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Brothers In Arms Hell's Highway

Harsahil

By Harsahil,
in Games

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Exclusive Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Preview

 

biahh2008090502241831rg1.jpg

 

Back in the days when the World War II genre was dying a slow death, with no COD4 in sight to revive it, the first Brothers In Arms title came like a fresh whiff or air, bringing with it real battlefield tactics and allowing you to step in the boots of a real commander. Nearly three years after the first in the series, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 tasted critical and commercial success, Gearbox Studios readies Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway (BiA:HH) to storm our consoles and PC in glorious HD. The ANGRY Pixel got it hands on PC preview code of BiA:HH to get a first hand taste of what the game has in store for us.

 

 

BiA:HH relives the ill-fated Operation Market Garden through the eyes of Sgt. Matt Baker that had Allied forces trying to punch through the German defenses from Holland into Germany. Baker, now a war weary veteran leads his men through well entrenched German positions, occasionally succumbing to flashbacks of battles fought and brothers lost in the war. The game starts off in a run-down hospital that has taken the full brunt of a German Luftwaffe bombing raid. Dark corridors, broken hospital equipment and furniture dot the level, having been faithfully recreated from actual photographs of a real hospital that bore the burnt of a similar air-raid.

 

 

Enabling the tutorial mode will let the game run you through how the game controls as you navigate through the corridors, familiarizing yourself with the concepts of taking cover, pinning down the Germans with suppressing fire and then finishing them off. The level ends with Matt Baker blown off his feet by a bomb. On recovering his senses, he finds himself staring down the barrel of a German gun. The game then cuts to three days earlier which sees the Airborne troops dropped down in Holland and battle their way through picturesque villages and street squares crawling with Germans. The preview ended with Baker leading his team through a blistering German attack to take down an 88mm cannon. The entire playthrough spanned across the first four chapters of the game.

 

 

It’s heartening to see that Gearbox has managed to stay as close as possible to the early target renders that wowed us a few years back. In its hi-def avatar, the game looks beautiful on the PC. From the derelict hospital level to the rolling countryside, everything is brought to life by the UT3 engine that is powering the game. One can simply not help but marvel at the beautiful meadows and trees laden with ripe fruits while guns boom at a distance. It presents a stark contrast against what Baker and his men are living through. The graphics handled beautifully with negligible screen-tearing and that too only in in-engine cutscenes. It’s worth mentioning that there seems to be a surprising number of cutscenes in the game. Thankfully, they can be skipped if you are on a second playthrough of the game. The transition from cutscene to game is seamless and very well executed.

 

 

The core gameplay remains the same as the previous BiA games so veterans of the series will have no problems diving right in. The Bazooka team is a new addition in your squad that helps you blow away well-entrenched German positions, but more of that, later. The game still subscribe to the tried and tested formula of finding the enemy, fixing him by suppressing fire, flanking him and finally finishing him off. Like the earlier games in the series, the 4F’s form the very spine of the game,. However, one major change this time around is that the set-pieces don’t seem to be as contrived as the earlier ones. While fixing and flanking are the best approach to finish off the enemy, the game doesn’t force you down that path. We were still able to take down the German’s pretty well by suppressing them and then picking them off one by one with some careful aiming down the gun sights.

 

 

The cover system works pretty well in such a scenario, allowing you to issue your orders from the safety of a wall and negotiate your squad to the best possible position. While in cover, the game shifts to a third person view where you can see Baker pressed against the wall or any other solid object that can stop the incoming hail of fire from the German positions. From this position you can also lean around or above the wall to take pot-shots at the enemy while still being relatively safe. During this, the view changes to an over-the-shoulder view for easier aiming. Pressing the middle mouse button lets you zoom in on the enemy for more precise aiming. Your squad is also intelligent enough to find its own cover if you happen to order them bang in the centre of incoming enemy fire. The only problem that we had with the cover system was that in while taking cover in cramped corners, the character models happen to impede our view while taking aim at the Jerries, forcing us to change our position to one that afforded a better view of the proceedings. Needless to say, this can get pretty annoying during a firefight.

 

 

Much like the COD series, there is no health bar to tell you how much damage you have already taken. When hit, the screen starts to redden finally turning to a dark hazy crimson shade. At that point, any enemy bullet will fatal. During this, you will also be temporarily deafened and all the sounds around you will be muted. Quickly going into cover will allow you to recover as the colors seep back in, the deafening explosions come roaring back to you and you are ready to pop back in into the fight. While negotiating from cover to cover, you can press the spacebar once, which will get Baker to start sprinting. In such a state, you can only steer him using the “A” and “D” keys, much like a car. Pressing the spacebar again or running into an obstacle with stop him in his tracks. Very helpful when you need to dash behind that fallen log of wood lying a distance away in an open field as the machine gun nest tries to make a sieve out of you. On a jarring note, when you try to climb up and down a staircase, the camera shudders in a nauseating manner. We really hope that it is fixed in the final version of the game.

 

 

The game seems to have done away with the Situational Awareness View that enabled you to zoom out of the battlefield to look around and find out better approaches. Instead, you have a standard map that marks out the objectives and positions of enemy and friendly units. However, before you can access these maps, you will have to go to a recon position, usually high up on a wind mill and press “E” to get better view of your surroundings. During this, the game takes control of your camera to show you something interesting going on in the background. During one such sequence, we saw the German troops dragging a young girl into the barn. Later on, once we had decimated the enemies, we walked into the barn to see the lifeless body of the young girl hanging from the barn ceiling. Enough to give you cold shivers! Sometimes the game will prompt you to press “E” where it will take control of your camera to show you something interesting and then give the control back to you, quite like Gears Of War.

 

 

Coming to the destructible cover, this is one significant new change from the earlier games. Gone are the days when you could crouch behind a rickety fence to shield yourself. Now it takes just a few rounds from the enemy to shatter it and leave you exposed to gunfire. The same goes for the enemy as well where you can shoot through wooden carriages or furniture. This adds a new dynamic to the world of BiA. Throw in the new Bazooka team into this and you have a whole new way of dealing with the situation at hand. Machine gun nests and enemies behind sand bags can be made short work off with the bazooka. It’s a beauty to watch your bazooka team take down the machine gun nest in the bell tower and watch it slowly sway and fall to the ground, taking the ill fated Germans with it. Sometimes, the explosions will trigger a slow-mo sequence where you see the hapless souls launched into the air by the impact of the explosion, limbs torn apart in the goriest fashion. A similar sequence also plays when you manage to get a neat headshot from a distance. Gimmicky they might be, but such sequences are triggered only occasionally so that they never get old.

 

 

Enemy as well as Allied AI is pretty smart, though a couple of times they did manage to get stuck behind a wall until we relived them of their misery. When pinned down, you will find the enemies blind firing at you which can be fatal at times. Sound effects are spot on. Guns sound authentic and so do the characters. Character models are neatly detailed, especially the eyes that look eerily alive. Lip syncing is still not up to the mark. Hints of Xbox achievements in one of the sort-of-collectibles where you have to find recon points and “Killroy was here” scrawled on the walls in the unlikeliest of the places by the allied soldiers. The presence of these in the PC version of the game suggests that the game might support achievements on Games for Windows. Unlockables also include pages from history that tell you the story behind the levels complete with authentic photographs. Fire looks beautiful with shimmer effect though explosions in slow-mo occasionally look ugly especially when the camera zooms in on it. Depth of field is well implemented, especially when aiming down the sights. A healthy spread of checkpoints ensures that there are hardly any frustrating moments. Neat touches like dirty nails on the character model’s hands bring to life a life spent in the foxholes and crawling through trenches.

 

 

While the game doesn’t completely revolutionize the shooter-strategy genre in any way, it does what it is supposed to do and does it good. Beautiful visuals, a keen eye for authenticity and an overall polish ensures that this game will find a shelf space in every gamers collection who is on the lookout for an authentic and chilling portrayal of what it was to be like in the shoes of a soldier as he fought against a well equipped and well trained enemy and at the same time, battled his personal demons as well.

 

The game releases on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on Sep 23rd, 2008.

 

In-game screenshots at the source

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