Another solid Brothers In Arms title.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the latest title in the WWII first person shooter series by Gearbox. The Brothers in Arms series follows the adventures of Staff Sergeant Matt Baker of the 101st Airborne Regiment. Although a first person shooter, the series is remarkable for it's emphasis on squad based tactics. The player controls a number of squads, and to be successful in battle, the player must use the squads to pin the enemy down with firepower, then flank the enemy's position, and finish him off. In general, its not possible to survive these battles without using the squads. So that said, how is Hell's Highway?

Hell's Highway tells its story in cut scenes. Staff Sergeant Matt Baker has seen a lot bad during his tour, and the ghosts and guilt are taking their toll. Baker is suffering from combat fatigue, and the storyline follows his personal struggle.

The storyline, however, has little to do with the game play. Outside of the long cutscenes, almost nothing refers to the plot -- its just the standard combat. One gets the feeling that the story line was put together after the game play was finished. I suppose there is no harm in it, but to tout the storyline as an important feature of the game is to overstate the effect.

Hell's Highway plays almost exactly like all previous titles. Which is to say quite well. Squad based controls are simple. You pick a squad, then point where you want the squad to either move to, or attack. The game's AI handles all the details. The AI characters move fairly directly to where you tell them to go, dodge attacks along the way, and automatically take cover and return fire. This is important to game flow -- as Baker, you only have to worry about the big picture of where squads should go relative to the enemy -- you do not have to get bogged down in details of controlling your AI squad members.

Overall, your squad mates aren't the brightest. They can keep the enemy pinned down with gun fire, but they often can't kill them. That task is pretty much left up to you. So even with all the elements of squad control, in the end, you still have a lot of traditional fps action to do. I liked the balance, but I think it would have been neat to just direct the battle once in a while from a vantage point. Another problem: your mates are tend to take a straight route to the location you direct them, which often puts them into the line of enemy fire. To save your team, you can often set up an intermediate point that will route them from the worst, and from there they can make it to the intended point with little damage.

Enemy AI is a bit docile. Oh, they fight aggressively and shoot rather accurately. But they are easily flanked - you'd think they too would be versed and thus prepared for such maneuvers. But no, they stay aligned in their attack and forget to cover the side approaches. I would have preferred more challenge beyond just accurate fire. That said, the map makers do take care to present some traps in the soldier placement.

There is a bit of diversity in the game play. Most missions are the standard squad based battles. But a few missions involve solo efforts. These are generally ok, although one mission does stand out, as you start with only a pistol against a yard full of machine gun toting guards. There are also a few missions where you operate a tank. Tank operation is very simple, and thanks to unlimited ammo, also rather boring. There is no challenge when one can just keep the canon trigger pressed.

Overall, the battles are fun -- but I have an important recommendation. The game defaults to putting a red reticule over enemy placements. The reticule is used to indicate the amount that the enemy is suppressed by your gunfire. An enemy that is suppressed, cannot return fire, and thus is ready to be attacked on the side. The inadvertent effect of the reticule, however, is that it tips you off to the enemy's location. This takes away from surprises and can make combat rather arcade like. A simple fix is to turn off the reticule in the Game's Options section. Doing so really makes a big difference in the gaming experience -- surprises and traps makes the game far more interesting and fun.


There is a nice selection of weapons, and more importantly, the weapons feel different enough that there is always a good reason for selecting one over another in different battle situations. Often in WWII fps games, limited ammo leads one to pick up the enemy's weapons -- that way you can grab their ammo as you kill the soldiers. In Hell's Highway, you can find parachutes of ammo, which makes it possible to stick with American weapons, if that's your preference.

There is a combat option that allows you to duck behind anything that stands between you and the enemy. Think of Gears-of-War ducking system, although Gears system worked a little better. What is nice, though, is that wooden objects take damage from gun fire, so a wooden fence, for example, provides only temporary cover before it is destroyed by enemy gun fire.

The game provides a generous selection of controller button configurations, which is good, because I did not like the default settings. Aside from controller layouts, almost everything is configurable - sound, brightness, visual layouts, violence levels, etc..

The video quality is typical over sharpened Xbox 360 graphics. Frame rates were smooth, although I did notice some problems in the cut scenes. Sound was very good with loud rewarding explosions and gun fire. Voice acting was good, although the dialog during battles was repetitive and monotonous. Soldiers love to tell you to get down and voice complaints about the lack of progress in a battle. There is an option to turn voices off in battle, but ironically, the lack of background yelling becomes missed very shortly. Slow motion replays of particularly tricky or high body count maneuvers come up occasionally - it would be nice to be able to save those clips for home movie night.

Hell's Highway is about a 10 hour game. More if you turn off some of the game defaults meant to aid the player. And there are multiplayer maps as well. Most players should start off on the difficult play mode. Once you complete the game, and even higher mode is unlocked -- but if you're inpatient, simply go into the game options screen and you can turn off the game aids that default to on in the easier levels.

Hell's Highway is an enjoyable game, if only because the Brothers in Arms series really has an edge over most fps games thanks to its great squad play. That said, I probably won't be replaying it on the unlocked highest level -- once was enough, thank you. The game ends with the promise of another sequel. Maybe in another year, I'll be ready for another go.