Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Knowledge about the story going into the game:
         
         Very little knowledge going into the game. I knew it took place during World War II, and that there were other games in the franchise prior to Hell's Highway. I haven't played the other Brothers in Arms games.

Opinions after the game:
        
         Brother's in Arms: Hell's Highway is a game that tells a great recounting of the events of Operation Market Garden during World War II through the eyes of Matthew Baker's squad. Unfortunately, outside of events occurring during combat, it is hard to find a meaningful connection between their personal back stories and their roles in the squad.

          The game does a half-decent job of explaining the characters that are from the last game in the series, mainly by bringing up old conflicts the squad has had in the past, but not going into much detail about them. The game alludes to a past event involving a squad member that was found near the dead bodies of two German soldiers, and two other squad members. The event had a traumatic effect on the squad's leader Matthew Baker who knows what happened but won't tell the squad, and the significance of the event is slowly revealed over the course of the game. Unfortunately, in the midst of Operation Market Garden this event, which I am guessing was important in the last Brothers in Arms game, is hard to care about as much in Hell's Highway. It has even less bearing on my recollection of the story because nobody outside of the main character even seems to care about it that much, or has moved on. Even the game itself didn't find it that important.

       The interesting parts of the story were the things having a more direct effect on the characters. Small subplots involving a German child and his father, and the new member of the squad, Franky, were more easily connected to the events of Operation Market Garden. The game isn't afraid to kill off characters either, and doesn't shy away from what would be considered mature in today's video games, like women and children being killed during the war. The games story was serious enough that I wouldn't be surprised if the next Brothers in Arms game touched on the Holocaust and concentration camps. Brother's in Arms: Hell's Highway uses the backdrop of World War II realistically.

Knowledge about the combat going into the game:

       What was shown in the commercials. I was not even aware it was squad based.

Opinions after the game:

       I am not a fan of squad-based combat, and tend to shy away from tactical shooters, assuming that the squad AI was inferior to my own human brain. I would much rather enjoy running into an area with my teammates football fields behind me as I dive towards the enemies with reckless disregard for my own well-being, and surviving. As a result of that, this game was rather hard for me. 

      Seeing a squad react as intelligently as they do in Hell's Highway makes me wonder how they react in other squad-based games. When I say react intelligently, I mean simple things like when I order a squad to run into an open area, while under fire, and after their initial "your wish is my command" stupidity, scorning their decisions and running to any cover they can find to avoid death, instead of simply standing in the open getting their asses handed to them. Your hands, by the way, will be full of ass by the end of Hell's Highway, because this game was hard as hell. Maybe I just suck at squad based games, but I found myself dying because of thing like misjudging the amount of enemies and trying to advance, or ordering a squad to come to me and having enemies open fire on them right away. I never felt like any of these mistakes were because the game was cheap or the AI wasn't reacting correctly, though. I was just being stupid, or outsmarted.

       The enemy AI is equally intelligent, understanding when I am flanking them if they see me and opening fire on me instead of my teammates, or attempting to run back to another squad if their squad members are dying. Seeing that an enemy, when under fire, will only peak out of his cover a small amount, and rarely land shots because of it was a rather nice touch, instead of having them standing up out of cover every time they attacked, and ducking out of the way when a bullet lands particularly close to their head were a nice additions. Not once did I see an enemy standing in the open, or stuck against a part of the environment unable to move, which is good to see in this generation of video games.

       In the way of weapons they seemed balanced enough, but none of them were very interesting (This is World War II so I didn't expect much, anyway). Body parts can come off in this game, but not when an enemy is dead, then they become a static part of the environment, so you can't sadistically dismember a man, Gears of War style. The game has no melee combat at all, which I found myself not minding since getting that close to an enemy is near impossible anyways. Something I did find unfortunate was grenades, mainly that they sucked, and that the trajectory of them was impossible to predict. The main problem is that grenades tend to bounce off of your cover, or land a tiny bit too far or in front or in back of a target, and do no damage as a result.

Knowledge about graphics/sound going into the game:

      What I'd seen in the TV spot, which did not do the game's graphics justice.

Opinions after the game:

      The graphics were far beyond what I'd expected. I had seen the commercial which showed a blurry mess of over-contrasted colors that does not reflect the games graphics at all.  Smaller explosions don't look that convincing, but larger ones, like when a tank or a building explodes, are rather impressive. The fire effects in particular I found to be realistic compared to what I've seen in other games. Draw distance effects, and the blurriness of objects farther away are used to great effect, most noticeably in a particular level that starts you in a large graveyard with a cathedral in the distance. The character models are large and detailed, comparable to the player models in Battlefield: Bad Company. The faces, and the subtle expressions the characters make are impressive as well, but are only really on display in the in-game cutscenes.

       The cutscenes in the game are impressive, showing emotion in the characters well, and using the camera to great effect. The first and last cutscenes were the ones that impressed me the most, and a particular cutscene in the middle of the game ( The one where it's raining; if you play it you'll know the scene). The environments shot in-engine with the characters put the graphics on display nicely, only showing small glitches like small texture pops one or two times over the course of the entire game. The faces of the characters look believable, and in particular in the last cutscene, which has the main character crying, and a lot of bad news being broken overall, has the characters acting believably. I did not find any issues with mouths being out of sync with the voices either, although when characters yell it never seems like their mouths are opened enough for the all the noise they are making which can look strange.

     As for the sound their is not anything to complain about. Ears ring when explosions occur nearby. Guns sound believable for World War II era guns. Voice acting is fantastic. Distance of explosions and crashes sound believable as well. The only problem is that sometimes noises during cutscenes drown out dialogue for instance in a cutscene where the character is having an inner monologue with himself, almost to the point of a whisper, and in the background there is gunfire, mortars exploding, rain, and other people talking and it became hard to make out anything he said.

Knowledge about multiplayer going into the game:

     I wasn't expecting anything meaningful.

Opinions after the game:

     I was right. The World War II multiplayer game worth buying comes out later this year. Worth noting is that there's about 300 achievement points that need to be earned in multiplayer. One achievement has you logging in and playing on September 17th, the anniversary of Operation Market Garden, I have to assume. This game came out on September 23rd. That is awful. That achievement is worth 50 goddamn points.

Buy or Not:

I rented it. I don't intend on buying it, either. The story was worth experiencing, but the multiplayer is nothing special, which multiplayer is going to have to be to make me stop playing Modern Warfare or Team Fortress 2.
There aren't really any achievements to get after you beat it either, since the rest are multiplayer, and the last difficulty setting doesn't get you any points.