He ain’t heavy, he’s my Brother In Arms
Reviewed by OracleX
It's not easy being a WW2 First Person Shooter these days. Ever since Medal of Honor: Allied Assault blitzkrieged its way onto the relatively calm FPS scene in 2002, the gaming public has been hit by wave after wave of imitators, expansions, follow-ups and sequels, all keen on exploiting the new opening on the suddenly vulnerable market front.
Three years later, Brothers In Arms (BiA) faces some stiff opposition from games well entrenched in the fickle public opinion. First it has to take the fortified beachhead against veteran shooters such as MOHAA, then consolidate and defend against counterattacks by cult classics like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Hidden And Dangerous. It then has to push inwards fighting countless skirmishes with mediocre but numerous offerings like Pacific Assault, Mortyr and *shudder* Sniper Elite. And finally, assault that insurmountable hill upon which Call of Duty has established its headquarter as the Best WW2 Shooter Ever.
To make it worse, all this has to be done under the command of a relatively inexperienced leader, Gearbox, whose past FPS experience has been limited to porting (and failing) Halo, Half Life and 007: Night Fire across platforms.
BiA, follows the footpath of Matt Baker – the somewhat whiny “I never asked to be squad leader” of the real 101st Airborne 507th Battalion Fox company. Yeah, I know what you're thinking – “Paratroopers… you know how they can be!” and sure enough, the game exudes the same feel as an earlier episode of Band of Brothers. That's because the series was based on the real exploits of Easy Company whereas the game faithfully re-enacts those of “Baker's Dozen” on D-Day and the eight days that followed.
This might make BiA sound like a shorter and somewhat revamped version of a Call of Duty mission. But the two couldn't be more different. While both aimed to provide the players with a more realistic experience of WW2 than your Average Jerry WW2 FPS, they took entirely different paths to do so. CoD recreates the WW2 theatres of war through intense action, electrified atmosphere, large body counts and tightly scripted scenes that overwhelm the player. Whereas BiA is more squad-based, tense and historically accurate, forcing the player to be mindful of tactics and weapons.
In addition to being a one-man killing machine yourself, you as Matt Baker, control two squads of “assets”, namely a “Fire” team for fire suppression, and an “Assault” team for flanking and taking the Jerrys unaware. Some times your Assault team will be a tank instead of three infantrymen, giving you plenty of opportunities to chuckle with glee as a well-aimed tank-shell effortlessly levels a previously vicious MG42 position.
Having six human shields and a tank, however, doesn't give you a lot of power to just overrun the enemy, as trying to do so will end the game quickly with a 100 percent casualty rate, including your incompetent self. You can only carry two weapons with you both with limited ammo, although you can pick up and switch to enemy weapons as you go. There are no health packs during missions, once wounded you stay wounded for the reminder of the level. The guns are difficult to aim even when looking down the iron sights, making hitting enemies on the move or firing at long range a nightmare at best. As a result, you would be lucky to charge five feet into the open without catching a dozen rounds to your face. So how do you beat the krauts?
To quote from the FM 100-5 - the Army's keystone warfare doctrine: "Manoeuvre is movement relative to the enemy to put him at a disadvantage. By manoeuvre, friendly forces gain the ability to destroy the enemy or hinder his movement through the direct or indirect application of lethal power or threat thereof. As the commander develops his concept of operation and considers the manoeuvre of all his forces, he is careful to retain a balance in the application of manoeuvre, firepower, and protection."
BiA's game-play faithfully follows this law of aggression, and forces you to think and plan in order to overcome the large odds against you. First you order your fire team to suppress the enemy with a barrage of fire from behind cover (don't worry, they can shoot all day without running out of ammo), once you have the bastards ducking, and more importantly, not shooting at you, bring up the tactical (AKA Situation Awareness) map that nicely displays an aerial overview of the surrounding area pinpointing the exact position of your troops, enemy soldiers and any routes to perform a flanking manoeuvre. Then order your assault team to follow you and quietly circle around the entrenched enemy position to hit them from the side or back where they're unprotected. Even if you don't manage to conquer them, only force them into the open, your fire team will nail them.
Sounds easy, but it's not, as the enemy AI has been blessed with superb intuition that allows them to move with you if they spot you trying to flank them or fall back into a better position. They're also crack-shots that can take you out in the blink of an eye if you're silly enough to expose yourself in the open for too long. This gives the you a lot of challenge and some degree of freedom to choose either to lead the assault or stay back and order your team to do it.
Graphically, the game is rich in detail but lacking in vibrancy. After being spoiled by the tracer-fire filled night sky and burnt out towns of CoD, the same grayish green French countryside of BiA seems stale and lacking in the epic department. It's only after flipping through the Extra section (which you unlock as you complete a stage), that you realise that's exactly what it was like on the day of the actual event. Before making BiA, the Gearbox developers visited the real life locations of the combat sites in France where some of the old buildings are still standing. Combined with photographs taken on the days of battle, and action reports, Gearbox painstakingly recreated the locations and events for perhaps the most genuine WW2 experience you'll ever likely to see this side of a time machine.
That however, has also proven somewhat to be its downfall.
Reality, including war, can be monotonous, and sometimes one has to take liberties with the truth to create the necessary events to excite a jaded gamer. By sticking too closely to the actual events, BiA has robbed itself of the truly incredible and epic scenes we're used to in CoD. The attempts to humanise your band of brothers failed miserably, characters were shuffled around so quickly you lost track of who was who, there's no dialogs in battle and by the time you got to know someone, they're killed off by the script. Even your own character – Matt Baker, sounds horribly clichéd in his pre-mission monologues. Compared to another recent squad-based game, Star Wars: Republic Commando, it's a dismal performance in script writing.
Another often complained about issue is the aiming or rather the difficulty of. There's simply too much recoil for regular FPS players like me to handle. Shooting from the hip at a distant target is like throwing darts at high-flying birds, you'd be lucky if you hit anything at all. Looking down the iron sights gives better aim with single shots, but you can forget about any control in rapid fire. Close range shooting isn't much better, as any weapon will jump wildly if you hold the trigger down, you can brace the gun by moving it downwards as you fire, but it doesn't help at all if you want to fire in an arc. Many times, I out-flanked the enemy and snuck up behind them only to get killed because the usually trusty Thompson was so out of control I only managed to get one before the rest turned on me. Why insist on “real” aiming when there's no realistic damage? Shouldn't the two go hand in hand? Very frustrating in a game that only allows saving using checkpoints.
BiA is a welcoming change from the seemingly endless parade of WW2 shoot-em-ups. It's tactical, it's smart and it's different. Sticking too close to the real events, however, restricted the game somewhat, made it a less awesome experience than it could have been. Issue with aiming and some bugs still needs work. Great first attempt at game-making (instead of porting) by Gearbox.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012