A very realistic WWII game, with soild graphics, though a bit tedious at times to play do to poor user interface.

User Rating: 8.3 | Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 PC
By cbsbyte | Review Date:
Overall, I like this game. The game is based on a true story set during the Normandy landings. The story is narrated by Sgt Baker, the character you play in the game who is thrust into a leadership role after jumping into France, and must lead his me into combat with little real combat experience. The characters in the game have their own unique personalities some which are based on real soliders. The game has everything going for it except for poorly created, non aggressive German AI, lack luster graphics, and poor user interface with giving commands with the mouse. First I should state that the design team traveled to France to map out the areas, and recreated the battlefields of Normandy. From accurate looking buildings, fields, and roads are all included in the game. It is as if you are standing on the orginal battlefields. They poured through WWII US and German military documents, notes, after action reports and personal letters from soliders, to find out the smallest details of the battles that the 101st fought through, then added it to the game. Most of this info is shared in the game through unlockable extras. BIA Road to Hill 30, is a FPS WWII game with a twist, the player gets to control the squad, and give orders to find cover, supress, then attack the enemy. The enemy have a optional supression indicator that changes depending on their supressed level. The player gives orders by picking the team, one supresses the enemy with heavy weapons and the other teams is used to flank then kill the enemy at close range. You do this by useing the mouse to click on an area to move your squad too. This seems simple but in reality it is not since the AI is not very intellilegent. First, I found the AI for the Germans is too simple, they do not flank, attack, or retreat but stay in one position until they are killed. Only the German panzers move around to flank. Your squads AI is pretty good, they duck, and move well underfire, but they have to be watched because they might take cover infront of an object instead of behind it. Other times they don't see an enemy, even if they are in the open until it's too late. I also found it difficult to move the cursor around with the mouse to pick a location, sometime the cursor would get stuck on a wall or tree. I have to run around the battle field to get my troops moving forward with killing them. There is no simple way to plot your troops across the battlefield without doing it underfire. The unique situational awareness mode, where one is able to pause the game, zoom to find the basic objective, your squad and any enemy that your character has seen on the map. It works but one is not able to freely zoom around the map but only from the point of a choosen objective. The graphics are soild but nothing special. I believe the game is using the Unreal 2 engine with minor upgrades. It does have HDR, though it seems too unnatural. The vegitation look lush but not well defined. There are to many low resolution textures on buildings, ground and even poeple. It really distracts from the game. Though the Ragdoll physics are very good and the facial expressions are well done. Even older games like Fry Cry on medium settings easily blow BIA on high settings away. I found that the Sound effects are pretty good in this game, and the music score is very good. Gameplay is challeging, but mostly because you have to spend some time slowly progressing forward trying not to get all your men killed. If you rush they will all die. Though If they do die don't worry they will be back in the next level. This is not very realistic and detracts from the overall game. Certain squad members will be killed off in the story. Though most of them are minor characters. This becomes very annoying after awhile since one never feels aquanited with any of them. I also felt that some of the story was a bit contrived, and trying to hard to be emotional. Though, I did feel most of the voice actors did a very good job with the reading given the source material. Overall this is a good game. I liked how after each mission one could go to the main menu and view newley unlocked details about the battle. I really enjoyed how the story unfolded, and seemed to convey what real soliders felt during the war. Though the serious problems are to be prepared to babysit the AI and poor user interface.

Other Helpful Reviews for Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30

Load Comments (0)