| Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 review |
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Ever since EA's groundbreaking PSOne first-person shooter Medal of Honor, the entire world and his dog has wanted a piece of a virtual Second World War, but it can be argued that only Activision and Ubisoft have managed to carve franchises to match the following EA have built.
Developed by Gearbox Software, Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 is based on the real-life exploits of the 101st Airborne as they drop into Normandy, France on D-Day with the simple objective of securing the strategic town of Carentan for the Allied invasion. Although names and details of the division have been changed for both legal and dramatic details, the missions that the player follows throughout D-Day and the week that follows were all verified to have happened.
With that in mind, the attention to detail that Brothers In Arms offers is outstanding. Although the various stages are short and not overly open, every element in each of them is overwhelmingly accurate to the actual location and built as closely to its wartime condition as possible. With the environments built up from actual photos, maps and eyewitness accounts Brothers In Arms paints one of the most richly detailed pictures of wartime France. There are visible points of cover and the scenery varies dramatically whether it’s the backdrop for an urban skirmish or the verdure of heavy foliage to be crept through - it can be quite bewildering at times when trying to break through a well-defended German outpost, which is no doubt the feeling that Gearbox were trying to create.
Likewise, the atmosphere draws the player in exceptionally. The characters grow emotionally throughout the game’s chapters and the conversations before and after missions feel realistic – there is an instinctive urge to fight off the enemy and protect your teammates. The audio is spot on – rifles and machine guns sound clunky whilst the bullets whiz through the air on a very sharp and crisp note. At the other end of the scale, mortar explosions are near-deafening and tanks rumble through the landscape striking fear into the heart of the player. The sense of having nothing more to go on than your mission objectives gives the impression that you’re lost behind enemy lines with only the remote hope of reinforcements coming to your aid.
It is, therefore, a shame that for all of the work in creating an accurate and atmospheric WWII shooter the engine that pushes the visuals lacks the power to do the game justice. The texturing isn’t of significant quality; most of it looks very low resolution and this is particularly noticeable on buildings, walls and hedges. The frame rate also stutters and very rarely remains stable, which can, from time to time, wreck havoc with your aim – already lacking precision due to the unsophisticated weaponry of the time.
The gameplay mechanic is built on a single idea - suppress and flank. As the commander of the squad, it is the player's job to order his grunts into position, have them barrage the enemy with a hail of gunfire, and to send them in to clear out the forces of National Socialism. All of this is provided by a very simple system of pointing the reticule to the location that you wish your officers to either move to or fire at and flick the appropriate button. The troops have enough intelligence to keep low and take cover accordingly and will follow orders to the letter for better or for worse, so it is up to the player to put them to good use – for example, a single unit will struggle to suppress a number of foes leaving your flanking units exposed to sudden retribution. Your available soldiers in each mission are very limited, so it’s crucial to progress slowly but safely.
Unfortunately, this system is quite narrow-minded. Although the types of enemies vary from regular infantry to machine-gun nests and armoured vehicles, each type can be approached in exactly the same way. Once the ideal way of approaching the foes is discovered, it can be repeated throughout the game. Increasing the difficulty doesn’t help this, as the enemies do not offer any kind of counter resistance to an attack. A circle that turns from red to grey displays the level of suppression. Once they are fully suppressed (grey), they will not attempt to break away or cause a diversion, they simply resign themselves to their fate.
Brothers In Arms isn’t a bad game by any means. It features a lot of nice concepts and marks out its own territory rather than slipping into a carbon copy of the next first-person shooter, and the immersion that the atmosphere and accuracy provide certainly pulls you further into the game than most other titles of its ilk. It’s disappointing that a bad engine and rushed execution detract from the overall experience, leaving it with nothing really remarkable.
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System: Microsoft Xbox
Genre: First Person Shooter
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: Ubisoft
Players: 1-4
Version: European
Reviewed: Sep 2005
Writer: Rob Bowker
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Pros:
- Attention to detail is very striking
- Great atmosphere
- Suppress and flank idea is clever...
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Cons:
- ...which is sadly repetitive in practice
- Scrappy graphics engine
- AI isn't dynamic enough
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Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 Video: 14.6MB
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