Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Following the previous games, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway puts you in the shoes of Sergent Matt Baker as you lead a squad and fight in the historical Operation Market Garden. The game leaves a good first impression as it helps you get back in touch with the band of solders you have learned to know and love in the first two games. It also gives you a little refresher of the first two games if you haven't played them in a while. While it does take a while to get into, it does a good job of letting you connect with all of the characters and setting and helps you get a realization of what Matt Baker is going through as he loses some of his best friends.

The game has an optional tutorial at the beginning as you trudge through a German filled hospital, it gives

you a good feel of the basic controls but the gameplay is limited as you don't have a squad to order around. After you reach the end of the first level, you begin to see what this game does best. The tutorial then gives you so me fairly good instructions on the basics on how to control a squad. While the idea of shooting while ordering people around may seem complicated at first, the game does a great job on keeping it as simple as possible while allowing you to do some pretty complex tactics with just a few mouse clicks. The four F's come into play very frequently when encountering enemies, Find 'em, Fix'em, Flank 'em, and Finish 'em. You are constantly looking for ways to find a way around the enemy while keeping them pinned, this makes it intense because without cover, your as good as dead. The health system in Hell's Highway is very ingenious as you can only take 1 maybe 2 hits but it relis on a "luck" system if you will, the worse your "luck" is, the redder the screen gets and the greater the chance you will be shot. While the game doesn't mention anything about the health system, i dont remember being shot more than once or twice before dieing.

While the games main feature, the squad comabt, is near perfect, it sometimes puts you on your own on certain missions. This is a shame because the regualr shooting elements arn't as good as games such as Gears of War or Call of Duty. But this doesnt come into play very often and the solo missions, more often than not, have a purpose. Going solo outside of these missions is a big no no though, if you attempt to go in alone on the squad based parts your as good as dead. Even though the gameplay asnt as good when you go in solo, its still very enjoyable.

One of the games strong points has to be the cutscenes, there are several of them and they give you a little breather inbetween all of the action. The plot does have some loopholes in the game but compaired to other WWII shooters out there, it is the best. The storyline in very enriching and you will often find yourself feeling bad for some of the characters and biting your nails in some of the scenes hoping someone pulls through. Though if you havnt played through the first two games, i recommend you pick those up before you play this one, the plot relies on the first two games if you want it to have any impaxt at all. You are very connected to the characters and this makes it alot more enjoyable as the story goes on, some men might not make it through and this knowlege can make it very emotional when someone passes on.


While the gameplay can be good, and the stoyline can be very gripping, the game isnt without its flaws. Some graphical glitches, mainly with the shadows can make you focus on them more than the storyline. There are also some collision detection problems with the cover system and the controls can seem a bit clumsy, those complains seem minimal when you look at the big picture. Overall if your the kind of person who isnt tired of the WWII games that have come out in the past 5 years, you can enjoy this game's attempt to be original. Not very often do i find myself playing a WWII shooter just for the single player experience but for this game, it was easy to make an exception.