Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway - Review

Added September 29th, 2008 by Artie Augustyn

If there’s one theatre that’s over explored by game developers, it’s World War 2. Leave it to video games to take something as horrible and grotesque as a merciless war against genocidal lunatics and psychotic nationalists and turn it into profit. The emotional tragedies apparent in movies such as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List have mostly been absent from video games. The Brothers in Arms series has made attempts to break this mold by adding characters with personalities and conflicts that reflect what real soldiers suffered through during the early 1940s when the world was at war. Although the latest addition to the franchise, Hell’s Highway, succeeds at providing an enjoyable tactical first person shooter, it fails to deliver any emotional attachment to the men you fight beside throughout Operation Market Garden.

Despite the fact that Hell’s Highway takes place in a familiar setting, the combat of the game differs greatly from other first person shooters on the market. Instead of being a one man army accompanied by four to five useless AI teammates, Brothers in Arms puts you in control of Sergeant Matt Baker. Because of his rank, Baker can control up to three different squadrons. The game suggests you use your teammates to fight your way through difficult scenarios instead of putting them to the side and gunning in alone. This recommendation soon becomes an obvious command as you’ll quickly realize death is imminent without cover and teamwork.  Rarely can advances be made on your own.

 You’re ability to lead a squad is more valuable than how often you can land a headshot.

You’ll want to stay in cover, command your squad to flank, suppress, and engage enemies as much as possible.  Most squad based shooters of the past have had a nasty stigma due to terrible AI coding. However this is not the case for Hell’s Highway. Your teammates actually have a noticeable effect on the battle.  If you never use your allies, you won’t finish the game; use them correctly and you’ll feel like a real Sergeant in World War 2, skillfully outsmarting your enemy. Each conflict is set up in a way that tests the player’s mind and forces them to think about all the angles. Placing a squadron in front of a thin wooden fence, will put them in harms way, ordering troops to run to cover that is in front of an MG42 will get them mowed down, and putting a battalion too far into the battlefield, will expose their flanks to the enemy. There’s enough variety in the field layout and the types of squads you control to make you think there’s several ways to approach any one scenario. Even though there are an abundance of commands to give and strategies to execute, the controls are contextual based so you’ll never feel laded by confusing controls. When the game sticks to testing your leadership abilities, that’s when the experience is simply sublime.

 There are a total of four different squads: Bazooka, Assault, MG, and Base of Fire, however Bazookas are the most lethal.

But of course, the developer Gearbox found a way to screw all that up. Every now and then the game decides you’ve had enough of the squad tactics and pressures you into a different type of gameplay. Ironically, even though the entire point of the game is to reveal how unrealistic every other shooter is, the game forces you into situations where it’s you versus five hundred Nazis, with no tactics to be burdened with. These segments completely contradict everything the game has going for it, and they’re not all that fun either. The game is constructed so you have to suppress an enemy, flank with a squad, and then go for the kill. When you’re just fighting by yourself, you can’t do that, making these sequences more difficult than they should be.

Accompanying the dreadful lone-wolf Rambo levels is outdated Tank sequences. From time to time you’ll be in control of a tank commander who rolls through levels blowing up everything in sight: Nazis, Panzers, Flak 88s, the whole shebang. It’s understandable why these levels were added to the game, since their entire purpose is to rejuvenate the squad combat so it doesn’t become stale by the end of the game, but the Tank segments feel as if they were developed five years ago. The tank controls poorly -- all movement actions are mapped to the left stick, so you can’t pull off simple procedures such as moving left, but looking right. And after games like Battlefield: Bad Company and Mercenaries 2 have been released, the immunity of the level’s artifacts is bizarre. Sandbags can be smashed and destroyed, but barb wire fences still impede your path. The rules of destruction are greatly inconsistent.

 Most characters have a scar or accent to identify them with, otherwise you’d have no idea who is who.

Consistency isn’t one of Hell’s Highways strong suits, especially when it comes to the presentation. Brothers in Arms runs on the Unreal 3 engine, which has become notorious for having technical problems. Texture loading, shadows behaving oddly, and irregular performance have been problems in other Unreal games, sadly Brothers in Arms is no exception. There are points in the game where you watch a cut scene and swear it looks real, but five seconds later a character’s face doesn’t load in and looks like a Playstation 1 game. It’s hard to reach a verdict on the graphics due to their discordance.

That being said, there’s a good share of moments that leave you saying “Oh Snap!!!” Hell’s Highway has a built in action camera that identifies when something gory is about to happen, and zooms in on the event as it takes place. Nazis’ heads will explode from headshots decorating fields with skull fragments, and well placed grenades can turn a German solider into an instant basket case, or blow his torso from his legs and throw intestines through the air like confetti. These moments, although disgusting, are very entertaining to see, and will leave you gravitating towards grenade and rocket launcher tactics, hoping to witness another gruesome execution.

The rest of the presentation of the game doesn’t hold up as well. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Brothers in Arms strives to be an emotional tale about a terrible war. The beginning of the game starts with a TV show inspired “Last Time, on Brothers in Arms.” If you haven’t invested time into playing the previous Brothers in Arms games, you’re going to be discombobulated by the lack of a proper introduction. That’s not to say that the story you’re missing out on is “good” or at least “interesting.” This game tries to divulge the psychological effect war has on the main protagonist Matt Baker, but the execution falls short. The sound design team obviously had some trouble constructing the cinematic scenes. It seems as if every character is whispering to each other, as a result any dramatic moment can’t be taken seriously since they’re so quiet it’s hard to detect any emotion. In addition to this significant problem, the plot twist of the game doesn’t really make any sense nor does it explain why Sergeant Baker is having so much trouble coping with previous events.

 Why can’t all headshots look like this?

Finally, the multiplayer component of Hell’s Highway is shockingly forgettable. The entire structure relies on realistic military rules. Players are appointed as squad leaders, these leaders give orders, and the grunts are supposed to carry out these orders. However, this is a game being played by teenagers, so of course no one does what they’re supposed to. The strategic, patience-based gameplay from the single player doesn’t translate to multiplayer at all. In addition to this, the only game type available doesn’t make any sense and lacks an informative tutorial. It’s obvious that Hell’s Highway should’ve remained a single player focused game and stayed far away from multiplayer ambitions. Regardless of whether or not you get people to listen to your commands, Hell’s Highway just isn’t fun as a competitive multiplayer game.

Luckily these faults do not mar the greatness of the squad based single player campaign. The strategic focused combat is unique to this game, and rarely do squad based games ever achieve this level of quality. Due to Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway unrivaled combat, its experience should be witnessed by anyone who enjoys shooters requiring some degree of tactics and skill. There are plenty of battles to fight through, collectibles to discover, and techniques to perfect in Hell’s Highway, and I fully recommend purchasing.