Hell Let Loose Vietnam Review

The most unexpected thing about Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is how much it has in common with Big Walk. Both games involve a lot of trudging across wide-open terrain. Both feature superb maps. Above all, both are essentially about talking to people — each one leans fully into voice chat and demands that players communicate clearly if they want to win.

The difference lies in how they motivate the talkative. Big Walk nudges players out of their comfort zones with clever puzzles and gentle encouragement. Hell Let Loose: Vietnam compels you to speak up with your randomly assigned squadmates, because staying silent means getting blown to pieces. If Big Walk is all carrot, this is all stick — and it swings that stick without hesitation.

Same Structure, New Jungle

For anyone familiar with the original Hell Let Loose, this is essentially that formula relocated from 1940s Normandy to southeast Asia. One hundred players split into two teams take on the roles of US Army soldiers or North Vietnamese Army troops, then battle for control over expansive maps using combined-arms warfare.

Unlike Battlefield — the most obvious point of comparison — Hell Let Loose favors authenticity over spectacle, though spectacle is still plentiful. Fights often happen at distances where you need to squint just to spot the enemy, and sprinting off alone is a fast track to a shallow grave.

That's why teamwork matters so much here. Alongside familiar Battlefield-style roles like medic and grenadier, the game enforces a strict chain of command. Six-player squads answer to a squad leader who can plant spawn points to get everyone back into the fray, while an army-wide Commander calls in supplies, airstrikes and more.

Vietnam also introduces faction asymmetry missing from the original, where both sides played nearly identically. The US gets helicopters; the NVA gets a network of tunnels for fast-traveling across the map. These asymmetries are nice in theory, but they don't dramatically change the moment-to-moment experience.

The Jungle Changes Everything

The real shake-up is the terrain itself. Dense vegetation blankets most maps, making enemies agonizingly hard to spot. You'll find yourself crawling through tall grass, trying to pinpoint enemies by the sound of their gunfire, and sometimes nearly stepping on someone before you see them. Adding to the tension, the game doesn't register kills with explicit confirmation — unless you're close enough to watch the enemy drop, you can't be sure they're actually down, which has cost me more than once.

The map design itself, however, is excellent. Expression Games extracts impressive variety from environments made mostly of trees, rice paddies and scattered villages. Thanh Hóa Bridge is a highlight, with its railway bridge spanning a river that splits the map down the middle — long sightlines along the banks combined with close-quarters fighting on the bridge create genuinely compelling scenarios. Huế Outskirts is another favorite, a mountainous, partly industrial region where elevation matters enormously.

The maps are also big — considerably larger than Battlefield 6's comparatively cramped arenas. That makes infantry transports genuinely useful and gives Commanders proper strategic breathing room, especially in Conquest and Domination, where teams must hold multiple zones at once. Even in Offensive, Vietnam's version of Rush, nothing stops the attackers from planting spawn points behind enemy lines and striking from the rear.

When It Works and When It Doesn't

When players communicate, the game can be superb. In one Offensive match where I ran a Medic, our squad held the first hardpoint against the US forces largely thanks to an outstanding squad leader: he tracked enemy attacks across the left flank, directed grenadiers onto enemy armor, and even predicted a last-gasp assault from behind. It was genuinely inspiring.

When nobody talks, though, the fun drains away. There's still atmosphere in abundance — napalm erupting along treelines, helicopters thudding overhead, rockets streaking after them in white smoke trails — and it's a reliable source of absurd war stories. My first helicopter ride ended with the chopper exploding on landing and killing everyone aboard, which was a more fitting introduction than any cutscene.

Poor coordination, however, turns matches into a miserable snipe-fest. The game sensibly limits dedicated snipers, but with basic rifles lethal at medium-to-long range even on full auto, everyone is effectively a sniper. At its worst, Vietnam becomes a swamp of spawn-kills and instant headshots from unseen directions. The jungle sometimes shields you, but LOD phasing can leave you more visible at distance than you realize.

As a pure shooter, it also feels a step behind its rivals. Movement is clumsy and sluggish, and close-range gunfights feel oddly weightless. I respect Expression's decision to skip hit markers, but kills need some other audio or visual feedback to land properly.

There's also the inevitable exposure to voice chat's darker corners. I met both angels and demons across my tour, and thankfully you can mute and block offenders — including one player blasting Formula 1 coverage at full volume. But a game that mandates talking to strangers has to work harder at building a welcoming community. Unlike twenty years ago, players today have endless alternatives, and plenty of us will simply walk away from slurs and racist mockery rather than endure them.

Ultimately, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam captures the best and worst of online multiplayer. When everything clicks, it offers more interesting battlefields than Battlefield itself. But it's less consistently entertaining, and earning those rewards demands real effort and a high tolerance for nonsense.

A copy of Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was provided for this review by Team17.

Source: Eurogamer