Previews// Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

[i]Cliff Caswell writes for the British Army's Soldier Magazine and has covered operations in the former Yugoslavia - mainly Bosnia and Kosovo - as well as Northern Ireland and Iraq.

He has also been on exercises in the Falkland Islands, Jordan, USA, Czech Republic and Germany. Most recently he went back to The Falklands and on to Argentina to interview veterans of the 1982 war.[/i]

How much you will enjoy the latest Brothers in Arms offering is likely to depend on whether you have the appetite for yet another World War II-themed title. Battle fatigue is starting to set in with the genre, with games offering near-identical experiences. Graphic depictions of fighting, blood and gore, slow-motion shell shock sequences, John Williams-esque music and over-emotive storylines have become the disturbing norm. There is only so much intense combat a man can take before he cracks and that cracking point is drawing increasingly near.

When Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan burst onto cinema screens in 1998, some critics predicted that the gruesome portrayal of battle would forever change the face of war movies.

Nearly a decade has past, however, and that prophecy has yet come to pass in the film world. What Spielberg’s masterpiece has spawned, on the other hand, is a seemingly endless parade of World War II titles across successive generations of consoles.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have stormed the Normandy beaches; that I’ve shot down bucketloads of Japanese aircraft at Pearl Harbour and sniped at German officers in Stalingrad. Like the Ryan battle scenes, they all blur into one endless jumble of smoke, incoming mortars and the cries of wounded comrades.

The saturated marketplace of World War II action gives the team behind Ubisoft’s latest Brothers in Arms title a difficult job – how to set the game apart from the rest of the battlefield. But this squad-based shooter has two things that make it different.

The first is the military direction provided by Gearbox Software’s Colonel John Antal - a retired U.S. Army heavyweight whose influence has become a defining force behind the project. The other is the focus on realistic tactics, which must be mastered to achieve objectives.

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway also stands out with its storyline, which is set against the backdrop of an Allied defeat rather than the glory of D-Day or the Russian front.

The Arnhem engagement (Operation Market Garden) of September 1944 was an Allied military disaster that resulted in thousands of men being killed or captured. It is during this, the largest airborne invasion in history, that you assume the role of Sgt Matt Baker, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne.

“Arnhem was a close run thing but ultimately we did have to withdraw our forces,” said Antal, an established military historian who served in Korea, Germany and the former Yugoslavia during his 30 years of service in the United States army.

“But the game shows that each soldier plays his part in the wider battle. You get to use real tactics in realistic environments, and you will be placed at an advantage or disadvantage depending on how you employ your weapon systems.”