Hell Let Loose: Vietnam Review

The first man I killed in Vietnam was floating six inches above the ground. I wasn’t sure if he was a friendly or not, and it took an entire magazine to put him down. When I looked through my gunsights again, my character’s hands were shaking. A teammate congratulated me, but halfway through their sentence, their voice cut out. Then I got shot in the head and was sent back to the spawn screen for 30 seconds. War may be the H word, but Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is a mess.

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Conceptually, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is almost perfect. It takes Hell Let Loose’s satisfying gunplay and milsim-lite mechanics and transplants them to one of the most fascinating conflicts in modern history. The Vietnam War had cool guns, distinctive uniforms, and wildly varied environments. Booby traps and tunnel systems could’ve fundamentally changed how you moved around the battlefield, while helicopters and boats could’ve created more dynamic combat. The setting encourages mid-match narratives to unfold naturally. It’s the perfect war for a shooter.

But Hell Let Loose: Vietnam just doesn’t take advantage of it. There’s no emergent story, no memorable cosmetics, and nothing to distinguish one match from the next. The game is almost entirely devoid of content and has so many technical issues that it’s hard to describe them all. The problems start with the most fundamental part: shooting people. Even when everything else works, which is rare, pulling the trigger still isn’t very fun. Your character always has shaky hands, just like in earlier versions of Squad. So it’s tedious to line up a shot, let alone land one. Your enemies are almost always obstructed by foliage or other cover, too, making most kills feel like guesswork. When you do take down an enemy, though, there’s so little feedback that it hardly seems worth the effort.

Bad gunplay wouldn’t necessarily ruin Hell Let Loose: Vietnam if the rest of the experience made up for it. On paper, it should. Your goal during each match isn’t to get your squad to the top of the leaderboard. You have to capture objectives, establish logistics routes, and occasionally take control of a vehicle. But, like with the shooting, all of those mechanics are bogged down by annoyances of their own. Moving around the game’s giant maps is slow even when you’re able to hitch a ride. There are too many control points spread across them, too, scattering players so widely that getting into an actual firefight is a rare occurrence. The vast majority of your time will be spent running towards the sound of gunfire, getting domed before you know what’s happening, then spending half a minute waiting to respawn.

And, honestly, that’s just not fun. Squad, Arma Reforger and even the original Hell Let Loose got away with the same general problems because when shit hit the fan, you felt like you were in a proper warzone. But playing Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is an exercise in frustration. The presentation doesn’t help, either. Gunshots sound weak, explosions look tame, and visually, the entire game is dated. There’s no memorable soundtrack, just the occasional player blasting CCR through their in-game mic. When coupled with abysmal technical performance, the title feels like a pre-alpha build, not a £34.99 full release.

The bugs only reinforce that impression. You’ll experience some kind of oddity in every match. Sometimes, they’re mildly amusing, like a forest being so dense that trees are rendered multiple times. Voice chat will occasionally stop working, or your custom keybinds will fail to save, which is annoying if not game-breaking. But connections to some servers can be spotty, making it difficult to play the game at all.

Even if the developers fixed every bug in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, there still wouldn’t be much of a game here. Six maps, 15 unique weapons, and some crappy cosmetics are all you get. There are a few small features and nice touches scattered throughout the experience. You can swim and bayonet charge with your rifle. Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, England, narrates all the descriptions for the tiny weapon pool. There are community servers to play on. None of that makes up for how little there is to do, though. There’s very little incentive to level up your character or individual classes, so you have to keep playing because you actually want to. Given how unenjoyable the experience is, you probably won’t bother after a few hours.

In time, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam may become a great game. Buried underneath its jank, performance problems and lofty price tag, there are the bones of a solid shooter. Until the developers overhaul its core systems and add substantially more content, though, there’s nothing worth recommending here. Arma Reforger has Vietnam War servers that actually work. Squad captures the beautiful chaos of warfare. Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, even with its dwindling player count, is better in every possible way. And while that game had you listening to CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle,” Hell Let Loose: Vietnam will probably just make you want to run away.

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