Usually the Vietnam war is as a good setting for FPS games, but this just isn’t fun. The game’s clearly meant to be played in third-person because your player’s not actually tall enough to see over the grass in most places, which sucks because I bought this game for the first person gameplay, yet enemies can see you even when prone amongst a field of six-foot reeds. The gunplay is mid at best, and enemies will often either oneshot you or do less than ten damage after emptying four mags in your general direction. As a result, I would often find myself wiping out roaming pairs of enemies and then instantly quick saving before a sniper picked me off from behind a bush whilst standing on top of a rock outside of my render distance. Teammates often get stuck on random bits of geometry and then flat-out ignore the follow command, which is particularly annoying as it means I have to constantly check that my teammate is behind me, otherwise I end up needing to make the trip to exfil twice over. This is made even more annoying by the encumbrance system, which essentially means that at any less than max health, you will lose stamina at an increased rate depending on how many items you’re holding. Once you run out of stamina, you'll be forced to stop and catch your breath for a couple of seconds like in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The game doesn’t work properly without dgVoodoo despite this being a port from 2016, and even with dgVoodoo installed, it was still prone to random crashes.

With the exception of the setting, it just feels like an inferior Ghost Recon game, which is a shame because Ghost Recon: Vietnam sounds like an absolute banger of a concept. I can see how the multiplayer might be fun, but the game doesn’t exactly have a bustling online community, so you’d probably be better off trying to find a match in Battlefield Vietnam. I wouldn’t recommend buying it unless you have some kind of nostalgia for the game, which I certainly do not.

Usually the Vietnam war is as a good setting for FPS games, but this just isn’t fun. The game’s clearly meant to be played in third-person because your player’s not actually tall enough to see over the grass in most places, which sucks because I bought this game for the first person gameplay, yet enemies can see you even when prone amongst a field of six-foot reeds. The gunplay is mid at best, and enemies will often either oneshot you or do less than ten damage after emptying four mags in your general direction. As a result, I would often find myself wiping out roaming pairs of enemies and then instantly quick saving before a sniper picked me off from behind a bush whilst standing on top of a rock outside of my render distance. Teammates often get stuck on random bits of geometry and then flat-out ignore the follow command, which is particularly annoying as it means I have to constantly check that my teammate is behind me, otherwise I end up needing to make the trip to exfil twice over. This is made even more annoying by the encumbrance system, which essentially means that at any less than max health, you will lose stamina at an increased rate depending on how many items you’re holding. Once you run out of stamina, you'll be forced to stop and catch your breath for a couple of seconds like in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The game doesn’t work properly without dgVoodoo despite this being a port from 2016, and even with dgVoodoo installed, it was still prone to random crashes. With the exception of the setting, it just feels like an inferior Ghost Recon game, which is a shame because Ghost Recon: Vietnam sounds like an absolute banger of a concept. I can see how the multiplayer might be fun, but the game doesn’t exactly have a bustling online community, so you’d probably be better off trying to find a match in Battlefield Vietnam. I wouldn’t recommend buying it unless you have some kind of nostalgia for the game, which I certainly do not.