Innovative, immersive and accomplished, this will be treasured by more mature FPS gamers.

User Rating: 8.9 | Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 PC
By Bahger | Review Date:
First impressions: It's different. I applaud the boldness and the consistency of execution. It is slightly annoying at first to have to switch to iron sights in order to be able to hit anything (you cannot hit even a stationary, mid-range object when firing from the hip) but the tradeoff is that it is immersive, it magifies the authentic "fog of war" atmosphere and the game plays fair in that, as long as you have some cover and/or suppressive support, you will not get killed while transitioning to iron sights. Even with the iron sight, BIA's weapons do not make you a super-soldier; recoil is an enormous factor and any incoming fire will also throw your aim off, again emphasizing the need for cover and tactical support. The result of all this is to make the game's pace slower, more deliberate than the conventional shooter, but no less involving. I think you'd have to be crazy to play this game with a recticle enabled and almost certifiable to want a save-where-you-like system (see below). I fully endorse the lack of an in-game save feature and I never thought I'd hear myself say that. The challenge in BIA is to play like your life (and that of your team) is on the line; how can you do this if there is always the possibility of a trial-and-error approach? The save-points neccesitate making tactical decisions under pressure. They are not spaced too far apart, just far enough to present a realistic challenge. Again, kudos to the designers for their courage in going against the grain of conventional shooter gameplay in order to come up with something unique. It works. The weapons are terrific. They really feel and sound analogue, i.e. mechanical. They are not supposed to be extensions of the player's mouse-hand. In this game they are tools; deadly but subject to recoil, limited in terms of magazine-size and only as effective as the player's tactics. I wonder if they ever thought about weapons jamming? It's also a great, bold move that grenades are not "aimed" with a visible trajectory cursor. Instead it's more like it must have been IRL: pull, throw and run/shoot. And unlike SWAT 4, you revert automatically to your primary weapon as soon as the frag goes out. Grenades should be a suppressive weapon, not a super-frag and BIA implements this superbly. Graphically, the soldiers are a bit goofy and Gearbox was ill-advised to have attempted to sell them as emotionally expressive, interactive NPCs a la HALF LIFE 2; their engine just cannot meet those levels of expectation. Having said that, what is impressive about the graphics in BIA is the topographical and environmental detail which convinces you like no game before (certainly not COD, which I liked for what it was) that the Normandy offensive was fought in farmyards and churchyards, in villages and among hedgerows. Birds fly up from behind trees, dead livestock litter the landscape, there are abandoned tractors and town squares, this is a battlefield that was somebody's home until twenty four hours ago. It's full of life, it's as though peoples' cars still have gas in them and their larders are still full of fresh food. No other game has done this. In addition the grass and water effects are terrific and scalable in-game, yet more proof that this is not a cheesy port. Here's the bottom line: BIA's attention to graphical detail makes you believe that you are fighting in the back yard of your own civilization (after all, this is France, not Afghanistan) and that is precisely the significance of D-Day and it's aftermath. The top-down SA view is interesting but aggravating at times. Controlling its rotation with the mouse is so loose and imprecise that it's nausea-inducing and there are all sorts of arbitrary limitations on point-of-view. I hate to say this, but some of the dialogue is hokey and for all the "authentic" cursing (which doesn't bother me) the game does not rise to anything like BAND OF BROTHERS' level of craft in reenacting the dynamics and poetry of GI life at this pivotal moment in history. The game tends to hammer you over the head with its earnestness here and whereas the intent is good, you feel a little bit bullied by it at times, especially when you are forced to listen to your avatar's over-portentous snippets of philosophical dialogue at the beginning of each chapter. Finally, marker placement for the positioning of your teams can be a little quirky and you will end up sending them to their deaths occasionally, not because of bad tactical decisions but because the system can be a little imprecise, like the quirky SA view rotation. It's good but it does not eat FULL SPECTRUM WARRIOR for breakfast, something I had to say because FSW is getting unjustly dissed all over the place in BIA reviews... Here's the key fact: BIA is not about killing, it's about taking and holding ground. BIA is really a hybrid FPS/light infantry tactical simulator, and if you expect the former to take precedence over the latter then COD really is more suited to your gameplay requirements.

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