Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Review

 

You are back in the shoes of Matt Baker and are surrounded by familiar faces from the previous titles as the game launches with a “Previously, on Brothers in Arms…” intro. This does seem kind of cheesy at first, but for people like me who haven’t got to play through the first two games, it was intended to be quite helpful. The main problem I had is that it didn’t go into enough detail and so through the game, there were references to the previous events that I simply didn’t understand. It assumes that you have played the previous games and know the significance of certain objects and characters as the game goes on and more of the story is unravelled and for me, this was the campaign’s biggest weakness. Of course, if you have played all the BIA games, you should be fine with it though a little more explanation would have been nice. Anyway, back to the story. The game starts with a pretty hefty cinematic which re-introduces a lot of the characters and sets the backdrop to the mission you are about to embark on. This mission is Operation Market garden and as many of you history boffins will know, this was an operation which was ultimately a failure, and this taps in to the main theme of Hell’s highway, and that is the idea of loss.

 

Throughout the game you are experiencing loss in a number of ways. Your men get killed in battle, your squad loses its faith in you and you eventually start to lose your mind. In order to portray these ideas effectively Gearbox have put in a lot of in-game cut scenes between missions and checkpoints to try and emphasise the emotion that should arise when watching a friend die in the field, many of these are also narrated by Baker himself, similar to the styles of many war films you will have seen, of course this means it suffers from a hell of a lot of war time clichés, but it is still good fun. You will also end up experiencing flashbacks and visions of past events that come back to haunt you though these tend to occur when you aren’t in the heat of battle, which is helpful. As the story progresses you do feel like you have come to know your men better as you exchange chatter while playing, and observe interactions in the cut scenes and thankfully, the game play supports the idea of the importance of you squad.

 

If you have played any of the previous games, you will know how the squad system works, and well, it really hasn’t changed at all. This is a good thing, because it was the real trademark feature of the series and it is what separates it from the other games in the genre. I’m glad to report that using this system is still as fun and as satisfying as it ever was and at times you will end up simply sitting back and watching the battle take place as your squads flank, suppress and kill your enemy without you even moving from cover. The cover system is a new mechanic which helps you further as when you enter cover you now go into a 3^rd person view and so you get a better view of the battlefield in front of you. Because of this, you can command your squads much easier from safety and move around the battlefield with greater ease and protection. A new cover system means a new health system, and it works very similarly to many other shooters out there, but with a twist. It is basically a regenerating health system, you get hurt, you go into cover, you regenerate, simple as that, the only difference is that when you leave cover in a fight, regardless of whether you are actually being shot, your screen will start to turn red, this is indicating that you are in trouble, and so you either need to find cover quickly, or use your guns, or your squads to suppress the enemy so they can’t shoot as effectively.

 

The only down side that I could find to the squad system was that you will find yourself deploying the same tactics in almost every fight. As Gearbox like to call it, the four F’s, Find them, Fix them, Flank them, Finish them (I think that’s right…) and while this idea is all good for the first few missions, it can get quite old and repetitive. However, they have made a few improvements to help you along the way. In the previous games, one thing I found annoying was the fact that it was just so damn hard to actually shoot someone yourself. Thankfully, it is no longer the case and so if you get bored of using your squads to do all the work, you can use them as a suppressing force and you can focus more on moving around and tackling the enemy yourself provided you are careful, as it is now easier to actually shoot people. Also, if you get a good grenade throw or a long-range headshot, it will zoom in to a slow motion camera shot of the poor sod’s head exploding or limbs flying off, it is a cool little feature that brings home the real horror of war, but also provides a few “hell yeah!” moments in the heat of battle.

 

This new cinematic gore system is helped by the fact that the series has come a long way graphically too. Now on the Unreal 3 engine, you are provided with some fairly decent visuals to go along with the experience. While on the whole I was happy with the graphics, there were some areas that could have had some improvements. First off, there were a few cases where low resolution textures would appear next to high resolution ones which looked really odd. Also, as the draw distance grew on the larger environments, the graphical flare dropped severely as objects disappear and only load when you get within fairly close proximity of them. That said, it did run really well for me and I had no technical issues whatsoever which is always a high point. The environments were quite varied too, even though many fights took place in fields and farms, there were some good urban maps as well as an abandoned hospital and bombed out city at night. Also, later into the game you fight through a town in the dark when it is raining and it is here that you really get to see the game at its prettiest. To be honest though, I was still a little disappointed by the graphics simply because this game has been in development for ages now, I was kind of hoping for a bit better though maybe that’s just the Crysis fan within me talking, because it really didn’t look bad. The competent visuals are at least backed up by some strong audio. The guns sound authentic, grenades leave a convincing ring in your ears after exploding and the voice acting is generally at a high standard which helps the cut scenes a lot.

 

The game also comes with a multiplayer component, but it is blatantly an oversight and a last minute addition as there is one game mode similar to a conquest style match and the maps are generic and poorly designed. They also lack the detail required to be interesting and take a hit on the graphical side which is a shame. However, who is going to buy this game for the multiplayer? I would have been fine with it if there was no multiplayer, but despite the lazy map designs, it still holds the potential to be fun and I will admit that I have had some good games already online, so it really doesn’t detract from the experience, but if you want an online shooter, there are much better options out there.

 

To summarise, Hell’s highway does a fantastic job of presenting an interesting and involving story in an over-used time period. World War 2 may have been done to death, but Brothers in Arms is still a series which is a blast to play and while there are still a few kinks that need working out, there is no reason for a fan of the series to leave this game out of their collection.

 

Final Verdict: Great singleplayer, poor multiplayer, but the fact that it has multiplayer is a bonus in itself. Any fan of the series will enjoy it, and any shooter fans wanting something slightly different should give it a go too.