Aside from a truckload of broken images at first, the move of toase.net to its new home went pretty well. I have to commend the developers of Movable Type for making the harrowing experience of transferring a weblog (mostly) painless. Apologies in advance for people who have linked to archived pages in the past – the numbering system has been thoroughly fucked, so the occasional 404 will slap you around a bit. All the scripts have been tested and are operational, so feel free to browse as usual.

Now to get to the matter at hand: the imminent release of Pandora Tomorrow and playing Battlefield: Vietnam almost the entire weekend. I figure I owe at least something that resembles an opinion, because after this week’s release of SC:PT I’m not sure how much time can be put aside for Vietnam’s lag-tastic network code and unoptimized graphics .

Ignore what everyone is saying about it being a mod. If you’re expecting a worthy sequel to BF1942, this game will disappoint you guaranteed. However it most definitely feels like a new game, and the new weapons, vehicles and textures show a kind of polish that you would only get from professionals. The Vietnam war is one of the most shameful engagements of the US Military, but somehow DICE has made it fun to play. No more lone rangers running for each control point: you must operate as a unit or you will die. I found that just looking the wrong way would land me in a bodybag. The lush, rolling jungle landscape provides many more hiding spots for campers, and using your surroundings wisely can easily make the difference in a successful assault. I appreciated the addition of music from the era – it certainly added a kind of movie-like quality to the action – but the doppler effects that the game uses to carry the sounds outside the vehicles is a bit jarring. Yet when you look up and see a group of Hueys lazily hovering over the jungle canopy, or a patrol boat zooming down a waterway blasting the shoreline while its loudspeakers blare “Born to be Wild”, for a second you feel like you have stepped into one of those movies. And then enemy gunfire breaks the trance, you hit the deck, and the game continues. Battlefield Vietnam is not a mod, it is undeniably a well crafted game.

Tony has an interesting social examination of the game – I would recommend reading it – but I’ve experienced none of the more lowly comments or behaviors from fellow players so far. There are some team and weapon balancing issues, but I found for the most part the game was extremely playable aside from the minor technical issues. This whole experience has prompted me to put a finger on something that has been prodding the back of my mind about the industry’s fixation on ultra-realistic war simulators, that I eventually plan on putting into words. For now, though, I walk through the jungle with eyes on the back of my head, a full clip, and always, always clean socks.