels good to use minus a few exceptions. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, some of my all time favorites are in this game.
The game has a server browser where you can choose where you want to play. Most people just play Territories which is like Operations from Battlefield 1 where you have to capture all objectives in a sector in order to keep pushing forward until you have captured every sector on the map.
Going back to the weapons, the American soldiers get the standard M16 (AR), M60 (LMG), M1 Garand (Rifle), M2 Carbine (AR), but also get the Grease Gun (SMG), Flamethrower, M14 (Rifle), M37 (Shotgun), XM21 (Marksman), M40 (Sniper), CAR-15 CommandoXM177 (AR), M1911 (Pistol), and finally the M1917 revolver.
Sadly the Australians got the shaft when it comes to the weapon department. The majority of the guns they have at their disposal are the American ones. They only have a few weapons exclusive to their team, if you're excluding variants. But, they are pretty damn good.
They get two different variants of the FN-FAL, and two SMGS, the Owen and the F1.
The FN-FAL has a hefty kick to it but the one shot kill range is ridiculous. The Owen is not that great, it's weak in terms of power and damage range, but the F1 is fucking awesome. The high rate of fire and low recoil makes it so fun to use, it reminds me of the M1918 Automatico from Battlefield 1.
But the Vietnamese, HOLY FUCK! These guys got sucked off during development.
The Vietnamese have the best weaponry in the game, there is no contest for me. They get guns such as the fucking MP40 (SMG), PPSh-41 (SMG), AK47 (AR), SKS (Marksman), MAT-49 (SMG), IZH-58 (Shotgun), RPD (LMG), DP-28 (LMG), Mosin Nagant (Sniper), SVD (Sniper), M1 Carbine (Rifle), TT-33 (Pistol), and the PM (Pistol).
I mean, do I need to explain this? How can I say no to the MP40, PPSh, SKS, RPD, DP28, and a goddamn Mosin Nagant? These are my favorite guns in history. If a game has a PPSh or a Mosin Nagant in it, I swear to God I will use it lol. Although sadly in this game the PPSh does not get a drum magazine, but itâs still fucking awesome. It dispatches enemies so quickly. The sound of it, hell, the sound of the MP40 and MAT-49 as well, theyâre fucking orgasmic.
It actually makes me feel bad for the other factions, they get shit nowhere near as good. You would think that the Vietnamese would be overpowered because of this right? Well, the developers did a good job of balancing the gunplay. Because of the ridiculous time to kill, a certain gun doesnât feel more OP than another one. Any gun can be good as long as you know how to use it, minus a couple of exceptions.
cough The Owen..
cough The Grease Gun..
However, if you want to use a specific gun, you have to be in a specific role. The game has a role system, hence where one half of the teamwork comes in. Every role is designed for a specific purpose.
There are a total of 8 roles, the Vietnamese for example get these:
Guerilla
Scout
Machine Gunner
Sniper
Sapper
RPG
Radioman
Commander
If you want to use the Mosin Nagant for example, you have to be in the Sniper role, the DP-28 requires the Machine Gunner role, the PPSh is in the Sapper role, so on and so forth. There is another catch however. Each role only has a certain number of player spaces, 2 or 3. So there is a chance that every role can fill up, in which you get stuck with the default Guerilla class along with the majority of the team. Iâm assuming this is for balancing purposes. Imagine 20, even 10 people running around with M60s or flamethrowers, that would be fucking madness.
I actually have quite a problem with the role system and Iâll get into that but, on one hand the roles are meant so that your team can work together to fulfill specific needs. If you need your teammates to plant some surprise traps in some trenches or some tunnels, the Sapper can do so. If you want some air support, the Radioman rubs over to the Commander and gives them coordinates to call in an airstrike.
Snipers can take out long range targets, Scouts can pinpoint enemy locations. If your team is under heavy fire from a helicopter, a quick RPG can take care of it, that is if you have someone who actually knows how to use the damn thingâŚ
..Oh. Ohhh.
Yeah.. Now hereâs where I get into the issues I have with this game. Iâll start with the roles.
[ đžđđđ ]
The role system can either make or break an entire match if your team isnât really competent enough to fill out their duty. There are times where your teammates will just take a role only because of the weaponry, and you know what, I do that too sometimes with the Sapper and the Machine Gunner classes, but this can be a problem because there are times where we need that RPG or that Radioman but theyâre not doing what theyâre supposed to.
The absolute worst example I can think of is when I play on the map Resort as the Americans. Oh my fucking god, it is an absolute shitshow. It seems like more than half of the people who play this game donât know how to fly a helicopter. Either that or theyâre massively trolling.
There is a helicopter pilot role on certain maps, and the issue is that only the people in that role are able to get in the helicopter and fly it. No one else. So if you have someone who doesnât know how to fly, or they do know how to fly and just wanna fuck around, you will be subjected to the same cycle of getting into a heli, waiting 30 seconds or more to get to where you need to go, only for the pilot to fucking crash and kill everyone on board, including you.
This is how one of my matches went in particular:
I spawn in, get in the heli, and as soon as the pilot gets to the beach he makes a force landing, but he lands too hard and he blows all of us up, then I respawn, I get in a heli again, and guess what? It happens again. This shit has happened so often that it was actually impossible for my teammates to get out of the spawn base because there were no helicopters, because the pilots kept crashing them, either that or they got shot down.
This got infuriating. It's even worse than it led to a shitload of toxicity and arguing in the chat. It got so bad that the enemy team actually felt pity for us and they said âyou know what? Weâll let you capture the beach.â
And they actually retreated and let us capture the first fucking point, all so that we didnât have to keep getting into helis with people who donât know how to fly the damn things. And itâs not like the game doesnât teach you how to do it, there are tutorials that you can do, along with the shooting range and whatnot, so why donât people just practice??
If you donât know how to fly, then why the fuck would you take the Pilot role? Well like I said, either youâre an idiot, or youâre a troll, and a shitty one at that. To be fair, there is a kick system where your team votes to kick someone out of the role and have someone else take it.
But, during that match, I donât think anyone knew how to fly, even the veteran players that have been playing for a while. I didnât know how to fly either, but thatâs only because I was a new player at the time, and Iâd rather let someone else fly than me, since well, flying works differently in every game.
I am an ace pilot in GTA games but I canât fly for shit in Battlefield games. But yeah, there are times where your team just does not communicate. There can be times where your team desperately needs an airstrike but either the Radioman or the Commander donât work together to call that shit in. Speaking of airstrikes, they can actually break the entire game because of the baffling respawn system, and Iâm gonna get into that.
There are two spawn points on each map, but you can get an extra one if youâre Vietnamese and a squadmate builds a tunnel for you to spawn on. But for some reason, and I still donât understand how this shit works, sometimes I die but it doesnât bring me back to the respawn screen, instead I just respawn instantaneously and then I get shot down again. Why does this happen? Is it a bug or a feature? If so itâs not really explained.
There have been numerous times where I am on the Vietnamese team and the enemy team calls in a napalm strike right? First of all, napalm is the most broken shit in the game for numerous reasons. The moment you even get near it your soldier will explode into a ball of flames. Napalm is instant death, no questions asked.
Secondly, because of this random respawning nonsense, many scenarios like this can happen:
The enemy calls in the napalm strike, it comes down and it kills you
You respawn instantly, the napalm kills you a second time after spawning
You respawn again uncontrollably, the napalm kills you a third time
You respawn yet again, and guess what? You die a FOURTH time to that one napalm strike
And FINALLY you get put back in the respawn screen.
Would you believe that I have had this instant respawn bullshit with napalm happen to me, not just one, or twice, or even thrice, but at least EIGHT times?
Hell, even when itâs not an airstrike, there are times where I get shot and killed, then the game force respawns me and I die again immediately. What the fuck is that about? Because of this, itâs so easy for the Commander to just rack up over 100, hell, even 200 kills by calling in airstrikes because the game just forces the enemies to respawn and they die over, and over, and over again. The kill feed just gets LOADED with the Commander's name on it.
Imagine how much free XP you get as a Commander, and all you have to do is just point at your screen, press a single button, and watch as the entire enemy team just gets BOMBARDED. It's unbalanced as fuck.
Speaking of dying over and over, death itself can also be quite infuriating at times. But of course there will be that one guy who will say the same copy and paste question "It's war, what do you expect?"
I get that this is meant to be a hardcore realistic type of game, but there is a point where the realism can get in the way of the player's enjoyment of the game.
There are a shitload of times where you will die but you have absolutely no control over it. You'll be in the middle of running to your teammates or an objective and you either get shot from out of nowhere, or you die from something like a grenade or an airstrike.
The farthest that I've ever been shot was at 310m. I am not joking. It honestly pissed me off. The absolute insane ranges that people can shoot you from but you can't see them at all, it happens way too often in this game.
There are so many times where I get shot and I'm just sitting there like "where the hell did I get shot from??" There are so many places where enemies could be hiding because the maps are so large.
Everywhere I go I am at risk of getting shot. Unlike a more casual fast faced shooter like Call of Duty or Battlefield, camping is a viable strategy in this game because death is so easy to come by at any given moment.
It does get frustrating where I'm just casually minding my own business, and then out of nowhere, BAP
I get hit by an explosion, or I get one shot killed from over 100m by some guy proning in a bush or sitting on top of a cliff or something. It happens so often. Sometimes it can suck the fun out of a match.
Sometimes it just can be an endless cycle of death, and it gets tiring after a while. Matches for me can go like this:
I spawn, I die
I respawn, I die
I respawn again, I die again
I can go on deathstreaks because I just can't counter the enemy. And having to rely on teammates just to help me out but can't do so just adds the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
Some of the maps in this game are very one sided. A few of the worst examples being Firebase (as the Vietnamese), Resort (as the Americans), and Hill 937 (as the Americans).
Firebase is shit because the majority of the map is just a plain open area with almost no places to take cover. There are times where I immediately die right after I get out of the respawn screen because it's so easy to get shot in the open.
But the Americans get most of the trenches and also have other places to hide out in.
Hill 937 sucks as an American because the whole map is just rocky mountains that are beige and brown colored, but the American soldiers all wear green, so you stick out like a sore thumb. Plus, the Vietnamese get trenches and bunkers to hide out in and shoot you from.
And Resort? Well, I don't need to explain again why that map sucks as an American.
The lag in this game can also get pretty ridiculous at times. I don't know how it happens, maybe it's cause of the servers that I play in, but there are times where I jump into a server that says it has 50 ping or slightly more, but then I load into the match and I get over 100 ping, which is not a good ping to have if you live in the United States.
I played this morning on a 70 ping server and my ping went up to 180, almost 200, and I had to leave it, cause I can't play if I'm lagging like crazy.
So with everything I went over, this is why I both love and hate this game at the same time. On one hand the game is an immersive, intense, strategy provoking, and satisfying war game with an incredible choice of guns and excellent feedback.
And the other is a laborious, frustrating, and sometimes very one sided battle with a few very shitty maps where death is impossible to avoid and getting killstreaks is insanely hard unless you either hardcore camp, or you are a Commander calling in airstrikes, and you get shitty teammates that don't know how to play the game because they just skip the tutorials and just jump right into the matchmaking.
It's brutally difficult trying to get positive K/Ds in this game, even if you are a person who has been playing FPS games for a long time.
But obviously this game is not for everyone. And that's the point right? It's meant for people who love more niche hardcore games if they're sick of any games made by Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard, EA, etc
I enjoy this game for the most part, but there are times I get burnt out from playing it. But it's more fun when I'm playing with Discord friends, they can make the experience less painful.
The thing about games like this is that my opinions are subjective. This review is just based on how I feel about the game. Everything that I have experienced in this game may never have happened to you. If you have never played this game but you love these types of games, then I recommend giving it a try, see what you think about it, and then having your own thoughts about it.
When the game isn't on sale it's only $20, which is a steal in my opinion, and if you don't like it then that's what Steam refunds are for. The power of Steam. If I had to pay $30 or more, and I didn't have friends to play with, then yeah, I'd probably rank it a bit lower.
I have 80 hours spent on this game but I don't mind spending another 40 or so. I recommend bringing some friends with you, especially those who know Vietnamese and American stereotyping lol.
What would make me give this game a higher score would be if it had a story mode. Something like Call Of Duty World at War with 4 player online Co-Op. That would be fucking amazing. But as it stands, it's a mostly good game with glaring blemishes that could be fixed up in the future.
7/10