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Title: Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30
Platform(s): Xbox, Playstation 2, PC.
Publisher: Ubisoft
Difficulty: Medium
Review written by: Bradley
Brothers in Arms puts you in the most popular of shooter settings, what else? World War II. But, what makes Brothers in Arms stand out above the plethorah(sp?) of WWII shooters? Find out in my review.
The story of Brothers in Arms goes like this, based on a true story, you play Sgt. Matt Baker on the 101st Airborne and you lead your team through a series of missions taking place in the 8 days leading up to the invasion on Normandy. You will fight on real battlegrounds and of course use real weapons from the era. The campain is about 20 missions long and as i said before, takes place in 8 days. As the story furthers itself, you will choose between completing your mission, or saving the lives of your squad, your brothers in arms. You fight on the French countryside in various environments and take on the Krauts. You get little excerpts from Baker's mind before every mission letting you feel like you are Matt Baker and it's you that's in this situation.
The sound in BIA is truly awesome. All the weapons sound great and the voiceovers are very good. Each of your squad has a distinct personality which is carried along by conversations during the missions. The music is really good. You have orchestrated music playing during the game, loading screens, and the main menu. But when the game needs to be quiet, it can be quiet. There are lots of distinct weapon sounds to be heard throughout the game on your side and the opposing forces. The tanks sound really cool too. Nice and authentic to the time period and the cannons are sweet. Now mix all of these elements together in some frantic but also strategic battles and you have one hell of an enjoyable, engrossing experience.
The graphics overall in this game are great. You have different types of environments, times of day, and all kinds of cover to take a gander at. And they all look good. You can see the whizzing of bullets going by your face and see them chipping off chunks of wood, debris, or whatever you are hiding behind. The easy way to tell who is a friendly and who is an enemy is pretty simple. You see gray, blast the hell out of 'em. You see tan, don't fire, but it wouldn't matter if you fire or not because thankfully the game won't let you fire on friendlys. Environments usually consist of grasslands, feilds, the occasional town, and as the name implies, roads. The roads you will travel have conveniently placed cover for your squad to duck behind so you can flank the enemy. All of the character models are nicely done and the animations are smooth. The downside to the graphics is that sometimes you may get a little clunkiness and choppy frame rate, but this is rare. Environments are also pushed along by the different times of day you will play. You've got sundown to cloudy, all adding little extras to the world you are playing in. Overall, this game looks awesome but the rare chugging takes it down some.
Last but so very far from least is the gameplay.
Gameplay to-do list:
--Talk about the great squad based shooting and tactical battles.
--Talk about the AI!!
--The multiplayer.
--The replayability.
--Tanks... aww the tanks... "drool"
--Anything else i can think of that needs to be said about the gameplay.
1) The squad based shooting is the main thing that sets this game apart from other WWII games. It's kind of like Rainbow Six lite, because you have 5 basic commands. Move. Where you hold down Left trigger and move the cursor to a position on the battlefeild. Follow me. Just hit down on the d-pad. What it does is pretty self explanitory right? Hold your position. Up on the d-pad, makes your squad... hold their positions! GASP! Suppress. Hold Left trigger and move the cursor to where a group of enemies is to get your squad to hold them back and suppress them, so you can come up from the side to flank and kill them. And ATTACK! Hold left trigger to move the cursor to a group of enemies, then hit right trigger to make your group charge in aggressively and kill that group. Kind of risky, but it's damn useful sometimes. This game is not a Medal of Honor or Call of Duty. It is not as fast paced but that doesn't take away from the fun. You can hit the "back" button to pause the game and pull up a tactical screen, from this screen you can look at all your squads' positions and the enemies positions and figure out the best way to attack. You will need to use your brain so you don't get killed because there is not health items in this game. So attack wisely. Remember, suppress then flank. You'll be doing that a lot in this game.
2) The AI on both your allies and your opponents is phenominal. They will take cover and cover each other's asses if need be. They follow your orders though, so if you put them in an open feild, they'll only live for so long, so you have to be smart too. The enemies take cover behind things and will stay behind their cover while your squad is suppressing them, but if you act like an idiot and try to flank them by running right up on them, they'll shoot you down in a heartbeat. You'll recieve fair warning if you're being shot at, you'll see white fade from whatever direction, or blood if you get shot.
3) The multiplayer is a little limiting, but it's still really fun. I do not have Xbox Live, so i don't play online. It's split screen for up to 4 players and system link for 2-4 players also. There is one mode, you choose whether you want to be on the Krauts or Americans, then you choose what team you want to be on, Assault or Fire team. The only real difference between them is the weapons. The Americans have to blow up anti air guns while the Krauts have to try and stop them. This is not like any other kind of deathmatch game though. You don't have infinite lives, you have only your team. When you die, you're gone, but you can become one of the other members on your team. That's basically the multiplayer in a nutshell. Fun, but needs co-op and more modes.
4) The replayability in this game is high. First of course you have the multiplayer, but the single player campaign can be played through multiple times to unlock some pretty cool extras like videos and photos and development stuff. Beat the game on higher difficulties to unlock the cooler extras. Each mission you beat unlocks an extra for that level. This leads to many play throughs, plus, the game is just downright fun.
5) Tanks. Yeah, that was kind of a joke, but the tanks look cool. Unfortunately for us, you can't drive them. But you can hop on the back of one and blast everything that gets in your way with its machine gun...so that's drool-worthy.
6) I believe i've pretty much said all there is to be said about the gameplay, if you don't mind a little repetition in the gameplay department, then you'll love this game, as did i. With the massive selection of WWII games, most of them bad, if you are to pick one, from what i've played of the war shooters, pick this one. Rainbow Six plus WWII is a wonderful combination that works great for this game. Not to fast, not to slow, just freaking fun.
So graphics = good, sound = superb, story = true and great, gameplay = wow. So game = great. Overall, i give Brothers In Arms a 9.3...out of 10.
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