After some troublesome open betas, a short delay, and some technical reworks, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is finally here. For this trip into hell, Expression Games has taken the immersive 50 vs 50 first-person combat out of 1940s Europe and dropped it into 1960’s Vietnam. Fans of the series will feel right at home with the dynamic firefights, strategic planning, large, open maps, and arsenal of historically accurate equipment. Though not everyone will appreciate the absolute bedlam the jungle setting inspires.
When I first heard the title “Hell Let Loose: Vietnam,” my first thought was “Oh God, good luck with that.” Hell Let Loose isn’t your average FPS game. It occupies a precarious position between an arcade shooter and a hardcore military simulator. For most players in a lobby, it’s a Battlefield-style action game. For a select few leaders, it’s an objective-based squad management title, like Rising Storm and Isonzo. For two commanders, it’s a full-on real-time strategy.
Other than Squad and Squad 44 (formerly Post Scriptum), there really are no games that scratch this particular FPS-RTS itch. While not everyone is happy about one of the best World War II games being transplanted to Vietnam, the conflict really is the perfect choice for a sequel. The asymmetry of the war shakes up the gameplay without requiring any major changes to the mechanics. One side is a high-tech modern military equipped with everything it would need to win a third World War. The other side had bolt-action rifles, digging skills, and very comfortable pants. The gameplay does a superb job of replicating the chaos that turned America’s “advisory and training mission” into a 20-year quagmire that ended the way it did.
But for WW2 guys hoping for a sequel set in the Pacific theatre, it’s still kind of a bummer.
The Vietnam War has always been a tough nut to crack for video games. On paper, the setting sounds like a layup for an FPS. It was a conflict with dynamic landscapes, machine guns, helicopters, jets, rock & roll, and special forces galore. But for games and history alike, the jungle complicates things. The dense foliage and winding rivers don’t just favour the chaotic and the patient; they punish the organized. For a tactical FPS or a strategy game, this can be a big issue. Hell Let Loose is both.
“The mechanics and roles remain largely unchanged from Hell Let Loose, but everything is much faster and more mobile.”
How does Hell Let Loose: Vietnam overcome this problem? It doesn’t; it embraces it. Expression Games takes the unfairness of jungle warfare and uses it as fuel for an engine that milks its players’ adrenal glands. The strategy and mechanics are the same as its predecessor, but increased mobility and force asymmetry ensure no side is ever standing on solid ground. The US military can rain down napalm on any point they choose and use helicopters to quickly resupply besieged points. But the NVA can literally undermine the US war machine, establishing fast-travel tunnel networks that stretch well behind enemy lines.
In Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, the jungle has total control. It twists the Hell Let Loose formula of strategic warfare into chaotic battles of attrition between what, from a distance, looks like armies of angry bushes. Most engagements between capture points occur by surprise, within knifing distance, or through volleys of machine-gun fire aimed toward sounds you didn’t make.
The mechanics and roles remain largely unchanged from Hell Let Loose, but everything is much faster and more mobile. Soldiers can now swim and climb ladders but can also vault to higher locations. Crews can support their grunts with helicopters, gunboats, logistics trucks, and tanks. The vehicle selection is limited, but so are the practical applications. Outside of early-game rushes and late-game supply drops, vehicles were mostly left parked at the base.
The main issue with vehicles is that they are nightmarishly vulnerable to enemy fire, not terribly effective in combat, and come paired with miserable control schemes. Take helicopters, for example: instead of using mouse movements to adjust pitch and yaw (like you do in Arma or Warzone), pilots have to roll with A and D and adjust yaw with left and right mouse clicks. It is needlessly different and feels like the aeronautical equivalent of QWOP. There’s also an issue with map rendering while flying, but more on that later.
But the big question is: was it fun? Oh my God, yes. The final playtest was an absolute riot. In a few short hours, I was part of mass ambushes on enemy bases, chased by tanks, and running solo missions behind enemy lines. I got in accidental knife fights with snipers, was napalmed by friends, and captured a point as a lone survivor under artillery bombardment.
The mixture of strategic depth and environmental variables gives each match a uniqueness that’s hard to find in other games. Rolling fog or billowing smoke from an airstrike can inspire bayonet charges that no one could plan, and a lone wandering enemy can lay waste to the most carefully coordinated attacks.
All that said, there are some glaring technical issues and areas where Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is a step backwards for the series.
Firstly, it doesn’t look as good. The endless jungle just isn’t as interesting to look at as World War Two-era Europe. Instead of bombed-out villages, haunting forests, and idyllic farmland, we get endless jungle. At times it can be difficult to remember which map you’re playing because the jungle makes them all look the same. There were times when we’d be 15 minutes into a new match before I remembered that the map had changed. There will be six maps at launch, but I honestly couldn’t tell you how many I’ve played. The only defining features I remember are that one map had a sandy patch and a port.
There’s also an overreliance on cinematic grades that push the colour palette into aggressively orange or bluey-green mushiness. It’s very vibey, don’t get me wrong, but it actually affects gameplay. Spotting enemies at a distance can be a pixel-peeping game, but the lack of contrast can hide bad guys in plain sight, often masking them in texture pops.
Which brings me to the game’s biggest issue: texture popping.
Think of textures as the paint layers on an object in a game. To run smoothly, a game engine will hide or lower the resolution of textures it thinks the player doesn’t currently need. It will also change the models of far-away things to use fewer resources. The denser the world, the more aggressive the engine has to be. To render the jungles of Vietnam, Expression Games had to tell Unreal Engine 5 to be downright ruthless.
With maxed-out graphics settings, the optimal render distance in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is about 10-20 feet. If you look at the ground as you walk, tire tracks and footprints will pop into view. It can be a little annoying, but eventually you get used to it. What I never got used to, though, was texture and shadows popping in while aiming down sights. Simply using my weapon would cause distant (and not-so-distant) trees to grow extra limbs and obscure my target or hide it in a previously unseen bush. The lighting and geometry flickering can be a lot on the eyes, and I found myself needing more breaks than usual.
All things considered, though, the game is looking pretty impressive. Especially when you consider the scale of the maps. Popping and colours are easily fixed, and devs seem to be listening to community feedback pretty closely. Within a few patches, I expect my criticism will age like milk—but at launch, it’s a thing.
Some issues that have been worked out over the last few weeks are hit detection and stability. In my five hours of play, every shot I expected to hit did. The game never crashed, and my connection was fast and stable even when loading into EU servers.
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is the rare case of a game that got delayed because it needed more time to cook and actually got fixed. Beyond that, it got additional changes that the player base pressed for—all within a few weeks. I have a good feeling about this one.
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is not the Hell Let Loose I expected. It’s similar in structure to the original but totally different in execution… Vietnam has that effect on games. Battlefield: Vietnam and Rising Storm 2: Vietnam feel closer to each other than games in their own series. That lineage now includes Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which even in its pre-release state feels like the most complete and chaotic of them all.
Not every fan of Hell Let Loose is going to appreciate the vibe shift, but no fan of Vietnam games is going to want to miss this one.
