- Good visuals
- Excellent and Unique Multiplayer
- Intelligent AI
- Single player campaign is extremely enjoyable and not very
linear
- Tons of extras
- Best weapons modeling of any WWII shooter
- One of the most emotional and riveting experiences you’ll ever
have with a video game
- No cooperative play
- Some noticeable hiccups in the frame rate
- Rare audio glitches
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Brothers in Arms: The Road to Hill 30
Score: 9.4 / 10
World War II (WWII) games are at the
current height of their success. Medal of Honor and Call of Duty are
some of the notable franchises worth mentioning when it comes to WWII
first person shooters. Call of Duty recently set the bar for what a WWII
shooter should play like (at least on the PC). Late last year Activision
shipped the console version of Call of Duty, which was mediocre at best.
When Ubi Soft announced Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (BIA) in May
of last year, I was skeptical of whether BIA would deliver on all its
promises like Call of Duty failed to do on the Xbox. Fortunately BIA
delivers on all its promises and ends up being one of the most riveting
and emotional gaming experiences you’ll ever have.
First and foremost it’s important to note that BIA plays differently
than Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, since BIA focuses heavily on
squad-based combat and real fire and maneuver tactics used by soldiers.
Unlike Call of Duty, BIA allows you to take command of one or two fire
teams (depending on the mission) and you can issue simple commands for
your squad to carry out. The basic premise of the game is to
find the enemy, suppress the enemy then
flank and eliminate the enemy. In order to accomplish this, the
developers created the environments in such a manner that there are
multiple pathways for approaching the opposing force, so the game
doesn’t funnel the player in a specific way.
BIA is based on a true story and chronicles the heroic battles that the
men of the 502nd Parachute Regiment (Fox Company). The entire
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story of the game takes place over a week. The game begins with you and
your soldiers parachuting into Normandy, the night before D-Day. You and
your soldiers move along the French countryside and small towns and rid
them of German control. You play the role of Matt Baker, who is a young
nervous soldier that isn’t ready to be squad leader. Before each mission
in the game, your character philosophically describes the physical and
mental constraints of war on himself and his fellow soldiers.
Where BIA really separates itself from Call of Duty and Medal of Honor
is that the game places a heavy emphasis on the personality of the
characters. The game features about twenty or so characters, each with
their own unique behavior and each react differently in combat. You
really begin to care about the well being of your soldiers.
One of the best parts of BIA is how intelligent the AI is. Your soldiers
respond quickly to your commands and carry them out effectively. Not
only that, your soldiers will do things like find the best possible
cover when being shot at or shooting at an enemy, rather than standing
in the open. The AI for the German soldiers is also extremely
impressive. The German soldiers use the same flanking maneuvers that
your own soldiers use and the enemy soldiers can usually sense when they
are most vulnerable too. In some cases if you throw a grenade at the
enemy and they are not properly suppressed, they will throw the grenade
back at you.
In some missions you’ll also get to give commands to one or two tanks as
well. The commands that you can give your soldiers are rather simple,
but effective. You can tell your soldiers to move to a certain position,
suppress the enemy with gunfire, charge an enemy or follow your lead.
You can really tell that the developers wanted to give gamers an
authentic war experience. This is best represented in how detailed the
environments are. The developers actually traveled to Normandy and
studied aerial reconnaissance photos in order to get the environments
looking right.
The environments are stunning and the character models look
frighteningly real. Everything from muzzle flashes to grenades exploding
look superb. One of the most impressive details is the saturation
effects in the game. When your character is too close to a grenade or
mortar going off, you’ll experience a shock effect. Everything around
you becomes blurry and slows down. BIA also proves to probably the most
graphic WWII shooter out there. You’ll see soldiers blown apart by
bombs, limbs blown off and other such graphic scenes. It’s
understandable to see this amount of gore since the developers were keen
to get the point across that war is hell.
There are a lot of other details the developers included such as water,
mud and blood splattering or splashing on the screen. You’ll also come
across nice little background details such as tracer fire and planes
flying overhead. The only real problem with the game’s visuals is that
there tends to be some noticeable hiccups in the frame rate during heavy
firefights, especially towards the end of the game.
The guns are modeled accurately. It’s almost impossible to kill an enemy
from long range, shooting from the hip. You’re almost always required to
aim down your weapons sights to take out the enemy. The shooting is made
more difficult by the fact that your rifle is usually in motion when
you’re looking through your sights. Depending on whether you’re crouched
or standing will also affect the accuracy of your shot.
One of the best gameplay mechanics in BIA is the situational awareness
mode. This mode freezes the action and you can survey the battlefield
and look for the best route to approach the enemy. This gives you a
great amount of information about the environment you’re operating in.
The single player campaign consists of twenty or so missions. While
you’ll probably be able to blow through the campaign in less than a
week, there is plenty of reason to go back for more. Beating different
missions of the game on varying difficulty levels unlock a number of
extras in the game. The extras in the game include reconnaissance
photos, information on American and German weaponry and many other
things.
BIA multiplayer component is one that is unique, extremely engaging and
addictive. Rather than having some vanilla style multiplayer modes like
team Deathmatch or King of the Hill, BIA multiplayer modes are all
objective based. One team plays as the Americans and the other team
plays as the Germans. Each of the multiplayer game types always has one
team on offense (usually the Americans) and one team on defense (usually
the Germans).
BIA supports online play for up to four players. Each player controls
his or her own AI controlled squad, so a majority of characters in a
game are AI controlled. Basically you give the same commands to your AI
controlled squad that you would in the single player campaign. There is
also split screen offline and online play too. Similar to Halo 2, you
and a friend can go online and compete against other human opponents.
Unlike a lot of other games in the genre, there is no in-game music. All
of the music is played during the menu screen or loading screens
in-between levels. Your own soldiers give you a lot of feedback during
firefights. Your men will yell out when they are reloading, wounded or
when a fellow soldier is dead. During the beginnings of most missions
you’ll hear your soldiers talk amongst each other. They’ll joke around,
bicker, argue or be in grief over the death of another soldier. There is
also quite a bit of profanity during the actual gameplay.
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 doesn’t disappoint on the Xbox, as it
has a compelling single player experience and impresses even more with a
unique and addictive multiplayer component. Even though BIA was
originally scheduled to release late last year, it was definitely worth
the wait as BIA is easily the best WWII first person shooter on the
Xbox.
