Screenshots :.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
360
Matt
01-10-2008
"Impromtu team meeting, methinks. Coffee, anyone?"
"The bazooka is your friend."
"The gore is okay, but the slow-mo feels awkward."
"Hiding behind walls works nicely."
"Tank vs. train. Tank wins, methinks."
World War 2 shooters may be two a penny these days, but that doesn't stop people from buying them and it most certainly doesn't mean that the odd one can't be a cracking good slice of gaming. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is a great case in point for this, and even though it's been delayed and subject to more than a few quizzical looks throughout the development period, it's turned out just fine. A 100% nailed-on classic it might not be, but as a harrowing portrayal of war and the way it affects relationships between men it does a pretty handy job.
Set in 1944 as the Allied forces started their push into Holland, Hells' Highway sees you resuming the role of Matt Baker from the first game (Road to Hill 30) as he and his squad try to gain the upper hand on the residing Nazis. Across nine levels and through some pretty tricky situations, you follow Baker as he endures hardships and faces the consequences of some tricky decisions that he is made to make.
If you've not played a Brothers in Arms game before, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is probably just another title to add on the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor pile. See, you'd be wrong there chap – this is a more tactical affair. Granted, you still leg it around and shoot Nazi soldiers, blow up tanks and the like, but this time around you have a couple of squads (sometimes just one, on one occasion three) to order into cover to provide covering fire. It's this tactic, the arranging of your men so you can keep the opposition pressed down whilst you go about your business, that is the crucial mechanic on which Brothers in Arms relies.
It is crucial too, despite initial doubts as to whether it was important or just a sideshow to make a difference. Aimlessly running around with your men behind will see them all getting mown down pretty quickly. Hence, with a couple of deft taps of the B button to switch between squads and a tap of the left trigger to order your men into cover and fire, your task is to tactically outsmart the enemy and leave yourself time to pick them off while they are otherwise occupied. As a way of hammering home that war is never about individuals and always about squad unity, it works pretty well.
What it also does, though, and something that isn't so great, is that it often reduces levels to a repeating pattern of locating enemies, scurrying into cover and then ducking and firing for five or so minutes until everything is cleared out. Your squad members are very capable of providing covering fire, but it always seems that it's you who is doing the killing whilst everyone else scatters bullets pretty much everywhere except into enemy soldiers. They do chalk up the odd kill now and again, of course (the bazooka squad saved my hide more than once), but the weight of actually gunning down Nazis tends to fall on your shoulders.
Whilst this does get a little dull eventually, it is broken up by a couple of different sections, with the seemingly obligatory tank segments popping up and giving you a chance to obliterate everything pretty quickly. Variation is also provided by a sniper part lodged in the middle of the game that's over way too quickly, and a couple of sections where Baker has found himself stuck somewhere without his team to back him up, but they're pretty short and not all that difficult to complete.
It's not that Hell's Highway isn't fun though, so don't get me wrong here. The combat itself may break itself down into a similar routine, but it's always challenging and does reward good squad placement. Having your assault unit pin enemy soldiers behind a wall as you sneak around the side and plug them feels great, and you quickly form some sort of bond with your men even if they do spend most of their time missing what they're supposed to be aiming at.
Part of this is down to the game's story, which is very well told and eschews most of the corny war stereotypes as it delivers a rather harrowing tale, aided by some great voice acting and a soaring musical score. It constantly hammers home that there aren't any real winners when it comes to war, and through some pretty shocking and brutal moments you lose various members of your squad and other characters as you progress, and it doesn't particularly let up even at the game's final cutscene, so it's not one that you'll be polishing off and having that warm fuzzy happy ending feeling that some games give.
That's fine by my book, but what doesn't sit quite so well are the numerous little bugs that tot up to stop Hell's Highway being quite as good as it should have been – things like men running into objects and continually running into them until they are shot, or Baker snapping back into cover as you lob a grenade, causing it to bounce off whatever you're up against and back at your men, who don't actually seem too bothered about running away from their impending doom. Once you get past a checkpoint the game will magically revive your downed squad members, but on more than one occasion I found certain members were unable to be commanded to move and instead stood stock still until they were killed.
The enemy AI is a bit patchy too, which hurts the sense of realism further. With cover being destructible you often find enemies still crouching behind fences and tables that shattered long ago, whilst they are also rather prone to sitting out in the open even if there is cover around. During hectic gun battles this can be all you need to turn the tide in your favour, and it does feel like a slightly hollow victory once you pop a poor guy in the head because he was kneeling at the side of a bus.
Talking of popping people in the head, another thing that doesn't particularly sit quite so well with the game's subject matter is the action camera that shows slow-mo moments when you pull off a headshot or blow a couple of people up with a grenade or rocket. The game is rather gory and will often see soldiers' limbs getting ripped off, their heads being blown apart and in some circumstances their body getting blown in two which is all well and fine as showing the shocking, bloody nature of war is part and parcel of making you feel as if you were there, but glorifying it with slow motion isn't quite so... well, tasteful perhaps. It's only a video game, sure, but it feels out of place and rather unnecessary. Oh, and to add an actual technical annoyance to this, the action cam returns you to your character with the zoom view cancelled, which can be very annoying if you were using it.
Overall, though, and despite the issues mentioned above, the single player campaign works pretty well, and is enjoyable enough to keep you plugging away for the ten or so hours that it'll take you to work through the levels. The story keeps you interested, the levels are well-designed and the checkpointing fair, and the game doesn't fall back on the old routine of continually spawning soldiers at you and instead makes the enemy placement and number appropriate enough to make most sections challenging first time. For all it does wrong, it also does a heck of a lot right.
There is, as demand these days seems to dictate, a multiplayer mode tacked on for good measure, but it feels exactly that – tacked on. Offering a simple choice of a capture the flag type thing or... nothing else, it's enjoyable enough (especially with up to twenty players playing), but the lack of any real variation other than six different maps kinds of nips it in the bud rather quickly.
With over four years of development time under its belt, Hell's Highway was always going to struggle to stand up to the excitement and hype it had created for itself. With that in mind, and with the above taken into account, it's actually quite pleasing to be able to sum up the game by saying that it's actually turned out to be pretty good fun, if a little rough around the edges. It's certainly not as good as, say, Call of Duty 2 when it comes to World War 2 shooters, but it bests Medal of Honour: Airborne and offers something slightly different as its hook. An all-out five star experience this may not be, but for everything it does right, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is certainly worthy slice of entertainment.
Set in 1944 as the Allied forces started their push into Holland, Hells' Highway sees you resuming the role of Matt Baker from the first game (Road to Hill 30) as he and his squad try to gain the upper hand on the residing Nazis. Across nine levels and through some pretty tricky situations, you follow Baker as he endures hardships and faces the consequences of some tricky decisions that he is made to make.
If you've not played a Brothers in Arms game before, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is probably just another title to add on the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor pile. See, you'd be wrong there chap – this is a more tactical affair. Granted, you still leg it around and shoot Nazi soldiers, blow up tanks and the like, but this time around you have a couple of squads (sometimes just one, on one occasion three) to order into cover to provide covering fire. It's this tactic, the arranging of your men so you can keep the opposition pressed down whilst you go about your business, that is the crucial mechanic on which Brothers in Arms relies.
It is crucial too, despite initial doubts as to whether it was important or just a sideshow to make a difference. Aimlessly running around with your men behind will see them all getting mown down pretty quickly. Hence, with a couple of deft taps of the B button to switch between squads and a tap of the left trigger to order your men into cover and fire, your task is to tactically outsmart the enemy and leave yourself time to pick them off while they are otherwise occupied. As a way of hammering home that war is never about individuals and always about squad unity, it works pretty well.
What it also does, though, and something that isn't so great, is that it often reduces levels to a repeating pattern of locating enemies, scurrying into cover and then ducking and firing for five or so minutes until everything is cleared out. Your squad members are very capable of providing covering fire, but it always seems that it's you who is doing the killing whilst everyone else scatters bullets pretty much everywhere except into enemy soldiers. They do chalk up the odd kill now and again, of course (the bazooka squad saved my hide more than once), but the weight of actually gunning down Nazis tends to fall on your shoulders.
Whilst this does get a little dull eventually, it is broken up by a couple of different sections, with the seemingly obligatory tank segments popping up and giving you a chance to obliterate everything pretty quickly. Variation is also provided by a sniper part lodged in the middle of the game that's over way too quickly, and a couple of sections where Baker has found himself stuck somewhere without his team to back him up, but they're pretty short and not all that difficult to complete.
It's not that Hell's Highway isn't fun though, so don't get me wrong here. The combat itself may break itself down into a similar routine, but it's always challenging and does reward good squad placement. Having your assault unit pin enemy soldiers behind a wall as you sneak around the side and plug them feels great, and you quickly form some sort of bond with your men even if they do spend most of their time missing what they're supposed to be aiming at.
Part of this is down to the game's story, which is very well told and eschews most of the corny war stereotypes as it delivers a rather harrowing tale, aided by some great voice acting and a soaring musical score. It constantly hammers home that there aren't any real winners when it comes to war, and through some pretty shocking and brutal moments you lose various members of your squad and other characters as you progress, and it doesn't particularly let up even at the game's final cutscene, so it's not one that you'll be polishing off and having that warm fuzzy happy ending feeling that some games give.
That's fine by my book, but what doesn't sit quite so well are the numerous little bugs that tot up to stop Hell's Highway being quite as good as it should have been – things like men running into objects and continually running into them until they are shot, or Baker snapping back into cover as you lob a grenade, causing it to bounce off whatever you're up against and back at your men, who don't actually seem too bothered about running away from their impending doom. Once you get past a checkpoint the game will magically revive your downed squad members, but on more than one occasion I found certain members were unable to be commanded to move and instead stood stock still until they were killed.
The enemy AI is a bit patchy too, which hurts the sense of realism further. With cover being destructible you often find enemies still crouching behind fences and tables that shattered long ago, whilst they are also rather prone to sitting out in the open even if there is cover around. During hectic gun battles this can be all you need to turn the tide in your favour, and it does feel like a slightly hollow victory once you pop a poor guy in the head because he was kneeling at the side of a bus.
Talking of popping people in the head, another thing that doesn't particularly sit quite so well with the game's subject matter is the action camera that shows slow-mo moments when you pull off a headshot or blow a couple of people up with a grenade or rocket. The game is rather gory and will often see soldiers' limbs getting ripped off, their heads being blown apart and in some circumstances their body getting blown in two which is all well and fine as showing the shocking, bloody nature of war is part and parcel of making you feel as if you were there, but glorifying it with slow motion isn't quite so... well, tasteful perhaps. It's only a video game, sure, but it feels out of place and rather unnecessary. Oh, and to add an actual technical annoyance to this, the action cam returns you to your character with the zoom view cancelled, which can be very annoying if you were using it.
Overall, though, and despite the issues mentioned above, the single player campaign works pretty well, and is enjoyable enough to keep you plugging away for the ten or so hours that it'll take you to work through the levels. The story keeps you interested, the levels are well-designed and the checkpointing fair, and the game doesn't fall back on the old routine of continually spawning soldiers at you and instead makes the enemy placement and number appropriate enough to make most sections challenging first time. For all it does wrong, it also does a heck of a lot right.
There is, as demand these days seems to dictate, a multiplayer mode tacked on for good measure, but it feels exactly that – tacked on. Offering a simple choice of a capture the flag type thing or... nothing else, it's enjoyable enough (especially with up to twenty players playing), but the lack of any real variation other than six different maps kinds of nips it in the bud rather quickly.
With over four years of development time under its belt, Hell's Highway was always going to struggle to stand up to the excitement and hype it had created for itself. With that in mind, and with the above taken into account, it's actually quite pleasing to be able to sum up the game by saying that it's actually turned out to be pretty good fun, if a little rough around the edges. It's certainly not as good as, say, Call of Duty 2 when it comes to World War 2 shooters, but it bests Medal of Honour: Airborne and offers something slightly different as its hook. An all-out five star experience this may not be, but for everything it does right, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is certainly worthy slice of entertainment.
7/10
