Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (2005) Online

I usually start off every review with something that sums up the review in one quick sentence. This is called a topic sentence. It's something that gets straight to the point and keeps the audience interested. So my topic sentence for this review will be 3 words. Just 3. Here it is: BEST WAR GAME EVER! Okay, maybe that's 4 words, but you get my point. But seriously, this game is amazing. Being the best war game that I've ever played is pretty good, because I have played A LOT of war games. When I say "the best war game", I mean it is the most realistic war game of our time. I don't consider Ghost Recon 2 as a war game, because it is based in the future. When I say "the best war game", I'm talking about the ones that are based on actual wars. So that is pretty much the entire Call of Duty series, and some other random WW2/Vietnam games. But Brothers in Arms is something special. It brings great graphics, amazing story, realistic characters, and incredibly fun game play to the table. The opening sequence of the game will really show you that you are in for something. Because it is probably the most graphic opening sequence that I've ever seen in a game. The whole story gives me something that I have never seen in my entire gaming career. Yes, I am referring to my gaming as a career now. Sad. I know. You might think at some points, that you are watching a movie, because that is how the story is displayed. And that is good. Now I will get onto where the game really soars. The game play. It is fast-paced, exciting, and tense. Commanding your squad is very necessary. You must always keep them in cover, and try as much as possible to keep them alive, because they are important. Creating cover fire with your teams commands is used an incredible amount. So when this is done, you must come from the side, under cover, and take out the enemy from their side. This is used so often, because the AI in the game is so intelligent. They will shoot at the most important target to them, and take cover wherever they can find it. And trust me, they will definitely be able to find it. Sadly though, the game play is also the one place where the game sags. Commanding your two squads becomes a little annoying, because if you don't pay attention to them, they will get killed. Commanding a tank becomes tedious, because they tend to be more of a nuisance, then a help. The multi player XBOX Live, and system link play is nothing special. But oddly refreshing. With no death match (boo), but mission based team play. The worst thing about the multi player though, has to be the use of only 4 players. That is just boring. But after the game has been played and you can really get into the story line, you will be very happy. The game strives on the single player campaign, and is probably the most authentic World War 2 game I've ever played. Definitely one to get.

SCORE: 9.5 out of 10

I own a Wii, and I rented the other day Brothers In Arms: Double Time. Double Time is basically just a port of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood for the Wii, since both games were released in 2005 and the Wii came only a year later. I will only start by saying that on the Wii, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the motion controls, but you actually feel like you are Sgt. Matt Baker and leading your squad. The sound effects work really well, and the graphism was good, although I have already seen better then that. This game, while being a first-person shooter, is also a strategy game, because you will need to give your squad orders if you want to survive. That seemed pretty hard to do when I first heard about it, but in the end it works out pretty well. You hold the A button on the wii remote and point out to where you want them to get covered, you hold the A button and point at an enemy to make them fire and you make circle motion gestures with the nunchuck to get them grouped and make them join you. The story is really well-written, and believe it or not, you will be sad when your comrades will die. Sometimes, I just restarted a level when Pvt. Garnett or Pvt. Allen died just so I could do the level with them again and make them survive. One thing is too bad, it's the enemy AI, who seems to only manage to hit you when you're close, so it's easier to shoot them from a distance, but come on people. Buy this game!

This is one of my favourite games because it gives for once an accurate and somewhat realistic World War 2 experience. The Medal of Honor series was too far-fetched and i stopped purchasing the games after 'Rising Sun' (I had higher hopes after 'Frontline') 'Hill 30' gives the player a realistic performance as a squad leader in Normandy trying to keep his platoon alive while simultaneously fighting back hordes of German counter-attack forces from D-Day. The cinematics are pretty good and the opening scenes on the actual Hill 30 and in the C47 plane are both admirable and interesting.

What makes it, though, a worthwhile game for purchasing is the fact (and i've said it three times now!) The realisticness to the actual 1944 conflicts! The soldiers use colourful vocabulary in situations where and when they would, your character and team mates are only human and can take only on hit to die sometimes (beating Medal of Honour's "take five grenades to the chest and still keep kicking!") It's one of the best WWII shooters out there. My favourite level is 'Cat and Mouse' a sniping mission in a church tower in the town of Carentan.

However, it is slightly flawed as well. There is a slight glitch in the PS2 version that whenever you eliminate and enemy the game freezes for about a third of a second. It seems not much but can screw you up when facing a group of panzer-grenadiers armed with heavy weapons. Small things like that kind of ruin it.

Improvements? Get rid of the silly death glitch and introduce a two player mission co-op mode. Otherwise a seemingly brilliant game.

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, is a video game, but goes beyond what might be expected of one. If the public would simply accept interactive entertainment in the same way that we have television and film, Brothers in arms could be equated to the movie Saving Private Ryan. It definitely caries the same message, and has a huge impact on the user. I could tell immediately upon starting the campaign that the game was very serious, i couldn't get over how similar the game was to Saving Private Ryan. Initially, the sound of the weapons in the game took me back, but i couldn't put my finger on exactly what or why, then as i heard the burst of an M1A1 Thompson Submachine gun, the image of Captain miller dropping three Germans scrambling out the hatch of a half track engulfed my thoughts. Everything about the way the game looked and sounded reminded me of the film and then goes beyond the film, i soon forgot i was playing a video game. Scenes of my peers being sniped, a bullet through the back of their head, when just seconds ago he was full of life, the sound of tanks so distinct and memorable. I would say the remarkable similarities from the game to documentaries and films of WWII conflicts, everything from the sound of weapons, stray bullets whizzing past your ears, the blast of a fragmentation grenade, the deep rumble of a tank from afar, and the screeching stress of it's tracks rotating, and sudden concussions from a nearby blast, were some indication to the realism that is Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Never before have i seen such detailed animation, combined with ground breaking audio, the audio in this experience transcends from a video game, to that of film quality, military guidance and direction from men of the United States army that have seen combat gives the game the gritty, uncensored quality, the kind that allows one to believe they are treading alongside these soldiers and fighting for their survival, the bare acts of heroism are true to life and symbolize the sacrifice of the men of the second world war, this game is a tribute to the brave young men of the airborne divisions Screaming Eagles, and who's skills and specialties contributed so strongly to our success in the war. Never before have i experience something so refreshing from the often thought childish nature of video games, I cannot recommend this product any higher.

I'll start by saying that I am a huge fan of both video games and World War 2 related entertainment. What I am not, is a professional critic. This is based on my opinions, and gaming knowledge I've learned from experience, G4, and gaming magazines. Now, on to the review.

This has got to be one of, if not the best World War 2 video game I've ever played. While Call of Duty and Medal of Honor are awesome in their own rights, it doesn't have what BiA has: tactics. Real tactics and squad commands. It's also the most historically accurate game I've ever played (other than problems regarding German forces.) You actually have to use your squad to win, which is something I've never seen in a WW2 game. BiA is best described as "Band of Brothers: The Video Game". And since BoB is the highest rated mini-series on IMDb, that's a good thing. It's fun, addicting, and as close to Operation Chicago as you're ever gonna get. Best of all: your squad mates aren't idiots who run into gunfire. They'll take cover, flank, and be avoid enemy fire when you order them to move.

Now for the bad side. The worst thing is the enemy A.I. The German infantry in this game is about as smart as a rock. They'll take cover, then shoot at you. That's it. They won't move when your flanking maneuvers are detected. They don't try to flank or out-flank you. They don't try to run for it, or get to a better position. They stand there and shoot. Also, the German artillery positions aren't camouflaged, something that any army is especially sure to do. In an attempt to be as realistic as possible, Gearbox designed your rifle to move slightly while aiming, just like real life. While not necessarily a game-killer, it's still pretty annoying. Picking up weapons in the middle of a firefight is pretty rage inducing, though.

Final verdict: an awesome game well worth the price (purchase or rental), but not without its faults. 9/10.

Summary

Brothers in Arms mixes a squad based tactical game with a first person shooter aspect. The game let's you smartly control up to three teams, a team being a tank or a group of men. The movies, cut-scenes and conversations are excellent. The game is however hampered by a dumb AI, stale tactics, misrepresentation (again) of the Germans and their equipment and weak implementation of the first person shooter aspect. The game offers entertainment for the undemanding gamer, it certainly isn't a representation of world war II combat.

It was inevitably that Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers would see it's way into a video game. Granted, Medal of Honor and especially Call of Duty already translated these new world war II realism into a game, but both of these where first person shooters. There was an obvious demand for a squad based game. Brothers in Arms(short BIA) seems a logical implementation. It is the same setting as the first person shooters, but now you can control a given crew of AI soldiers.

BIA uses an easy point and click system to control the teams. The teams consists of up to three soldiers or a tank. But don't think that it is breaking ground in this aspect. In fact it looks much like the mechanism used in Republic Commando. Although RC uses soldiers instead of teams.

BIAs implementation of the squad based battles are at times silly. It is typical for a first person shooter to present itself as a corridor along which you are forced to travel with little possibility to approach an object differently. BIA has the same system but the corridors are broadened so you can now "work around the flank".

When you reach a piece of terrain you see conspicuously objects scattered about which have the name cover written all over it. Teams of 1 to 4 Germans will show up and take position behind the cover. Sometimes machine gun nests or gun position are already set up and will fire on you when you come in view. You order your teams to take up position behind the nearest cover and a exchange fire will start. If you do nothing this combat will last forever because the AI doesn't run out of ammo and the combatants can't hurt each other when standing behind cover. You can have breakfast and come back and note that nothing has changed.

The working principle in the game is that you have to flank a German position, pinning the Germans with one team and then using another to flank it. For this purpose obvious approach routes have been created. Whenever you try to outflank Germans at position A, new Germans will show up at position B, thwarting the flanking maneuver. But don't worry: you can flank them too. And if more Germans show up at C, you can flank them too. In the end you will be able to flank the Germans and then roll up the entire defense. Of course new Germans will show up at a second line so you will be redoing the flanking maneuver again in a short while.

This silly feature is compounded by other silliness. For instance, you can suppress the Germans, but they can't suppress your teams. Another thing is that when you flank the Germans they will shout that they are being flanked in German, showing they are aware of what you are doing but they won't do a thing about it and they simple ignore you!

More silliness: the German AI never makes a counter attack or flank your position unless it is scripted in the game to do so. When it is scripted the AI uses just one tactic: a full frontal assault totally ignoring loses, common sense or tactics. Indeed in one instance the German attacked first, then the mortars started to fire. Thus making a joke of the concept of proper infantry tactics. Or to quote from Max Payne 2: how stupid can you be?

Also silly is the German equipment. MG positions are always fixed and the arc of fire is limited and positions won't overlap. Apparently Germans in Normandy only use the 37 mm PAK, in reality an obsolete gun. A strange piece of equipment was the short barreled stug III shown in the game without camouflage in a earth brown overtones. A sitting duck for any fighter bomber. But most silly is that the German infantry have no light machine guns: historically each 10 man squad had one 3 man light machine gun team.

Another silly aspect is that they made your weapons laughable weak. With astonishment you discover that grenades do nothing. When you fire at a German you need to offload dozens of bullets just to down one guy standing maybe 15 meters from you. No game has every had such a weak interpretation of the MP 40 or Garand.

All Germans in the game are inhumanly determined. As noted before, they have no qualms about frontal assaulting machine gun position across open terrain. When you pop up behind Germans, they hardily bat an eye and turn around and start firing at you.Even if you riddle them with bullets. And they aren't in pot hole's or entrenched, no they are standing right up in open view without cover. Such audacity is also shown when you throw grenades at them. They even pick them up and throw them back at you. The Germans in this game never ever surrender. Instead the have to be killed one and all. And this even for second or third rate troops!!!

All in all BIA is a game that should be taken as being a silly. If you expect a realistic feeling game in a world war II setting you better look elsewhere.

Set, during the 1944 events of D-Day, the game tells the story of a group of 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment men of the famed 101st Airborne Division, who were dropped behind German lines on Normandy Coast, during WWII. Without spoiling the game, too much; you take control of Sergeant Matt Baker (Voiced by Troy Baker) as they make their way toward the Battle of Bloody Gulch as you take part in some fun tank battles and some sniper missions. The basic shooter mechanics are solid but you'll probably need to adjust your mindset a bit since you're not the God-like you are in most other games. Unlike games like 'Call of Duty', a couple of hits are sufficient to bring you down in Brothers in Arms'. Making the game, somewhat challenge. Still, I like how the game hints the inevitable exposure to enemy fire very clearly. In addition to seeing subtle tracer effects from enemy fire, the screen also occasionally blurs along the edge where the shots are coming from, making it seem like you're dying from those shots. You'll also sometimes see grass fly up in front of you or dirt clods splatter on the screen as bullets smash into the ground. It's a great way to let the player to get the hell of there without relying on annoying beeping sounds from the health meters or flashing fire indicators. You can opt to play with a reticle or not. It makes the game more realistic to play with it off but it makes it a hell of a lot more convenient to switch it on. If that doesn't help, the game's sound design is nothing short of fantastic and drives home the point that you hear a battle just as much as see it. The sound of your own gunfire is satisfyingly chunky and gives you a real sense of the power and character behind each weapon. In either case, the zoom function makes use of a great iron sights effect where you stare down the barrel and literally have to line the target up in your sights. Yet, this game still has a dodgy hit probability. I get that the relative lack of accuracy is designed to simulate the difficulty in hitting targets in a combat situation as well as forcing the player to use team members to engage enemy units and provide better tactical opportunities, but it takes away, much of the fun, out of the game. The repetitive nature of the gameplay really, really got to me. Also, a lack of "checkpoints" will have you loading the same map over and over again. You do gain medals for completing each mission but these merely unlock extra content from the game's production that really does nothing to make the game, more interesting. Yet, this game is notable for its intuitive command system, which the tutorial does a good job of explaining in detail. Teams and tanks can be ordered to move, lay suppressive fire, rally, find cover, and charge the enemy known as the Four Fs: "Find, Fix, Flank, Finish", which helps you suppress and flank your enemy. It's actually pretty cool, to hear that, it was used by the military during World War II. Moving the squad around is very easy, but there are some limitations on what you can do with squad management. For one thing, you can only send people to places you can see. This leads you to a lot of exposing yourself to enemy fire, scenes. I also didn't like that you can't assign the members of your fire team to man fixed machine guns. It felt unrealistic. There's no denying that the game has some merits with the squad based play and historical accuracy on real missions like 'Mission Albany', in which the player has to complete true-to-life missions of the 101st, but I find myself, getting frustrated at times, with how much the beginning of the game was so tedious and how the game doesn't feel real, at times, when wooden fences, haystacks, and tin barrels are somewhat bulletproof, yet you cannot crawl on the ground, or go prone. This is all in a game which claims to let you use "Real Military Tactics.". Even the game multiplayer opinion is pretty standard, with purely a two to four men mission-based affair here, so you won't find death-match or capture the flag options that 'Call of Duty' really capitalize on. Another problem with the game is the somewhat bland characters. It's nice that they added some real-life personalities to the game, to mix with the fictional ones, but the story that they come with them is very redundant, and overly scripted with Matt Baker giving the same monologue, orders, and information all the time. The rest of your squad is also somewhat forgettable and their deaths throughout the game is nearly meaningless as most of them, return back, fully healed for the next mission. That part, really took me, out of the realistic approached on the game. Don't get me wrong, the look of the game is undeniably authentic, but I have seem, better landscape and character models graphics in other WW2 games, just a few years earlier when this game, first came out like "Battlefield'. I can't believe the History Channel, though this was accurate. For a WW2 story, it was also very tame in the blood and gore. The violence in this game was so greatly over-hyped. In my opinion, the 'M" rating is largely unwarranted, as the violence isn't that violent, nor the profanity, that offensive. Overall: It's no wonder, why this first game in the 'Brothers in Arms' series, by video game developers Gearbox Software was often overlooked, due to other/much more popular WW2 first-person shooter titles like 'Call of Duty' & 'Medal of Honor' at the time. It really did lose some appeal, over the years, and now seem average at best. In the end, it's just that. Average.

"You really get to know a man if you get to watch him die, that moment right before he realizes its over, that moment his face reflects every decision he's ever made, what kind of life he led... and if he regrets it."

Am i the only one that thinks this quote is really absurd, how can ones dying face reflect so much information, i mean unless you actually say something about your life how the hell is anyone going to know what life you had, if the pain before death is terrible your face will be so contorted as to be impossible to read accurately if that at all was possible, this is just one of those quotes that sounds good initially but falls apart after a brief analysis.

Brothers in arms is based on the true story of Matt Baker's squad and their eight day fight through France. The missions go along the same lines as the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.

You start out at Hill 30 as your squad's position is being overrun by German soldiers and armor. As a shell hits near you and you begin to black out, your last eight days pass before your eyes. Gameplay takes place during the Normandy invasion by the Airbourne divisions. The battles take you from the countryside of Normandy to St. Come Du-Mont to Carentan and so forth. The thing I like most about this game is the fact that it's not your average run-and-gun game where you can take out the entire German military on your own. The game requires you to think up strategies of suppression and flanking. The fighting is similar to the game Full Spectrum Warrior in the way that you can tell your squad where to go and who to shoot at. The usual strategy is having your suppression team lay down heavy fire while you and/or your fire team flank to the enemies exposed side. Although you can decide your squad's targets, they are smart enough to fire on their own. The AI is the best I've seen in any game.

The Story, however, is the game's weak spot. There's very little meaningful dialogue that helps you get to know your squad-mates. Most of the time, you won't care if a squad member gets killed because of the lack of intimacy with your squad-mates.

Overall this is a great game that I recommend to anyone who likes FPS style games, strategy games, or if you just want a good game to pass the time My score: 9/10