Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is the third in a series of WW2 First-Person Shooters based on the true story of an actual squad in the 101st Airborne division.  The series is known for its interesting storyline and relatively remarkable AI.  This entry into the series boasts those same characteristics and as a single player experience, it is one of the best in the genre.

   Hell’s Highway’s setting is Holland during the ambitious yet infamously ill-fated Operation: Market Garden.  The Holland countryside is rendered beautifully and almost seems like an idyllic “happy place” from some overworked Company Man’s stress reduction techniques.  That is until the peace is broken by the shouts of Germans intent on your demise and the scything sound of a machine gun nest opening up on your position.  There’s no in-game music; that is reserved for the title screen and cinematic, which is something I like.  Having no music keeps the immersion level high, which needs all the help it can get, as above the enemy squads are suppression meters, which indicate whether or not a squad is well, suppressed, or not.  The suppression meter is there to help implement the tactic the game was designed for you to use, which is to have one or several of your squads hail firepower down on your foes to the point of them being unable to retaliate while you sneak around to their flank and open fire from a position where they have little or no cover.

     Now you may be thinking, “Ugh, so I have to command squads in addition to the regular stresses of the FPS environment?”, but don’t worry, BiA’s squad system is as easy and intuitive as it gets.  Holding down the right mouse button selects a squad, bringing up that group’s particular icon and wherever you place the icon is wherever the squad will run to. Squads come in three flavors: Assault (run-n’-gun), Base of Fire (suppression) and Special Weapons ( Germans go BOOOM!).  If more than one squad is at your disposal in a given scenario you can scroll through them via the tab key.  Also, if the squad’s icon is placed over a target, it will change graphics to indicate an attack command.  If controlling squads seems completely unappealing to you, even with such easy interface, there is still little to worry about as the squads are not completely necessary to your survival, especially at the game’s initial difficulty settings.

     Sure, the AI is considerable for a game in this genre: the Nazi forces will coordinate with each other to mount devastating fire patterns, remain under cover and even move when their current cover becomes compromised (like when you order your bazooka squad to demolish it).  While this is all neat and good, it doesn’t change the fact that all the German squads you face will be using the same tactics and you’ll never be facing more than three squads at one time and they’ll NEVER throw grenades o_O.  This made Hell’s Highway, for me, a cake walk when compared to the, albeit sometimes foolish, Japanese AI in Call of Duty: WaW, whose insane, grenade-happy mobs , dynamic attack patterns and ambushes created an intense and difficult bloodbath through which to wade, especially on the higher difficulty settings which I was happily able to access immediately after install.  Something I was unable to do with Hell’s Highway.

  It’s almost worth it to go through Hell’s Highway the first time on the easiest setting just so you can get to the Authentic difficulty setting (the game’s highest (of a mere three!)) as fast as possible as it is only unlocked after you clear the game on a lesser setting.  Authentic setting is where the game really shines and it’s too bad, as if not for my integrity to explore each game thoroughly as a reviewer, I might have not bothered with it.  In Authentic, you lose all interface icons except for the squad indicators when they are selected.  That means you have no suppression meters, no targeting reticule (iron sights: yipee), no compass ring (though you can still access the recon map, which so detailed its sick), no ammo counter and no, I say, no on-screen titles for weapons lying on the ground (Hallelujah! Amen!).  It’s just you and the Krauts, baby. Well,you and your damn squad mates.  Not all the time though.

     Hell’s Highway mixes it up nice with mission types, having you running through some areas solo for at least one mission per the game’s ten chapters.  The setting variance is nice as well, having you traipsing through Holland farm country, through a burning city, a non-burning city, burning countryside, a bombed out hospital or various burning and non-burning houses.  Lots of burning, I guess.  And plenty of non-burning, too.  A nice mix really, and although the encounter scenarios are much the same , the missions might be given some added flavor by having you placing explosives on 88mm cannons or Panzer IVs in order to destroy them, or you may even be in control of a Sherman tank.

     Yeah, the weapons are the garden variety for this type of shooter (Garands, Thompson SMGs, mp40s, frag grenades, B.A.R.s etc.), but the tank is a real gas in this particular game.  The controls are simple and you even get to have the commander sticking out of the top porthole in order to take 7.62mm madness to your German adversaries.  Just watch for Panzershrecks , enemy Panzers and even assault squads who may have you using the “dig-in” command to pop your commander back into the safety of his armored war machine to leave these foes to the dubious mercy of your main cannon.  A particularly well placed shot is rewarded with a slow-motion close up of its victim’s horrifying ends, and with the tank that often means limbs and torso’s flying through the air.  This feature also works when you’re not in the tank and it’s sweet to see a particularly annoying foe go down with brains and blood swirling about the bullet wound in his head at slow speed.  If this feature sounds annoying to you, don’t fret; it can be disabled.

Another feature unique to this series is the “dig-in” command mentioned earlier, which can also be accessed when not in the tank.  With the press of the “Q” key while you are behind cover you will duck behind said cover and as long as that cover remains structurally intact, you will not, no matter what, be hit by small arms enemy fire.  It’s better than crouching, though during the time you are dug in, the camera switches to a third person view which allows for easier directing of squads and grenade throwing.  If you wish to shoot, you must push forward and you will pop out from behind cover in order to fire at your enemies.  However, you will still be in third-person so you must rely on the targeting reticule to aim.  “Dig-in” is an extremely effective means of destroying your Nazi targets without exposing yourself to damage.  In the first two difficulty settings it makes the game much too easy but in Authentic, the lack of a reticule means you will be jumping out of “dig-in” mode and doing the old “crouch-and-lean” to hit your foes in the heat of heavy fire.  Or you can jump up, place a few headshots and crouch back down though you’ll have to listen to your annoying squad members griping about you being without cover while you do it.

     Yes, squad mate chatter: whether it’s wondering when they’ll get orders next, or bitching about the lack of cover you’ve provided them, can be ear-biting but you can always just send them to their deaths.  After all they respawn, healed up and ready to eat lead again, at every checkpoint.  Unless you’ve become too attached to them via the games extended cinematic cut scenes.  The game is based on a true story and by god (yeah I know it’s not capitalized, I was referring to Set) it will be told.  To Gearbox’s credit the scenes are beautiful (barring some uneven texturing) and the main plot point concerning a tragedy in the past unfolds in reverse, piquing interest.  The dialogue is smoked Gouda though, and war film fans will recognize many of the lines and their deliveries from those films even though this is a unique story.  In the beginning, newcomers to the franchise will be confused as to who’s who and what happened to who’s who, but in the end it will all make sense.  Besides, if you do things right, and play through it on Authentic difficulty, you’ll have two runs through the story to get everything straight.  And I know you will want to get your money’s worth.

     Not that it’s much, being that this game is a good thirty dollars less expensive than others in its genre, unless you go for the collector’s edition, which is only ten dollars cheaper than the others.  There are no multiplayer goodies in the Collector’s Edition, seeing as how the multiplayer in this game is bare bones and pretty much blows.  If you want multiplayer, get Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: WaW or for god sake’s man: Left 4 Dead!  The CE delivers actual physical goods including a game guide (covers the first chapter only), a mini comic book, a map of the Area of Operations and best of all: a nifty Sgt, Baker (you, in the game, not the guy from the Primus song... although maybe…nah) action figure! He is detailed well and comes with like forty accessories.  I’m still playing with him even though I am done with the game.  That’s better than a canteen you can’t use, right?

     Not that I would recommend this game over World at War for even the single player aspect, it’s too easy, but still it’s a marvelous FPS with an interesting story, beautiful graphics, fun environments and AI enemies who care more about their safety than killing you. Maybe they spend all that time behind cover trying to invent grenades.

-jr

Score: 7.5 Good and a half