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Review: Up until now, only two games on the XBox deserved to be bought for the WWII experience, Medal of Honour and Call of Duty. But both, while good in their own right (CoD more so than MoH), had their failings: in the end it was always You Vs. the entire German Army. Not so for Brothers in Arms. Here you play a squad leader, and as such you apply the basic doctrines for squad-level tactics: fire and maneuver, controlling a fire team and an assault team, using the first to supress and pin down the enemy, while flanking and assaulting with the second.
And basicaly that's it, you go along chapters representing days in the Normandy campaign (from D-day to D+8), starting with one team, gradually controlling two as the task demands it, completing goals in order to progress to the next chapter (read, day). Is this all there is to it? Fortunately... no. Brothers in Arms goes way beyond simple squad-level shooting. First, there's the accurate terrain and scenery the developers took great lenghts in recreating. The game has several extras that are unlocked upon the completion of chapters, and one of them show comparasion shots between the real locations in Normandy and the in-game shots... WOW! The similarity is astounding. It is no lie if I said this is the most accurate virtual representation of Normandy in 1944. Second, there's the AI. Those that played Call of Duty can well remember your fellow soldiers walking in front of tanks, wandering aimlessly or purposely in front of MG nests just to get shot to pieces, their function in the game to be only as cannon fodder or distractions for the enemy AI to shoot at, while you sneak up and throw a grenade. This doesn't happen in BiA. Your teammates act and react effectively, be it assaulting an enemy position, laying down supressive fire, or going from cover to cover, shooting in the enemy's general direction to keep its head down. As for the Enemy, they get to be pretty smart sometimes, if the player gets too near them they might throw a grenade (not a pleasant surprise, I might add!), relocate to a better position if one of the teams tries to flank them (and in the authentic setting, which is harder than difficult, they actually do flanking maneuvers of their own). And when those mortars start raining down... Scary. Well, what about guns? We all love them, right? US paratroopers in Normandy were equipped with the M1 Garand, M1 carbine (not to be confused with the Garand), scoped Springfield, BAR, Tommy gun, Colt M1911, Bazooka and grenades, while the Germans had the MP40, Mauser K98, regular and scoped, Panzerfausts and occasionaly a Sturm44, the grandfather of all assault rifles. And that's it. The player can also man MG42 positions and the machinegun positions in US tanks. Pretty impressive. But how accurate (dang, there's that word again!) are they? From reading player reactions at the developers' forum I gather they are pretty much spot on, sound much like they are, recoil throwing aim... and the grenades... remember in the series Band of Brothers how the grenades seemed strange when blowing up? Well, that's actually how they are, really. Anyway, this is getting too long, one could spend an afternoon talking about this game and still not cover half of it. The game recreates in the most accurate way what was it like back in those bleak and hopefull days in Normandy. The firefights aren't just to get on to the next level, going from waypoint to waypont shooting at everything that sounds German, when the lead starts flying, you're fighting for your life, fighting for your squad. You have to think your way out of this, without getting yourself and your teams killed! A real tribute to the fighting men of the 101st. |
PC & Video Games
