General synopsis:
Gearbox's third entry in the venerable Brothers In Arms series heads up to the front as with the first of the series for next-generation systems. Delivering on the franchise’s compelling story, unrivaled authenticity and intense squad-based action, Brothers In Arms Hell’s Highway drops you into Operation Market-Garden, the largest airborne operation of World War II. Lead Matt Baker, Joe Hartsock and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division as they fight to open "Hell's Highway" in a daring bid for a quick end to the war. The game , makes use of the new Unreal Engine 3 technology for its delivery of the war experience, with new cutting-edge gameplay features and a completely redesigned online component.
June 16, 2008:
Emotional impact on the player is a key element of Hell's Highway, as Gearbox's President Randy Pitchford has gone to lengths to point out. Instead of putting you in the shoes of some faceless, floating head packing a luger, you take on the roll of Staff Sergeant Matt Baker – a fleshed out and believable character who routinely interacts with his squad and has to deal with the emotional and psychological impact of life and death on the battlefield. To that end, the player too is positioned to actually give a damn about the result of bad tactical decisions – though, we'll need to sit down with the final game to really see if Hell's Highway plies out the tears.
The gameplay makes squad management as seamless as possible, in a Ghost Recon kind of way. You're broken down into separate squads - initially the Fire team, the Assault team or the Bazooka team. Each has its own function, which is fairly self-evident.
While moments of action are generally played from the first-person perspective, the breakaway cover system pulls out to display your surroundings from above, in a third-person perspective. This gives you the best possible view of your squad and the immediate surroundings, while also giving you a chance to catch your breath, line up a grenade, redirect your squad or prepare to vault over your cover with a tap of the A button (on 360).
Let's talk about grenades for a second. These have, in past games, been far too readily available. In Hell's Highway, these have seemingly become much harder to find; you're forced to use them sparingly, therefore upping their value. On the flipside, like in the real world, the splash damage seems a little higher than your average shooter. A well-placed grenade can really stem the tide of Nazi oppressors.
A checkpoint system guides you from one point on the field to the next; when issuing orders to advance, flank or take cover, hand animations and waving signal the appropriate manoeuvre to your teammates. It's a subtle way of keeping HUD clutter to a minimum, too – though, there are still some pop-up notifications, such as a casualty warning when someone takes one too many rounds of hot lead. Other features also seem a little tried-and-tested at times – particularly the red-ring that eventually lines the screen when you take damage, and the AI, while possibly not fully implemented, still seemed a little daft at times. Still, the immersive setting and impressive animation routines made up for initial shortcomings in the demo we saw. Hopefully, the next few months will provide enough time to smooth over any AI wrinkles.
Will World War II shooters ever go out of fashion? Not as long as people are happy to keep putting down the dollars, it seems. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is at least taking steps to break out of the Medal of Honour / Call of Duty framework by putting a stronger emphasis on story and characterisation than even Call of Duty 4 managed. Our fingers are firmly crossed that Gearbox polish the game on every platform and address our meagre concerns. Other than that though, we're feeling pretty good about this one. Roll on, August.
July 16, 2008:
At this point, we've written no less than 10 previews and features about Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, so there's not much more new to the game that we could talk about. The game was playable at Ubisoft's booth in PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 forms, and I played around with controlling an assault team and a bazooka team to outmaneuver and flank German infantry. There was also a chance to peruse the upcoming mass market paperback novel based on the game that is written by John Antal, the retired US Army colonel and author who is also a member of Gearbox's development team. Plus there's a comic book coming soon, as well.
I've always liked Brothers in Arms's tactical gameplay, which is a departure from the run-and-gun style of almost every shooter on the market. You have to think each encounter through, thinking on your feet as you maneuver fire teams into position, having them provide cover for one another, and engaging the enemy yourself with rifle fire and grenades. It's as close as gaming gets to real-world fire team tactics.
The controls take a bit of getting used to, especially if you've played other shooters (say, Halo or COD4). You either have to get used to the BIA controls (I had to restart several times after inadvertently throwing a grenade into the middle of my squad) or reconfigure them on the options screen. After a battle or two, though, you'll be commanding squads with confidence. Of course, it also helps to have a real-life Army colonel behind your back and encouraging you. I'm looking forward to the updated graphics of Hell's Highway, and it'll ship in the next month or two.
k
