Battlefield Vietnam

Flight Journal, Aug 2004 by Marks, Bob

Flying your grunt-laden Huey through a valley with the soothing sounds of "Surfin' Bird" blasting through the speakers, you spot a clearing just short of a Vietnamese village. Deftly dropping the big Bell into the tall grass, you shout for the grunts-fellow online players-to jump out. They disembark, and you grab a handful of collective just as the tree line erupts with 20mm cannon fire. Your Huey is crippled; you jump free with your M-16 and return fire while desperately seeking cover. Welcome to the jungle of Electronic Art's new Battlefield Vietnam!

Like its predecessor, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam is primarily played online. Sure, you can play in single-player mode, but that isn't what it's about. With robust in-game support for finding servers and a huge community of fellow players, it's easy to join up and engage in a virtual war. Virtual pilots will enjoy flying such legends of the era as the aforementioned Huey, the F-4 Phantom II, the MiG-19 and the Cobra gunship. If flying has become slightly stale (gasp!), try the large selection of tanks and armored personnel carriers-even river gunboats and the lowly Vespa scooter!

The graphics are nothing short of gorgeous: grassy hills and thick jungles mask your foes' movements. The era-specific music is a great immersive touch, and the mini history lessons on the between-game load screens are interesting. It's refreshing to see younger players being given the chance to gain something other than faster motor reflexes while playing! When you're comfortable with the simple controls, it's incredibly easy to be sucked into this violent virtual world. As you rack your brain over the best way to take this hill or that hooch, it's easy to get addicted. Battlefield Vietnam is so well-made that it's difficult just to play a quick game; time means nothing when you are running through the jungle.

There are times when even the most demanding flight-sim addict just wants to play a game. No checklists, no sectional charts, no gun convergence settings-just a silly game to grab a few grins. The game in question must feature aircraft, of course-let's not get crazy here-but sometimes, it's a blast to eschew the realism and just move on to the shooting. Welcome to the seductive appeal of Battlefield Vietnam.

Hypersonic Aviator GXG

It's often said that good things come in small packages. It's obvious that much good stuff is nestled under the Aviator GX6 gaming laptop computer's glossy, piercing-blue metallic-painted skin. Gaming laptop? Isn't that an oxymoron like "jumbo shrimp," you ask? Not at all; Hypersonic PC is well-known for its no-compromise gaming desktops, so when its name is on a portable, you can be sure that it will do more than run an Excel spreadsheet. Packing such high-end digital firepower as a 3GHz Pentium 4 Processor, an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB video card and just more than a gigabyte of DDR RAM, the Aviator GX6 is a desktop replacement that can run the most demanding flight sims as well as any desk-bound CPU can. The 15-inch UXGA LCD screen shows everything at an the incredibly crisp 1600x1200 pixel resolution, and Hypersonic's "no dead pixel" insurance guarantees that none of those 1.92 million pixels will be dim or inoperative. Sound from the built-in stereo speakers is quite impressive.

Like high-performance aircraft and automobiles, however, computers are a series of compromises. With such high-power gadgetry packed tightly into such a small case (1¾xl3x11½ inches), a lot of heat must be shed. Keeping the Aviator's desktop-class CPU and graphics card cool is a major engineering challenge, and as a result, the outflow efflux from the fan on the bottom of the unit is quite hot. Those raised rubber feet are there for a reason; using this unit on your lap is not an option. The Aviator's portability is a bit compromised by its nine-pound-plus weight. Its components also require a lot of juice, but I was able to get an impressive 40 minutes of worst-case scenario use out of a fully charged battery (playing Battlefield Vietnam online).

That said, you wouldn't slam a Ferrari Maranello because it gets low mileage and Aunt Marge can't sit in the back. The Aviator is an amazing piece of computer engineering that supplies even the most discriminating simulation buff with the processing muscle and graphics oomph he needs to fly the digital skies. If getting maximum performance in the smallest possible footprint is key to you, you won't be able to beat Hypersonic's Aviator GX6.

-Bob Marks