Hell Let Loose: Vietnam Hands-On Preview: An Immersive Jungle Rush

The year is 1965. After years of tacit involvement in Indochina, American President Lyndon B. Johnson committed 3500 ground troops to support the Republic of Vietnam. What was then America's longest war had begun in earnest.

Military conflicts as a whole are fairly horrible affairs, but the Vietnam War has earned a complicated reputation for its brutality and morbid stylishness.

Helicopters raining fire on a village are accompanied by Wagner, months spent in the jungle in dire conditions evolve into becoming ghosts haunting GI patrols, Fortunate Son blasts from every set of speakers in reach, and when it doesn't, it's because someone is screaming 'Good morning Vietnam' at the top of their lungs.

You'd think this mix of horror and vibes would be a breeding ground for great games, but most of the attempts either miss the mark or die early.

After establishing dominance over the World War 2 genre, Expression Games is the latest studio to try to get Vietnam right. If my time with Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is anything to go by, we are very much back.

Welcome to the Jungle

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was officially unveiled in August 2025, and I'll confess that my feelings were a mix of excitement and apprehension.

Vietnam isn't an easy war to get right, and it's been nine years since the last game to (kind of) hit the mark with Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, before development was abandoned without fulfilling all milestones. That didn't stop me from sinking north of 500 hours into that game.

If to be pedantic, we haven't really had a comprehensive Vietnam War shooter since the days of the Vietcong series, a whole two decades ago.

It was also difficult to visualize how the Hell Let Loose foundations would translate into the game. As the United States and its allies learned the hard way, the Vietnam War was a completely different animal from the large, set-piece battles fought in World War 2.

Those worries melted away soon after the first round started, when I shouldered The Pig for the first time and went to town.

Get Some!

After a quick tutorial, I deployed as part of a US Army unit assaulting the Thanh Hóa bridge. Put a pin on that, we'll get back to it later. I picked the machine gunner role, equipped with the M60 machine gun and draped with ammo belts over my shoulder.

The first thing that stuck out to me, compared to the original Hell Let Loose, is how much better the map design is. For lack of a better term, most of the World War 2 maps are a bit too 'square'. This leaves a lot of room for tactical inventiveness, but also means a lot of the time the frontlines feel sparse, and rounds feel too chaotic unless most squads are miraculously led by a competent player.

In contrast, the virtual battle for Thahn Hóa bridge had a clear flow. The Nam Ma river cut the map vertically, with a few islets and fishing hamlets offering cover, and the bridge sectioned it horizontally. You were never technically out of range from players firing across the river, but the foliage and structures did a good job at making mobility viable so long as you didn't rush out in the open.

Unfortunately for a lot of those participating in the playtest, that's exactly what they did. For the majority of this first round, where we got comprehensively steamrolled by an aggressive North Vietnamese force, I lay prone next to my squad, putting down fire from my M60.

It netted me a mere six kills, but inconvenienced a whole other bunch of people who didn't die but were sent running up into the forest as bullets kicked up earth near them. Get some, baby!

For the massive battles taking place, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam gets the ambience just right. The color grading helps you feel the tropical heat, the sounds of the forest are present but not overwhelming, and the guns and explosions are delightfully loud.

The gunplay feels like an evolved version of the (already great) Hell Let Loose system, and thanks to the clever map design, engagements feel more deliberate.

In other words, most of the time you get shot, you have a decent idea of where it was from, instead of having to chase pixels because the frontlines have disappeared two minutes into the game. Yes, I still have hangups over deaths at Hürtgen Forest, how could you tell?

Healing Wounds

Following our defeat, we swapped teams. As fate would have it, I ended up with the same squad leader (Jesse, if you're reading this, you rock), this time as a medic.

Armed with a Type 56, syrettes, and a disregard for personal safety, we rushed to stop the American invaders from capturing the beautifully recreated Thanh Hóa bridge. On that note, we need to talk about historical concessions.

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam takes a few creative liberties, but all of them are grounded in historical realities. This map is a good example of it.

If you take a glance at the map of Vietnam, the bridge in question is located deep into what was then North Vietnam. American forces never came anywhere close to Thanh Hóa, and outside of secret squirrel business by MACV-SOG, there was no ground combat into the North (in part due to fears that an invasion would trigger Chinese and/or Soviet intervention and a repeat of Korea).

Now, this particular bridge north of Thanh Hóa was likely the most fortified place in the world at the time, and it was the stage of epic air battles as American forces tried to knock it down (an objective that would only be reached in 1972). Expression Games chose to model the bridge as a map due to its iconic status, and it's the kind of concession that is easy to accept.

Similarly, for gameplay reasons, the North Vietnamese in the game get to call in air support as a way to even the playing field. The Il-28 jet bombers are a beautiful sight as they streak over the battlefield, but in real life, they watched the war from the sidelines until the US withdrawal.

The faction dynamics between the US and North Vietnam remain asymmetric, but it is still clear that these are two conventional armies trading blows, something Hell Let Loose has perfected since its release.

Go Home, GI

In our bid to defend the bridge, our squad was obliterated while riding a gunboat into battle. We were harassed by a flight of two helicopters and their gunners until our RPG-2 gunners brought both of them down in quick succession, and I made plenty of mad dashes under fire to pick up downed comrades.

The adrenaline rush was such that, by the time we were told the playtest was ending soon, I groaned like a child being told it's time to go home from the arcade.

My time with Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was short, and I am going through post-testing blues. Begrudgingly, I'll have to wait while Expression Games finishes this one up, but after this week, I can tell you that the wait will have been well worth it. Vietnam War gaming is finally back on the menu.