Brothers in Arms:
Road to Hill 30
By captain falcon8
D-Day. Before Allied forces landed on the beaches, paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne are parachuted into enemy territory. Their goals are to hinder and disrupt German forces. However a series of disasters - missed drops, scattered regiments, heavy casualties - and reinforcements seem a long way away. This is the setting for Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, the World War 2 game from Gearbox and Ubisoft.
Matt Baker is your name. You have been charged with being a sergeant in Fox Company of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. You do not believe you have the leadership credentials, and you struggle with the concept of leading your Company, and close friends, to their deaths. The terrain you will cover is or was real. Much of the scenery you will encounter can still be found in, and around Carentan of Normandy, France.
Gameplay
Best described as a cross between Medal of Honour and Full Spectrum Warrior. As Baker, you can interact as with a typical First Person Shooter - shoot, jump, look around, duck, and so on. What gives Road to Hill 30 a point of differential is your ability to take command of two teams through the battlefield. You can check the battlefield with a push of the “back” button - this brings up the “Situational Awareness View”. You can use that information in order to instruct your teams where to take cover and how they set up. From here, you can either take pot shots at enemies when they expose themselves, or flank the enemy - the focal point of the game. Although in some missions the “take cover, suppress and flank” idea becomes repetitive, you will soon find the game gives you something else to think about - such as Grenades, tanks, machine guns.
Later on in the game you will be treated to a level set atop a church. The change of pace is tremendous. No longer do you have to move your squad mates around; you now have to cover them with a sniper rifle as German forces swarm them. Its little gems like this level which make Road to Hill 30 so well balanced and satisfying when it eventually ends.
Artificial Intelligence is important to team and squad based games. 99 percent of the time the game delivers. When you order a team to run to the wall, they run, and they fire and they swear black and blue requesting cover fire. When they reach the wall they will take defensive positions and randomly peek over. Occasionally you will notice a team mate stand in the middle of no where. Make no mistake, unless he reaches cover he will die. In single player it happens rarely. However in multiplayer, cracks appear. More on that later. The enemy intelligence is also of a high standard. They talk to each other in German, they will reinforce areas of battlefields that have been depleted, and they will charge if all hope is lost.
One flaw in the system of Road to Hill 30 is how your compatriots die and resurrect. Cut-scenes introduce and conclude all levels. And if someone was to die in the level, only to then reappear in the cut-scene, things would seem a bit X-Files would they not? Well it happens. Only when a character dies in a cut scene can you be certain he is actually dead. When he dies in a level, your other team mates groan and scream and call out to him. You leave him behind, but once you finish the level he is there joking around or crying into his helmet because one of the other squad-mates died in the cut-scene. For such a well polished game, its weird Gearbox and Ubisoft did not find a solution for this.
Controls
It will take about twenty seconds of the prologue before you realise “hey, I am using a 1944 weapon, shooting at fortified enemies who are shooting back at me and I have never been in combat before”. Aiming is hard. Moving and running is not. The controls are responsive, the squad moving system is excellent, and with the help of the Situational Awareness View (back button), you have everything you need. One serious omission is the inability of the characters to go prone. Lying down is near standard in most war games. It allows you to crawl to safety without exposing massive amounts of your body to searing lead. Although it does not seem like a terrible loss, hiding behind a two foot wall is rather awkward when you can only duck. Another action I would have liked: to be able to pick up bodies and take them to safer zones - hopefully for medical attention rather than to dig a shallow grave.
Story
You start off on D-Day, and end up on D-Day + 7. You know you are not going to be the Matrix styled “The One”. You are one small pawn on the face of a horrific battlefield. Baker and his Company’s lives are where the story is at. The sharp witty dialogue between them can be funny, harsh, tear-jerking, and down right potty mouthed! Each squad mate has his own distinct characteristics. They provide many memorable moments, but unfortunately for them, those moments often revolve around their deaths. Baker will blame himself, he will swear and he will wonder what the **** he is doing in Normandy leading others to their deaths. This is the real story in the game - Baker’s guilt ridden take on the events. If you want the full effect, come into this game in a serious mood and be ready to listen. If you do not, you may not appreciate what this game is truly about.
Graphics
Ubisoft promised realism and authenticity. Wow. From the unknown fields you parachute into, to the bridges you cross, to the villas that have been fortified by the Germans, to the church of Carentan, this game is authentic. Gearbox have:
1) Used sketches made by soldiers,
2) Used aerial reconnaissance photographs used for planning battles
3) Talked to Veterans and used their stories
4) Walked through the fields and streets of Carentan
The result: a beautiful and astonishingly accurate rendition of one little piece of Normandy. It does not stop there. The guns look amazing, the tanks incredible and the particle effects around the mortar explosions look straight out of “Saving Private Ryan”. The faces of your comrades smile and frown as they talk and their eyes follow you - creepy yet brilliant. The animation of their movement is second to no game. Road to Hill 30 is a visual masterpiece made not by surreal settings, but by the realism expressed in every facet of the graphics.
Sound
Not always a massive component for first person shooters. Sure, sound effects and music are always in the background, but in Brother in Arms the sound is something else. From the angst-ridden pleas of your Company to take cover, to the horrific sound of mortar fire encroaching on the wall you are pinned behind. The sound of war is ugly, and Road to Hill 30 has it all. You will hear tanks approaching, planes flying over head and the wounded screaming in agony. Nothing however, comes close to making a dash for cover while under a hail of bullets from a fortified machine gunner. The whistles and screeches of bullet fire singeing the hairs off your ear lobes questions the stupidity of making the dash in the first place. Once you have reached cover, the bullets hitting the tree / wall / sandbags in front of you are also something special. Do yourself a favour and play this game with the volume up.
Longevity and multiplayer
The levels can be quite short. Tough but short. There are 4 difficulty settings, although the Authentic mode needs to be unlocked by finishing the game first. As you would expect, Authentic is tough and frustrating, but ultimately very rewarding. 12 hours for a first run through, depending on how well you control your team mates. For each of the twenty levels you finish you will unlock bonus content. For each level there are four “unlockables” - one for each difficulty setting. The bonuses range from tremendous “making of” videos, to the artwork done by soldiers which inspired the levels.
The multiplayer is a hit and miss affair. Four players can play at once in a two on two setting. Each player has three A.I. squad mates at their disposal. The controls remain the same as the single player, but the A.I. seems to worsen. They do not take to cover as they should, they often just stand around while being shot at, and when things get really intense, moving squad mates around becomes a burden. In saying that though the game modes are very well done. Objectives such as stealing papers and getting to extraction points, or blowing up bridges and gun emplacements are the common theme. Defence and offence are very equally balanced, and usually tactics and teamwork will conquer heroism and individualism. The graphics and sounds are consistent, but perhaps a lack of human players does count against it. A four on four multiplayer, maybe with less A.I. squad mates, may have made this side of the game more entertaining.
Conclusion
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 is a well polished World War 2 shooter that should be a candidate for Game of the Year with the gaming media. For its category, the graphics and sounds are as authentic as ever seen. The story is gripping and the controls are intuitive, and really help bring out the tactical side of the game. It may end all too quickly, but with a sequel already announced, I would be spoilt if I asked for too much more
