Leveling Down

In Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, most of your time will be behind cover.

I finished this game a little while back but never got around to reviewing it until now. To be honest, that’s not exactly a good sign as it means the game didn’t evoke enough feeling out of me (positive or negative) to want to write about it. Still, finally managed to crank it out. The game’s squad-based management system gives it a little something unique in the FPS category, but its general lack of polish and reliance on having played the first two to understand this game’s story hurt it. At least, for me it did as I had no idea who half the characters were. It doesn’t deliver enough in this day and age for a FPS shooter – especially a WWII one.

Good
- innovative squad-based management
- overhead map with good amount of information
- sort of has that Band of Brothers vibe

Bad
- short and lacks polish (talking without lips moving? come on!)
- confusing story and characters if you have never played earlier games
- multiplayer is dead

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Mirror’s Edge – getting closer and closer to the 1000. The question at this point is whether I want to get the full 3 stars on all 23 time trials (69 total) or just quit after the 50 required for the Achievement…

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway – pretty short game and the storyline is picking up a bit in the second half of the game. I should have it done by this weekend.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – at first I was pretty annoyed that the game was co-op (because I’d be playing with an AI controlled partner the whole campaign) but then my friend JPKewl got it so now I’m enjoying it a little more now that we can play all the missions together. We’re kind of slowly going through it whenever we both have time to play.

Unreal Tournament III – ended up picking this up at Best Buy last night since it’s on sale for $20 this week. I realize that it doesn’t have matchmaking and most of the online is dead (has co-op though), but I actually miss the game since I loved Unreal Tournament and UT2K4. I figure $20 is enough to play against bots on 50 different maps if that’s what it comes down to. Wish this version still had the Assault game type though but this video sold the game to me.

Prince of Persia – will probably get started on this next as my primary single player experience once I complete Mirror’s Edge and Brothers in Arms: HH this weekend. Heard it was sort of short so I might as well get through it.

Left 4 Dead – feels a little weird going back to campaign mode after spending time on versus mode. When you’re on a good team it’s awesome but when you’re with bad/non-mic players it’s probably one of the worst gaming experiences ever.

Seems like a poignant scene – wait who are these characters again?

I picked this up over Black Friday weekend back in November when it went on sale for $20. I would have never checked it out for more than that, as it was another WWII shooter and I think I’ve already had enough of those. How many more do we need right? But, on the other hand, I had never played a Brothers in Arms game before so I figured it was worth checking out. After all, with rumors that Gearbox, the developers of the Brothers in Arms franchise, on tap to develop Halo 4, maybe I should see what they’ve been doing before they move on to the most important franchise on the Xbox.

Read on for my impressions as a Brother in Arms newbie.

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Going to change up my weekly thoughts entries to shortened gaming related thoughts I’ve had each week. Here’s this week:

Left 4 Dead – Finally got the 1000. Dang it why did one of my friends have to just get the game this week though. Why couldn’t he have gotten it weeks ago?!

Shadowrun – Cool now maybe I can get back into this for multiplayer since I no longer have another multiplayer game to play at the moment.

Mirror’s Edge – Stupid Time Trial modes. I better just suck it up and beat them. Maybe I can clear them out this weekend.

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway – I should try to beat this soon so I can get rid of it while it still has some value.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – I wanted to start it but it’s getting bumped down so I can get through Brothers in Arms first.

Call of Duty: World at War – Tried it out again recently and maybe I won’t be able to hit the first Prestige after all. It’s just not fun anymore and the fact that I’ll have to put maybe 20 more hours in to get it means I’m pushing it back in my backlog queue in hopes the desire comes back later.

Prince of Persia – Looks interesting, but dang it there’s an Achievement for collecting like 1001 gems or something in the game? Ugh I’ll get to it later then. Same reason I ended up putting Naruto: Rise of a Ninja off.

Gears of War 2 – Epic announced that they’re actually going to release a patch to balance the multiplayer game sometime this month? Too late. And why aren’t they fixing the matchmaking that still takes 10 minutes to find a game?!