Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Among these undecideds would be, frankly, me. I sure don't want four more years of Bush, if only because I don't look forward to scrolling past four more years of anti-Bush tirades on my favorite Web magazines. Then again, I'm sure not convinced Kerry's considerable virtues as a face-saving internationalist are justification enough to switch pugilists in mid-swing. Whom to opt for, the one who scares the hell out of everybody, or the one who'd probably wind up giving the terrorist-enabling, student-mauling mullahs in Tehran and the nuclear-powered midget back East their first good night's sleep in a long time? The jackass you know, or the jackass you know little of? (Except, of course, that the opposing jackass served on the spear tip of American foreign policy.)
To see if playing "Battlefield Vietnam" would push me more firmly into Kerry's camp, I decided to review the game with that question right on the table. To go the whole way, I opted to be John Kerry, when I played it. "LtJohn Kerry" was the username I selected, when I fought online. I would be LtJohn Kerry when I commanded a PBR attack boat in the Mekong Delta, or fought as a grunt in the mean streets of Quang Tri, or played a Green Beret commando wading through the jungle heat of Lang Vei. For good measure, I even enlisted an actual Green Beret, to give LtJohn Kerry expert advice on his journey into the heart of high-poly darkness.
As in "Battlefield 1942," victory in "Vietnam" is determined not by body count, or by accomplishing a series of mission objectives. Winning the peace in Southeast Asia is all about holding territory. Each map in the game has a preset number of control points, and each side begins the battle holding a designated number of them. (Everything from a small jungle base camp, to a barbwire-lined airstrip.) The meta strategy is to move with your team (up to 25 players on each side) into the enemy control points and hold them, while also protecting your own. To get to these, you double-time it on foot and scooter, by jeep and tank, by troop transport chopper and parachute drop, or much like John Kerry, via fast patrol boats, moving up the Delta. To coordinate your team's movements, the game comes with an online chat system. Despite this, multiplayer games almost always devolve into free-fire chaos, from the start, quickly becoming a Cuisinart of brutality where gamers keep killing and dying and respawning to kill and die some more. And the chat function is used for little more than incoherent smack talk -- at least when you're playing as the future presidential candidate from Massachusetts.
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LtJohn Kerry arms himself with an M-16 and several grenades, and joins his comrades on the rolling hills of Khe San.
LtJohn Kerry: "I, John Kerry, will lead our army on the speartip of US foreign policy, to victory!"
Someone from the Vietcong side sardonically fires back with: "just what vietnam needs-- a democrat"
Kerry emerges over the hill, and kills the Vietcong who is about to destroy an oncoming APC with a rocket launcher. Meanwhile, another VC contradicts his own teammate: "john kerry all the way bush is a cockmunching warmonger"
Later on, LtJohn Kerry is trying to maneuver his PBR patrol boat away from the shore, but he keeps crashing the craft into the dock. Even when he isn't speaking, some of his fellow teammates are annoyed to see LtJohn Kerry's name listed on their side.
"boooo on john kerry," someone called Lt. Cowboy Boo types. "vote GB"
LtJohn Kerry protests: "but I fought in Nam!"
Lt. Cowboy Boo: "so what? he wants nato to have discretion over our troops"
Another U.S. teammate chimes in, with a sudden realization: "wasn't john kerry in vietnam?"
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