A Shockingly Unique WWII Shooter.
We live in a world where the WWII first person shooter is not only common but redundant. When you add up the total number of Brothers in Arms, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games- with the exception of 4 of course- you get a number that looks a little like an 8 rotated 90 degrees (infinity). The constant output of WWII games had certainly lowered the anticipation of the Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway release. Despite the redundancy I decided to take a look at this game and I am certainly glad I did.
Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway is certainly not your typical WWII first person shooter. Hells Highway successfully implements a squad and cover system into a WWII game and here's the zinger, it works. Not only do these mechanics work, they work well. Going into Hells Highway I hadn't played a Brothers in Arms games prior to this. As you can imagine I was pleasently shocked to find this uniqueness. The cover system gives the game a nice Rainbow Six feel while the squad system nicely adds a subtle hint of strategy. While your squademates seem to consistantly die when not behind the confines of a large concrete block; the ability to order them around does shake things up a bit.
Going into Hells Highway completely blind certainly effected my ability to follow the story closely. The game does a poor job of explaining the past events. Many times I found myself completely puzzled by some of the cutscenes not to mention they didn't run the best. The cutscenes consistantly loaded the environment late and the character's actions were very joggy. While the voice work on Hell's Highway is above par the syncing and mouth movements of the characters are very sub par. This tended to lessen the experience for me.
While I completely understand if you shunned Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway from the beginning I definitely think it would be worth your while to check this one out, especially if the last WWII shooter you played was Call of Duty 3.
