Brothers in Arms is definitely a FPS through and through although it provides a somewhat slower paced experience than other FPS games.
All enemy teams (small groups of a few enemies each) are marked with icons above them which indicates their suppression level. If it’s red, then the enemy isn’t suppressed at all and will fire on you and your teams at will. If the icon is completely gray, though, they are suppressed and they will fire but only from cover, so they are far less threatening. When enemies are suppressed you can try to flank them or otherwise maneuver either yourself or one of your teams.
Sometimes you control zero teams, and there are a few places in the game where you are solo. I’ve heard complaints of these segments but I have enjoyed them thoroughly. Sometimes you control a single team, but the most I’ve controlled so far (I’m just over half way through the single player game) is two teams. Usually you have an assault team, which means you usually have three soldiers with automatic rifles and grenades, and then either a machine gun team or a bazooka team.
Managing your teams is easy. You switch between the teams using the B button, and then once you’ve selected one you hold the left shoulder button and move your view around to see possible locations to move them to or enemies to suppress. You can also direct them to destroy cover, and that can be useful when enemies are behind a wood fence or something.
Once you give them an order, they move there, and they will fight all on their own, doing a good job suppressing enemies or killing them, but you can direct them to suppress a particular enemy team if you wish. Once you’ve positioned them and they are holding down the enemies, you can then move your character to flank enemies and pick them off. Enemies aren’t brilliant, but they usually know when they’ve been flanked and will fight back or retreat.
This provides a somewhat slower paced but very visceral experience. Battles have a somewhat puzzle-like feel to them, but the game does a good job of tying it together with an interesting although somewhat confusing story, a good cast of characters, very good but not exceptional graphics, and some really nice cinematic touches. For instance, the game will zoom in and go into slow mode when you do an especially great kill, which is really neat and makes you feel like a bad ass.
As I mentioned, the game has a cover system and it’s simple to move up to a window or some other barrier (and as you can imagine there are barriers everywhere!) and dig in. So when you’re taking damage you can usually just take cover, wait a few seconds while you heal up, and then push the left stick to pop up and shoot. The selection of weapons is great, and includes single shot and automatic rifles, machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, and more.
There has been one tank segment where you control a tank, go through a fairly linear train yard sequence, blow up stuff, and that was a lot of fun. Other than that, you mostly control teams, and occasionally you go solo. I’m playing the game on easy mode and I’ve died tons, but it has a great check point and save system so you never lose much progress. Kind of like Halo 3 and Half Life 2, the game is challenging but never frustrating.
Graphically it looks very good, as I’ve already mentioned, and it has a nice, gritty feel to it. The environments, which all take place in a bombed out Holland, look realistic, kills are bloody, and the in-game dialogue uses some adult language but is tasteful and well spoken. The game slows down here and there, but never to the point that it takes away from the experience.
I have been really burned out on first person shooters recently and wasn’t even going to buy this game. I finally bought it just because I figured it was worth checking out while I wait for Fable 2 and Fallout 3, which launch later this month. What I’ve found is this is the best FPS I’ve played for a long, long time. It is easily as good as any of the best I’ve played, and I find myself playing it for long sessions, with head phones on, completely mesmerized by the experience.