I went out and bought Brothers In Arms (BIA) last night on a whim. I knew that I wanted that or Republic Commando. BIA won out. I based my purchase on things I read. Smart? Maybe not, but I've bought worse games. I'm a sucker for military based games and have been having fun with Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW) lately. From everything I've read, BIA promises to give me the squad commanding power of FSW while still being able to aim and shoot a rifle from a first person perspective. Can't lose right?
I had about 30 minutes to devote to it last night. After Katie went to bed, I hooked up the headphones to the TV and went after it. BIA is pretty heavy on story which can be good. I personally am finding myself a bit worn out on the WW2 European theater however. It's popular for game developers because really, who makes a better enemy than Nazi's? I'm willing to purchase another game based on WW2 if it delivers on gameplay though.
I started on the easiest difficulty setting as I do with most games straight out of the box. This allows me to complete as much of the game as possible before something new catches my eye and I devote no more time to the original game. I've completed two chapters. The game is easy so far. Easy as in if you can't shoot a Nazi, feel free to walk up to him, fumble with your buttons until you find the one assigned to melee attack and then pop him in the face with your rifle butt. That's OK for right now. I'm sure it will get harder, and if I remember correctly there's two more difficulty settings.
The game attempts to come off as being "epic". I started the game and immediately found myself entrenched with a few squadmates. I had a Garand at my disposal which is sufficient enough for killing Nazi's. I brought it up to my shoulder and started finding enemies using my iron sights. I'm a BIG fan of iron sights in games. It adds a sense of realism that is not present when a game uses crosshairs. The only problem is you need to know how the Developers use iron sights. That is what's my sight picture supposed to look like? Is the target supposed to be on top of the front sight or do I cover it? I would burn through close to a full clip (I think it's 7 or 8 shots) with the Garand before I saw an enemy fall. In any case, it wasn't long before a tank rolled in and took out my entire trench. Credits rolled and the intro title screen to the game started. Great. I've been dropped immediately into action with no idea what I'm doing in an attempt to raise my blood pressure and SUCK ME INTO THE GAME! The WW2 atmosphere is to overused for that to be affective anymore. You want to suck me in? Do something new please.
After the intro to the game is finished, it goes to a cut scene of you in a plane, about to jump on D-Day. This is OK, but again, I've seen Band of Brothers a million times now. and while I welcome games that try to emulate the feel of the series, I don't take well to games that completely rip it off and follow it almost to the letter. I mean who cares if your plane is on fire, YOU DO NOT JUMP UNTIL YOU SEE THE GREEN LIGHT SOLDIER! The use of the F-word was a little bit overdone in this section as well. I generally take well to appropriate swearing in a game, but already this is getting to be a little to much. The cutscene continues to your parachute landing. It was alright, it was kind of neat seeing flak around you, and planes going down etc.
So, I've landed without my unit. I didn't see that coming. Ok, ok, I did see that coming. What I really didn't see coming was the fact that I would land with absolutely no weapon! Haha, yeah that's right, no weapon and no friendlies in sight. This might get interesting after all! I'm not above throwing my helmet at a Nazi ala Tom Sizemore as Sergeant Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan. That would in fact be cool and an homage to something WW2 related besides Band of Brothers. But no, I scurry down a dirt road following my HUD objective indicator to meet up with another guy with no enemies in sight. My partner now informs me that I need a weapon so he throws me his .45. Ugh, not exactly what I was hoping for in an iron sights only game, but at least it's something.
The first enemy encounter I had with my new .45 introduced the first glimpse at how squad tactics are handled in the game. It's actually pretty neat and I look froward to exploring it further. Basically by hitting the BACK button on your controller you pause the game. It gives you an isometric view of the battlefield and you are allowed to focus your view on different elements. Battlefield elements such as each of your squadmates, enemies, and location of your orders are selectable. I was ordered to find cover behind a stone fence and provide covering fire against two Germans while my squad leader flanked them and took them out. This was pretty neat except for the fact that I still only had a .45 and felt relatively helpless. Covering fire with a handgun means a lot of burning through ammo and not killing anything. I don't like that. Regardless, this was about being an Indian and not a Chief, so when ordered to provide covering fire, I'll fling lead and reload like nobody's business. The enemy was flanked and subsequently slaughtered. Meh, it's training I guess, but I like to do the killing.
Next up, my unit received an order to take out a couple of AA guns. This mission went along alright except I really didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I used my pistol to attempt to suppress the enemy behind a wall and eventually just took to flanking them myself and killing them. I'm not sure if I missed an order here or not. In either case, I was running really low on ammo. The interface for placing a satchel charge on the AA gun was standard fair. Press a button, and a mini cutscene loads showing you fondling a bag from over your shoulder. At this point a timer starts and you need to find some cover. Our next AA gun had a bit of a surprise in store for me. Again, it was manned by three or four Germans. I quickly ran out of pistol ammo and started pursuing other options for a weapon. I ran up to my squadmates hoping there was perhaps an option to take their weapon, since they were ineffective at killing things at this point, but that didn't seem to be an option. Now I had also ran up to bodies we had previously killed in order to take a weapon, but none were found. Now I was stuck. So, I ran up to an enemy and pistol whipped the living hell out of him until he died. He took some health out of me as well, but oh baby was it worth it to finally get my hands on a KAR 98. :)
03-06-05 8:15 am.
I gave the game a couple of hours last night with a slight Halo 2 break in the middle. The single player is more of the same, move unit to engage, suppressing fire, flank, kill. I stopped at a section against an MG42 that is giving me particular troubles. I have yet to figure out a way to flank it. I'm sure there's a hole in a building somewhere I just haven't found. I've been given access to grenades. They're OK, but it seems like you have one option as to how far to throw them. I see no difference in the length of my throw based upon where I'm looking. I've also noted a distinct lack of the sound of the Garand clip ejecting. I pointed this out on a message board where one of the Developers posts, and he said that the sound is there but it has just been toned down a lot. And that most likely you wouldn't even hear it in a heavy firefight. I'm sure he's right, but I want it louder.
I tried multiplayer briefly last night. I optimatched into some games and got stuck spectating until the game was over. Not fun. I bounced around and never found a game starting. I also started my own game, and waited for 10 minutes and no one joined. A failed attempt at multiplayer indeed. Halo 2 has spoiled the Xbox live aspect of every game out there.
03-10-05
I am really starting to feel an addiction to this game. Long has it been since a single player campaign has kept me up at night just trying to get a little bit further. JUST TO THE NEXT SAVE POINT! I'm tired. I'm all but falling asleep at work. I still haven't played any multiplayer. I am however scheduled to explore multiplayer with some Geezers tonight.
As soon as I started the tank missions I was hooked. Controlling the tank as a unit, then an infantry unit becomes very frantic, and very exciting. This game is awesome and being only about half-way through the easiest campaign I feel it was more than worth the money. It's hard even on the easiest setting. I'm not sure how I'll survive the other three difficuties.
I'll update with some multiplayer impressions tomorrow.
3-12-05
I played multiplayer for about an hour and half with some Geezers (www.geezergamers.com) on Thursday. A great time was had by all. The multiplayer aspect of this game is very good, but it's not what I would call great. We had a total of four people playing and switched it up between playing axis and allies 2vs2 stylez. We ended up trying three different maps/game types.
The maps themselves are not as open or as big as I expected. Of course, the last WW2 game I've played is the Red Orchestra mod for UT2K4 (http://www.redorchestra.clanservers.com/). I really don't even know how big the maps in RO are, but the bottom line is they FEEL big. When I hit the edge of map in that game, I am out in the middle of nowhere far from the action. In BIA you go what feels like 25 feet scaled in either direction and your at the map edge. I felt cramped. 2 out of the three maps I played felt like they were about 50 feet wide by 500 feet long. The game types seem to warrant this map style (get from point A to point B without getting shot).
Communication is key in the four player game. You command a squad or 3 men, and your partner controls a squad of three men. The voice communication kept breaking up and echoing. It was unreliable at best, and for the most part un-useable. There is no host migration like in Halo 2. Our host told me he was on an 1856/384 DSL line. I don't know how much this bandwidth played into the voice communication problems. I didn't notice any lag really. I can't say I missed shots or got killed because of lag. I also received a dirty disc error which caused me to drop from the game, reboot my Xbox and reconnect. I have NEVER received that error in any other game.
I won't go into the specifics of gametypes here but they were very fun. The defensive team always seems to hold an advantage simply because they are on the defensive. I think that's realistic and I liked it. It was very frustrating to play Allies, but switching to the Axis team provided a completely different gameplay style which was nice.
Overall, I think if you have a good group of people to play with online it can be very fun. I would like to see a patch for some of the voice issues.
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