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

Intro
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is the third game in the series from Gearbox Software. This development team got started with expansions to the original Half-Life games before settling into years of porting various games from console to PC and PC to console. Eventually the development studio would get its break with Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, the first of the Brothers in Arms games.

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 became successful due to a focus on strategy and tactics rather than straight up shooting for a FPS. It also didn’t hurt that it spent a lot of time developing its characters to give the game a “Band of Brothers”-like feel.

The sequel, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood was released but not to the same acclaim that the first one garnered. First of all, while the original game was released in March 2005, the sequel was released in October 2005 – a mere 7 months after the first game. Things didn’t help much either when the sequel felt more like an expansion to the first rather than a full blown sequel and was charged the heftier sequel price. Based on the timing, Gearbox Software probably kept working on the first game with an arbitrary point to separate the first from the second – angering fans.

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway was finally released in September 2008, about three years after the second game. It continues the storyline, but was delayed several times and probably suffered a reduced number of sales because of it. Originally scheduled to be released in Fall of 2007, it kept getting pushed back until it finally hit in Fall of 2008. What was kind of crazy was that the game went on sale for $20 at nearly every retailer on Black Friday, leading to believe that it totally bombed. It actually didn’t do too terribly – domestic sales on the 360 have almost hit half a million and domestic sales on the PS3 have almost hit a quarter million to date.

Gotcha. Wait, who is who again? Who said what? Huh?

Storyline and Premise
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway continues the storyline of a dozen or so characters under the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The player resumes the role of Staff Sergeant Matt Baker during World War II’s Operation Market Garden, a plan for the Allies to drop two American and one British division behind German lines in Holland. These Allied paratroopers were supposed to secure the towns and bridges, and then follow a highway to cut into the German lines and end the war. In this game, Baker’s platoon in the 101st Airborne Division is tasked with assaulting, securing, and then defending the town of Eindhoven and its surrounding regions across ten levels.

During and between each level, there are various cutscenes of the members of Baker’s platoon interacting with each other: Staff Sergeants, Corporals, Privates, etc. The first half of the game is very confusing in terms of who is who if you have not played the game before, but by the second half the game tends to focus on only a few of the dozen characters originally introduced. This makes it possible to enjoy a little bit of the storyline in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway if you haven’t played the first two games, but you will not get the full storyline experience otherwise.

Historically, Operation Market Garden did not go according to plan at all. The Germans were underestimated in this plan, so the dropped paratroopers were pretty much pinned down and stretched all along a road that came to be known as “Hell’s Highway” since so many suffered and died on that road. The Allies, finally realizing that they could not go through with the plan, pulled out and left 8,000 British paratroopers behind to the Germans as they decided to figure out a new plan. The game sort of doesn’t really have an ending – if anything it hints about an inevitable sequel.

Like Rainbow Six Vegas, you will motion with your hand when you give commands to your squads.

Gameplay Mechanics
General combat
Like any other WWII FPS game, you will be able to use weapons from that time period. You spawn with two different rifles per level, but are able to replace either of them at any time with any that dropped by enemies (in my case, I like to pick up the STG-44). There are pre-designated ammo points in the game, found in the background as parachuted ammo crates so you honestly don’t ever really run out of any weapons you choose to work with. Unlike previous Brothers in Arms games, in this one your health regenerates when you are not taking damage.

There are also a couple levels where you drive a tank. No real complaints there as it works fine for the most part.

Squad Control
The biggest difference between this game and other shooters is that as the commanding officer, you are given other squads of three men each to control in real time. In the first eight levels, you are given two squads, and in the last two you are given three squads – for a total of nine men under your control. Each squad has its own specialty, such as the Assault squad with shorter ranged automatic weapons, and the Bazooka squad where one of the three men carries a bazooka (useful for taking out fortified emplacements).

While it is entirely possible to go through the game by just yourself using traditional FPS duck and cover conservative style play, the squads make the game a lot easier. For those that have played the Rainbow Six Vegas games, the squads control very similar to your teammates in Rainbow Six Vegas. You can tell them where exactly to go and they will set up defensively in that area, and when to start firing upon the enemy as well as which specific enemy. Being able to manage other squads allows you to have them spread out and trap enemies behind cover, making it easier for you to progress.

What’s also a little disappointing about the game is when squad members get injured/killed. Sometimes you’ll get an update that a particular squad member has been injured. You can go over to him and see him lying there, but clearly alive, yet you can’t do anything whatsoever. No medic or anything – apparently you’re supposed to just leave him. Why? Because at the next checkpoint, any members of your squad that were killed or injured are miraculously respawned and back in the squads ready to fight again. I realize that they can’t have anyone die off if they want to, for example, have a particular soldier killed in a cutscene, but to just have them respawn like that? Seriously? There was no better idea than that?

The Cover System
The cover system is also something that is done a little bit differently in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. This game takes a slightly more realistic approach to combat: allies and enemies always try to take cover behind something before engaging instead of just running down a hall at you (sort of similar to Gears of War). Once you encounter an enemy that takes cover, a small red circle will appear over them. If the circle is red, the enemy will be more exposed as they continually fire upon you and your squads. If you shoot or one of your squads fires upon that enemy enough, the circle will slowly change to gray. Once it fully turns gray, the enemy will be in a suppressed state where they do minimal firing but are also less exposed. This makes it easier for you and your squads to move around and is perhaps the only time recommended to do so.

Personally, I found the cover system to work out pretty well, as I would often times have each of my two squads pinning down the enemy squads while I circled around and flanked them from behind for easy kills. But what annoyed me about the game was that practically the whole game was like that. Each section of a map entailed enemy troops setting up behind some sort of cover – whether we were in a house, on a field, in the river, etc. It got to the point where I became bored since there was nothing new to be offered in terms of gameplay as I had my squads pin down enemies while I walked around and flanked them.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of aiming down the iron sights for practically every weapon. What’s interesting is that if you are in cover and you shoot from cover, you zoom in but don’t use the iron sights – unlike when you’re just walking around. That made it so I reverted to using cover a lot whenever I played, just because it was so much easier to hit enemies when most of the screen isn’t blocked by the rest of my rifle.

Action Camera
The Action Camera is not necessarily a gameplay mechanic as much as it is a feature in the game. Basically, if you are able to headshot an enemy or blow up a grenade around one, the game will automatically slow down as you watch him get shot/exploded and collapse to the floor. I guess in a sense it’s supposed to be a reward for performing a skillful maneuver.

Multiplayer
While there is multiplayer in the game, it was always empty whenever I tried to look for a game. Not one ranked or unranked game anywhere. I guess that means it’s pretty bad.

The Bazooka Squad is handy for taking out guys set up in houses.

Achievement System
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is a short game. While there are the basic Achievements for simply beating levels and doing gameplay related Achievements that should come naturally, Gearbox Software decided to artificially lengthen the game by adding in Achievements for finding Recon spots and Kilroys. The Recon spots aren’t bad because they are actually highlighted on your map so you can find them easily and each one has historical significance that the player can read about if desired. Kilroys are basically little graffiti doodles that the player can find in each level as collectables. There are three hidden away in each level, and they can be drawn on walls, doors, etc. They’re a pretty stupid waste of time, to be honest.

One nice thing about the Achievement design is that even though there are some for multiplayer, none of them have any points. While this isn’t exactly as good as there being no multiplayer Achievements at all, it’s sort of a nice middle ground. I don’t even know what is the point of some of them, as one multiplayer Achievement revolves around you inviting a friend to play it online with you.

I don’t understand what kind of decision-making was made with some of these Achievements. There’s two different difficulty settings in the game, and a third one that gets unlocked when you beat it. Unfortunately, there’s no Achievement related towards beating the game at any difficulty. On top of that, there are several cheat codes that can be used for the game via an in-game input screen. Worst of all, these cheat codes do not affect Achievements. SO basically, Gearbox Software decided they didn’t care to challenge the playerbase at all in what they could earn.

Instead of adding difficulty related Achievements to the game, Gearbox Software decided to incorporate some Achievements that are the stupidest ones I’ve ever seen: logging into the game. There are Achievements for turning on the game once a day for seven days, once a day for 100 days, once a week for 3 months, and once on September 17th. I can’t believe they thought logging in Achievements was a good idea – and whoever thought assigning 225 points to these idiotic Achievements should be fired. Your game is ok, but if you honestly think anyone would want to play it for 100 days you guys must think your game is a lot better than it is.

If I played the earlier games, maybe this scene would have been more poignant.

Final Thoughts
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway was a disappointment to me. I expected so much after hearing how respected the Brothers in Arms series was and that Gearbox Software was a possible candidate for Halo 4. Well, combine their mediocre effort with Hell’s Highway and the poorly functioning Samba De Amigo port they did on the Wii and I’ll say that Gearbox Software is no longer a development studio that I have as much faith in.

I give the game a C. It was a decent shooter with some innovative new tactical squad-based gameplay, but I would have liked a lot more out of it. For starters, perhaps doubling the number of the game’s levels so I wasn’t done in maybe 5 hours. Secondly, a more coherent recap of everything that had transpired in the previous games would have done wonders. Then I could understand what was going on in Hell’s Highway instead of not caring. I don’t think it’s too much to ask either, since this third installment is on a completely different system than its predecessors. (Look at Shenmue II for the Xbox – it came with a feature length movie that told you everything that transpired in Shenmue on the Dreamcast in case you didn’t have a Dreamcast to play the first one.) And finally, maybe if multiplayer was designed and implemented better, people would actually play it. Those that are long term Brothers in Arms fans will probably get more out if it though, but there’s just no denying that the game is short, and multiplayer is non-existent. Most of the levels are not that enjoyable either – the last level is great, but why weren’t the earlier levels of the same scope?

At its current $40 price, I could not recommend it at all to those of you that are completely new to the series. Even when I bought it for $20, I still didn’t feel I got much value out of the game. It was a mediocre experience that is not really worth checking out unless you love WWII and have already gone through all of the other WWII Call of Duty games on the 360: Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, and Call of Duty: World at War. All of them are better and still have people playing multiplayer.

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.

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.

Storyline
I had heard that Brothers in Arms was sort of like Band of Brothers in that it focused a lot on the characters so you would feel more attached to them. At least, moreso than any other typical video game although I did get semi-attached to Captain Price in Call of Duty 4′s single player. Well, I didn’t get attached to anyone because it looks like this game really is a continuiation of the first two. Having never played the first two games, I had no idea who all of the characters were. There’d be lengthy cutscenes of characters talking or arguing, and they were just meaningless for me since I didn’t know who they even were. So, if you’re expecting a Band of Brothers style attachment to the characters, don’t start with this third game in the series. Otherwise, it’ll be like starting Band of Brothers from disc 5 or something. Then you wouldn’t know how awesome Lt. Winters is!

Gameplay
The first thing I noticed about the gameplay was that it had sort of a Real-Time-Strategy vibe to it. Instead of just controlling one character and maybe some teammates like in Rainbow Six Vegas, you’re controlling a couple of 3-man squads. You control them similarly to Rainbow Six Vegas – telling one squad to hold in one location and another squad to hold in another location. It’s interesting because you can set it up so you have one squad pinning down the enemy while the other squad is commanded to circle around and flank that same enemy.

While it’s somewhat of a unique element to shooters since it makes it a bit more tactical, the problem is that you’re only limited to two squads at most, simplifying the entire process. In an RTS game you’re on a large field and you have various troop types that you can command to set up in various areas. In this one you basically have two troop types – an assault group and a heavy group (machine gun or bazooka) that primarily play the same. Plus, it’s on a pretty small area so really all you’re doing is trying to get your two squads to fan out so that you’re hitting the enemy from two angles. I honestly liked the direction that the squad management was heading in, but it wasn’t strategic enough. But then again, perhaps if you had to control more than two squads the game would have to move towards a bird’s eye view and suddenly you’d be playing Company of Heroes.

There are definite problems with the squad system though. First of all, you don’t even need them. Sometimes I just have the squads stay back and I blast through everything myself. Second of all, it’s not realistic. Squad members can be shot and supposedly killed (by the end of a section you may be down to 1 guy left from a 3-man squad), but once the next section starts, all those guys that were killed are back again in the full squad. If this game was supposed to evoke some emotional response from me, bringing guys back to life a few minutes after they’re killed isn’t exactly doing that. So yeah, it’s an interesting concept – being able to manage a couple squads, but I can’t help but feel it wasn’t that deep or consequential. And if it’s not consequential, it doesn’t add much to the gameplay.

Parting Impressions
Seems like a quick game. I’m already about half way through, and it’s only been maybe 3 hours or so. I don’t expect to spend much time in the multiplayer, if at all. The game tries some interesting things, but it doesn’t do them well enough to be worth your time. Plus, the game’s not that exciting for some reason. It’s just setpiece after setpiece of waves of enemies where everyone is pinned down and trading fire. I also didn’t like that even though you talk a lot to command your squads, your guy’s mouth doesn’t move at all! Probably not worth buying for those that haven’t been following the series already. You’ll end up like me – dropped into a world with maybe over a dozen characters you’ve never even heard of and are supposed to care about and be a bit underwhelmed by the gameplay.

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?!