To be fair, it is an expansion of Bad Company 2, and so I shouldn't be surprised by this, but the game is basically Bad Company 2 with some new skins, a few new weapons, and a handful of maps. Even though one of the maps is named Operation: Hastings, don't get excited, because it's hardly anything like the original of Hueyland legend from Battlefield Vietnam. In fact, it felt like the people in charge of designing BFBC2V had never actually played BFV.

The choppers are horrendous to fly. I was excited to see a Huey, even if I was disappointed by the absence of the NVA Hip, just to learn that they've utterly restricted the maneuverability so heavily that it feels clunkier than the Mi-8 did in the original game. The only real maneuver you can pull off is a wide circle. Of course, to balance this, there are almost no maps in which you will see chopper vs chopper combat. In fact, there's really nothing in the game at all designed to take down the helicopter. The only effective way I've seen to take down a chopper is with the main cannon of a tank, and that's hardly an effective way at all. If ignored, the Huey will spin around a flag, with those devastating machine guns absolutely murdering anything in their path. And if not ignored, well, you're next to helpless anyway, and you'll likely be so distracted wasting ammo on the Huey that you'll not notice as some ground pounder walks up and slits your throat.

I also noticed that tanks circa. 1968 now have protected, automated gunner positions. Quite frustrating, really, because when you're running medic, you literally cannot do anything about a tank. You can't even shoot out the gunner, because he's safely inside the tank, remotely controlling the turret. Maybe, just maybe, I could see that on the M48, but on the T54 as well? I just doubt it.

I was also disappointed to learn that none of the interesting mechanics from BFV made a reappearance. No punji sticks, no tunnels, no caltrops, nothing like that. Hell, they didn't even include the SA-8. If they were going to make the clunky Huey a BAMFing box, they might as well throw the poor Vietcong a bone and give them the SA-8. I was also disappointed that both sides have equal access to weapons. I briefly experimented with a few other weapons, but overall, whether I was a US soldier or a VC guerrilla, I used the RPK or the PPSh. In fact, both sides had to use the RPG-7. There was little variety with the weaponry, little variation between factions (the only variation that comes to mind were the two tanks, which might as well have just been reskinned versions of each other), the closest to a throw back to BFV was that the vehicles feature radios that play music, though it seemed like it was automatic, and not player controlled.

And while the maps were beautiful, and it was fun to fight in the jungle again, the map design reeked of the same balance issues that were so prevalent in BFBC2. For example, the map Cao Sun Temple. The entire map takes place along a beach, which makes the PBRs really important. It's a cool concept. However! On conquest, he who takes and holds B, the middle point, first during that very initial push is basically guaranteed victory. Though, in all my games played, I don't think I ever saw the NVA ever capture A or the US ever capture C. Simply put, the entire game rode on who captured B, because either side of the base was a natural chokepoint. That's not so bad. Except in Rush, where the attackers HAVE to move past these same two choke points. Once you get to the third set of objectives, unless your team is amazing and highly coordinated, you simply cannot push into the temple proper to hit those third objectives. There's just too much cover on either side, with this massive no man's land in the middle. Because the map is so narrow, it is just too easy to sit back and snipe for both sides. You might get tons of kills, but if you're playing attacker, you've pretty much already lost.

Of course, issues like this aren't particularly new to DICE, who has made several maps recently, for various games, that featured just that sort of a problem. Operation: Blue Pearl, released in the more recent 1.5 patch for Battlefield 2, for example, is a map in which the USA starts on an island with the PLC rushing to capture a few front neutral bases on the mainland. If the USA does not break out and capture one of those flags in the first five minutes of the game, they always lose. The PLC can just stand on the shore with missile launchers and hit any incoming boats from a long distance. It is extremely rare to break out after being pushed off the mainland in the initial struggle. If the USA does capture one, however, they almost always win.

At the end of the day, BFBC2V was just BFBC2 reskinned with a few new maps and a separate ranking and unlock system. And for $14 that they charge for the game, I was really expecting something better than that. I was expecting a few throw backs to BFV, at the very least. I was sorely disappointed. Don't get me wrong: Bad Company 2, and subsequently Bad Company 2: Vietnam, are both really solid games. It's just that, after playing games like Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2, the mediocrity that has pervaded the Battlefield series is disturbing. Here's to hoping that Battlefield 3 turns all that around.