Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 preview

The list of WW2 games continues to grow. Two games have risen above the rest: Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, both have broken new ground in terms of realism in shooters. Still, recently the focus has shifted towards more action instead of accurate depictions of real world history.

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (BiA) may initially look a lot like the two aforementioned games, but it’s so much more…

Band of Brothers – The Game

BiA is a tactical FPS that takes place in the days surrounding D-Day. You play the role of Sergeant Matt Baker, who’s in charge of a squad of parachute troops dropped behind enemy lines. Gearbox aims to get players emotionally invovlved and Matt will reveal his feelings about the different experiences he has in the game.

The development team on BiA undertook some serious research before commencing the software coding. The team took an informative course under the supervision of Colonel John Antal and Major Pete Ptraka – who also served as consultants on the game. The lessons learned here have clearly influenced the gameplay.

There is no “I” in team

Baker’s no Rambo. He’s very dependent of his troops which you also have to manoeuvre and use to their maximum potential. The gameplay can be described as a mix between Ghost Recon and Full Spectrum Warrior dressed in WW2 uniforms.

You can also assume a birds-eye view of the action to get a better view of the situation and your options. But we still find staying on the ground to be more enjoyable, since this makes for more intense combat.

The realism shines through in the various locations in which the game takes place. They are meticulously designed and the game contains lots of documentary information, this is gradually unlocked as you progress through the game. There’s enough to fill out a couple of Discovery Channel shows.

Germans – now with AI.

One of the strengths of BiA is the AI of the enemies, especially their response to your actions. They are far from the clueless depictions of Nazi soldiers seen in many other games.

Just as you thought you outsmarted them, they catch on to your plan and regroup. Flanking is also a tactic they employ heavily, and when you replay a mission you’ll discover that the enemy’s tactic of choice will change often.

When the Germans regroup you have to issue new orders to your troops quickly or else you’ll face a lot of dead bodies in the wrong uniforms before you know what hit you.

13 soldiers trust you

The dialogue from your squad fits the situation you are currently in. If your advance is a success they get excited. However, if you fail to get them out of enemy fire, their yells will become more desperate .

This all makes you feel that your men trust you and that their lives depend on your decisions.

The game has more than 20 unique characters and more than 8000 lines of dialogue. Some are aggressive others are fearful and they all make a tremendous contribution to the atmosphere. A lot of effort clearly went into making you feel part of the story.

Battlefield doctor

You cannot quick-save in the game. Instead your game is saved at preset checkpoints. If you die, you can start from the latest checkpoint. If you wish to start from an earlier point you have to restart the map you are currently playing. This is a pretty standard approach in this kind of game.

The problem with such checkpoints is that it can be hard to advance if your unit was heavily injured at the last save. Thankfully the developer has given you the opportunity to heal your unit if you have started over from the same checkpoint three times without making any progress. A welcome aid to progression.

Computer-controlled multiplayer

The graphics in the game are nothing short of outstanding. Grass, bushes and trees all move in the wind and there are is noticeable pop-up. This, however, comes at the cost of relatively small maps that unfortunately limit the number of ways you can attack an enemy position.

Besides the 20 missions in the game, there will also be a new type of multiplayer. On the surface it looks like regular deathmatch but each player has control over three AI-driven soldiers when the round begins. They can be commanded just like their singleplayer counterparts. Up to four players can participate in such a match which makes the total number of soldiers 16.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to test the multiplayer component of the game in this preview but we look forward to getting involved in mutliplayer action in the finished game.

A new age of WW2 games?

Sometimes you play a game that convinces you of its brilliance within the first 20 minutes of play – BiA is such a game. Its strengths consist primarily of the depth of the story and the natural flow of the strategy.

This, however, could also potentially be the game’s major weaknesses, since on the surface it pretty much looks like the rest of the WW2 games on the shelves. This means that the game risks being overlooked when the unaware shopper decides which Nazi-killer FPS he’s going to take home.

Whether this will be the case we’ll know when BiA hits the stores mid-March for Xbox, PS2 and PC.

Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Julian Henlov (Progrock)