GENRE: FPS PLAYERS: 1 offline, 2-20 online Review: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the 3rd game in the Brothers in Arms series. Closing resembling the HBO hit band of brothers, BIA puts you in the boots of SGT. Matthew Baker as he leads his squad through what was the largest airborne invasion of its time, Operation Market Garden. The main idea and goal of Market Garden was to end the war by Christmas but the Germans had other plans. Brothers in Arms is far from average and is nothing like your average spray and pray shooter. Unlike most shooters where you blaze through swarms of enemies mowing them down relentlessly BIA forces you to use teamwork. In BIA this comes in a couple of forms. While you almost always have at least one team on your hand, you often granted an additional team that can carry a special weapon. These weapons include the Bazooka and the Light machine gun, each with the ability to destroy different types of cover. The multiplayer is just as squad based as the campaign. With up to 20 players over XBL the action is fast and crazy when it’s not lagging (Hopefully gearbox with deal with that soon). Each team is assigned one squad leader and three separate teams under the leaders command. Each squad leader is given the ability to mark checkpoints with colors matching each of the 3 teams on the map during the pregame lobby. The markers will then appear in game for the teams to follow. This gives the leader the ability to direct his team but doesn’t force players to follow his commands in an RTS format. Each game features an attacking and defending team. The attacking team is given a tank which requires three men to operate. On most of the maps the tank is better left abandoned as it is too easy for the enemy to quickly tag your ride with some C4 and end the life of everyone inside. In order to win the attacking team must raise their flag on an enemy flagpole or eliminate all of the enemies. In order for the defenders to win they must either prevent the enemy flag from being raised but holding them off, killing the flag carrier in which case the attackers have 30 seconds to recover the flag before losing, or killing all of the attacking team. The action is fast and intense and if you don’t know what you’re doing you’ll probably end up leading of few of your young soldiers into their graves. Try and run and gun and you’ll be in your own grave. Luckily the game does an excellent job of showing newcomers the ropes with a few opening chapters that give a few enemies at a time before facing you with a street full of Germans and a deadly 88. While BIA isn’t for everyone if you’re looking for something different out of the WWII shooter genre than BIA is where it’s at. GAMEPLAY: 9.0 Fast based squad based WWII action with a flawless control scheme. What more could you want? AMBIENCE: 10 Some of the best in the business. Shells explode nearby, bullets wiz by with a scary close zing; gorgeous visuals recreate German, Holland, and other locations. The voice acting while not top notch is enough to go with addicting and immersive story line. MULTIPLAYER: 8.5 Decent good use some fixes and some additional maps Otherwise its good squad based fun. OVERALL: 9.3
