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Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
October 14, 2008 | 7:39 PM PST
by: A. McDaniel
Kombo's Review Policy:
Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the latest chapter in Gearbox Software's ongoing Brothers in Arms franchise. The game follows the 101st Airborne as they help carry out Operation: Market Garden in an attempt to rout the German forces and help end WWII by Christmas. You take control of Sergeant Matt Baker and company setting off from Holland in the hopes of cutting through the resistance and creating a path straight through to Germany. Unfortunately, as history buffs and anyone with access to Wikipedia knows, Operation: Market Garden was destined to end in failure.
You are given command of several squads of soldiers that are grouped together by specialty. Fire teams are good for laying down suppressing fire, Assault teams are good for flanking maneuvers, and then there are the special or heavy weapons teams. Depending of the mission you may have control of a machine gun team, or a bazooka team. Learning how to use your squads effectively to suppress and flank your enemy will be the deciding factor between victory and the Killed in Action game over screen.
What's Hot
What truly makes the Brothers in Arms series [BiA] stand out from the rest of the WWII-inspired pack is its attention to detail. BiA roots itself in historical fact as much as possible. The storytelling is gripping and well handled. The material you will find in BiA could stand on its own in film or another media. In choosing a war backdrop that ultimately results in failure, Gearbox set the stage for yet another intensely emotional journey. The dialogue and emotion is conveyed using superb voice acting and expressive character models. Once you focus in on the story, you will definitely feel like you are reliving part of WWII.
In an attempt to keep the series from becoming stale, Gearbox has introduced the prospect of destructible cover. Whereas before in the series, you could theoretically stand behind a surface and take your time planning your next offensive maneuver, Hell's Highway makes you also consider the durability of the material you use to shield yourself with. This addition may not seem like much in terms of planning your routes, since you can often bypass them in favor of more sturdy cover. However, the destructible environment comes in handy when planning your offensive strikes, because you are able to order your special weapons teams to destroy their cover. For example, if a machine gun nest is giving you trouble, order your Bazooka team to blow away the sand bags they are hiding behind. This forces the enemy to scurry to find more cover, and are easily picked off by you and/ or a well placed assault team.
What's Not
Brothers in Arms has a lot of backstory. For those that never reached the end of the previous games or those that are just joining the series, BiA can seem like you have just sat down to watch a movie during intermission. The opening scene does a good job of catching you up in the backstory of the 101st Airborne, but there is just too much information at times. To make matters worse, it all goes by way too quickly to really grasp the whole of what has transpired thus far. However, that is not to say that the Baker's flashbacks and introspection of his younger years don't help set the tone for his character very well.
Some improvement has been made to the BiA AI, but unfortunately is it still not enough. In a squad based game like this, your teammates AI has to be nearly perfect in order to maintain your sense of immersion. Your teammates are smart enough to find the nearest source of cover when being fired upon, but with poor pathfinding, they still have a tendency to make unintelligent choices on how to get to a location. Sometimes your squadmates decide to walk in front of the cover you ordered them behind, giving away your position to the enemy before your other teams are properly placed. Those that are familiar with the series will understand exactly how badly the team AI can respond to commands at times. Series fans will either choose to accept the lousy pathfinding for yet another iteration or not. Either way, the teammate AI will lead to many needless deaths and lots of cursing.
The poor AI is not the only source of technical letdown. The game itself is riddled with glitches and the like. Sometimes you will find a patch of "zombie" enemy soldiers that seem totally unaware of your presence, regardless of the fact that you are standing right next to them. In other cases, you may find yourself immobile and forced to reset to your last checkpoint. With a title like BiA that relies heavily on characterization and immersion, glitches like these bring down the total game experience a great deal.
For the series' first excursion on the current generation of consoles, BiA looks more in tune with what PC gamers are accustomed to. BiA easily passes a shallow graphical inspection, but over the course of the game, you'll key in on their engine's shortcomings. Instead of true shadows and shading, every object is covered in a flat unnatural filter. Otherwise well-animated characters will sometimes look alternatively plastic or flat, covered in what looks like dirty newspaper halftone. The slow motion scenes that accompany headshots leave you wondering if the mess you're watching is intentional or just a byproduct of poor texture work.
Final Word
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is home to some of the best voice acting this generation. The story will endear you to sergeant Baker as you travel with him into his failed mission. It speaks volumes that the story is enough to convince you to overlook some of the games' glaring technical failures.
The squad based gameplay is otherwise what you would expect from one of the better WWII franchises. The feeling of watching your team pull off a precisely ordered flank and flush maneuver is still as rewarding as ever, and something that most WWII games can't match.
Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the latest chapter in Gearbox Software's ongoing Brothers in Arms franchise. The game follows the 101st Airborne as they help carry out Operation: Market Garden in an attempt to rout the German forces and help end WWII by Christmas. You take control of Sergeant Matt Baker and company setting off from Holland in the hopes of cutting through the resistance and creating a path straight through to Germany. Unfortunately, as history buffs and anyone with access to Wikipedia knows, Operation: Market Garden was destined to end in failure.
You are given command of several squads of soldiers that are grouped together by specialty. Fire teams are good for laying down suppressing fire, Assault teams are good for flanking maneuvers, and then there are the special or heavy weapons teams. Depending of the mission you may have control of a machine gun team, or a bazooka team. Learning how to use your squads effectively to suppress and flank your enemy will be the deciding factor between victory and the Killed in Action game over screen.
What's Hot
What truly makes the Brothers in Arms series [BiA] stand out from the rest of the WWII-inspired pack is its attention to detail. BiA roots itself in historical fact as much as possible. The storytelling is gripping and well handled. The material you will find in BiA could stand on its own in film or another media. In choosing a war backdrop that ultimately results in failure, Gearbox set the stage for yet another intensely emotional journey. The dialogue and emotion is conveyed using superb voice acting and expressive character models. Once you focus in on the story, you will definitely feel like you are reliving part of WWII.
In an attempt to keep the series from becoming stale, Gearbox has introduced the prospect of destructible cover. Whereas before in the series, you could theoretically stand behind a surface and take your time planning your next offensive maneuver, Hell's Highway makes you also consider the durability of the material you use to shield yourself with. This addition may not seem like much in terms of planning your routes, since you can often bypass them in favor of more sturdy cover. However, the destructible environment comes in handy when planning your offensive strikes, because you are able to order your special weapons teams to destroy their cover. For example, if a machine gun nest is giving you trouble, order your Bazooka team to blow away the sand bags they are hiding behind. This forces the enemy to scurry to find more cover, and are easily picked off by you and/ or a well placed assault team.
What's Not
Brothers in Arms has a lot of backstory. For those that never reached the end of the previous games or those that are just joining the series, BiA can seem like you have just sat down to watch a movie during intermission. The opening scene does a good job of catching you up in the backstory of the 101st Airborne, but there is just too much information at times. To make matters worse, it all goes by way too quickly to really grasp the whole of what has transpired thus far. However, that is not to say that the Baker's flashbacks and introspection of his younger years don't help set the tone for his character very well.
Some improvement has been made to the BiA AI, but unfortunately is it still not enough. In a squad based game like this, your teammates AI has to be nearly perfect in order to maintain your sense of immersion. Your teammates are smart enough to find the nearest source of cover when being fired upon, but with poor pathfinding, they still have a tendency to make unintelligent choices on how to get to a location. Sometimes your squadmates decide to walk in front of the cover you ordered them behind, giving away your position to the enemy before your other teams are properly placed. Those that are familiar with the series will understand exactly how badly the team AI can respond to commands at times. Series fans will either choose to accept the lousy pathfinding for yet another iteration or not. Either way, the teammate AI will lead to many needless deaths and lots of cursing.
The poor AI is not the only source of technical letdown. The game itself is riddled with glitches and the like. Sometimes you will find a patch of "zombie" enemy soldiers that seem totally unaware of your presence, regardless of the fact that you are standing right next to them. In other cases, you may find yourself immobile and forced to reset to your last checkpoint. With a title like BiA that relies heavily on characterization and immersion, glitches like these bring down the total game experience a great deal.
For the series' first excursion on the current generation of consoles, BiA looks more in tune with what PC gamers are accustomed to. BiA easily passes a shallow graphical inspection, but over the course of the game, you'll key in on their engine's shortcomings. Instead of true shadows and shading, every object is covered in a flat unnatural filter. Otherwise well-animated characters will sometimes look alternatively plastic or flat, covered in what looks like dirty newspaper halftone. The slow motion scenes that accompany headshots leave you wondering if the mess you're watching is intentional or just a byproduct of poor texture work.
Final Word
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is home to some of the best voice acting this generation. The story will endear you to sergeant Baker as you travel with him into his failed mission. It speaks volumes that the story is enough to convince you to overlook some of the games' glaring technical failures.
The squad based gameplay is otherwise what you would expect from one of the better WWII franchises. The feeling of watching your team pull off a precisely ordered flank and flush maneuver is still as rewarding as ever, and something that most WWII games can't match.
February 8, 2010
