Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 review

You’re certainly spoiled for choice when it comes to World War II first-person-shooters. However each major franchise tries to bring something new to the table to tempt you away from your hard earned games-spending-cash. Medal of Honor tried to tempt you with scripting and atmosphere, while Call of Duty tried to inject its battles with an epic scale.

Brothers in Arms brings an element of strategy to the genre and in itself is very atmospheric. Its also to my mind one of the most promising WWII shooters to come along in a while, and definitely a strong contender of being the best on the Xbox.

While Brothers in Arms plays for the most part like any normal first person shooter, with the usual comfortable control layout that every successful title since Halo has adopted, there are several noticeable differences. These serve to both enhance and spoil the game in the following ways.

Taking Aim

In an attempt to inject the game with a bit more realism, your soldier is certainly more mortal than usual. You are not a super soldier, and being gung-ho in the face of the enemy is likely to end with you staring up at the sky. To aid this realism, there is no crosshair to show you where you are shooting (although, if you aren’t tough enough you can turn it on via the menu) and to shoot well you need to sight down the weapon. This is a implemented brilliantly, and really feels like you are sighting down your gun. You can still move with aiming, but slower than normal. This means that instead of adopting the usual run and gun tactics, you will tend to move from cover to cover and take more considered aim.

Armchair officer

Then there is the excellently realised strategy element. You can have several fire teams that you can command with a simple yet effective command system. Simply hold down the left trigger and a context sensitive cursor pops up to allow you to have a team suppress or assault some enemies, or to have them move to any given spot. Far from being entirely dependent on your input, your teams have capable AI and will carry out your orders in the most life preserving way possible. So left to their own devices they will capably look after themselves. You usually have an assault team and a support team, but in a few missions you are given a tank to command.

Soldiers of the Reich

Enemies have an indicator over their heads to show you what they are currently doing. This is red if they are unopposed, and turn grey as they become pinned down by fire. The basic strategy is to keep them pinned down, while you or your fire team flank them and take them out. This remarkably simple strategy never feels old and trying to apply it to each different battle can give you an enormous sense of satisfaction.

There is the option to zoom out for a bird’s eye situational view, but I found myself hardly ever using this, and to me it felt like a bit of a cheat. And of course this is where all these additions spoil the game. The massive red indicators over the heads of your enemies will give away their positions so that you are never surprised by their attacks. It also ruins the atmosphere initially although soon enough you find yourself not noticing them. You can turn them off, but this makes the game even harder. And Brothers in Arms can be punishing in its difficulty. Even on Easy you will find yourself being killed fairly often, and as you move up the difficulty levels you will need all the nerves, and indeed patience to make it through. This is made worse by the fact that each time you die, you have to wait for the level to reload.

Scenes of Normandy

As far as bringing the Normandy into your living room, Brothers in Arms does a capable job indeed. The graphics are excellent, with some minor issues. It’s a shame that the foliage doesn’t look great close up, as you spend some time crouching down behind it. The levels are supposed to be based on authentic parts of Normandy and I’ve no reason to doubt the developer’s claims. Certainly they don’t feel contrived and some of them are remarkably atmospheric. Every now and then they offer up a level that is a change of pace to keep you on your toes. A stand-out for me was a mist enshrouded assault on German held farmhouse, where instead of your normal cautious assault, you charged headlong through the mist shooting at the enemy as you stumbled across them in the fog. It was thrilling.

The sound is equally brilliant, with fantastic surround sound throughout. Your allies shout and curse from all around you as the battle rages, and bullets zing past your head. The ground shakes with the rumble of approaching tanks, and always in the distance far off fighting can be heard. It's among the best use of surround sound that I have yet encountered on the Xbox, and its made all the more engaging for the lack of music. The martial sounding music only really plays during loading.

There is, of course, some support for Xbox Live, that offers up the same squad-based game play that you follow in the single player campaign. With up to 4 players commanding squads you face off on objective based maps to try and achieve your goals. These are the usual sort of objectives in these games and mostly involve either blowing something up, or trying not to let something be blown up. I had no trouble finding games and enjoyed the ones I had greatly. This is certainly a welcome addition to add longevity to the game, but sadly doesn’t seem to be as popular on Xbox live as some of the other major titles (probably because of the relatively small number of players).

I’d heartily recommend Brothers in Arms to anybody as a great game, and to fans of the genre as an unmissable addition to your collection. Everything that has been put into the game has been crafted with a great deal of care and attention to detail. The game is involving and challenging, at times incredibly atmospheric and will certainly be one of the greatest, if not the best, World War II game on this generation of Xbox.