Customer Reviews

Brothers In Arms Hell Hwy

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

To be fair this game and its earlier ones were made to bring a more realistic feeling to a WW2 shooter. It is not your typical shooter where you storm through a stage killing enemies by the 100's. You play as a Srg and have to command your squads around to cover one another and flank. The game has great graphics, a good AI, awesome sound effects and a even better story that will challenge and give you many hours of strategic combat. Please understand that most people knock this game because they are used to and I guess are not bored of your average shooter. If you are tired of typical shooters with no strategy whatsoever then I bet you will love this game. Also note that this game focuses alot more on single player then online.

Pros:
Emphasis on tactics (flanking the enemy is important). Team concept.
Graphics are very good. They are not the best that the PS3 has to offer, but very good. Excellent slo-motion effects.
Some historical relevance using a fictional squad within the US Army's 101st Airborne Division.
Good storyline.


Cons:
Audio and visual bugs (minus 1 star overall).
Online play is available, but not great. No emphasis on team concept online.
Linear play.
Finding a sniper rifle or using standard rifles can make it somewhat easy to pick off the enemy in each mission.


Rambos need not apply for this title. Running and gunning, while possible, makes the game more difficult to play.

First of all, this is NOT a run-and-gun FPS. Actually, it's a TPS (Third-person-shooter). Anyway, this requires a more slow and methodical play style than your Halo or Resistance type of shooter.

On-line play is OK, but the poor controls really kill the fun.

The Good:
- Very good cut-scenes. Helps move the story along. And there IS a story, which some may not care about. For me, it kept things more interesting. And despite what someone claimed earlier, you CAN skip the cut-scenes.
- Things to do other than just killing Nazis. You've got "Recon Sites" you can visit, which unlock some historical facts about Operation Market Garden. You also have "Kilroys" to find.
- Squad mechanics is done fairly well. It has its problems, but nothing major.
- Makes you think about the battlefield and how to use cover/flanking/etc.

The Bad
- Third Person Shooter. Some people like that, some don't care. I generally don't like TPS, because you always end up at some point not being able to look in the direction you want to look. It's just a problem with TPS in general (the worst was an older Metal Gear game I played on Xbox... the only game I've ever returned).
- Poor choice of controls. Why does each game designer insist on using different control layouts than everyone else? Half the games I've played use R1 for primary fire, while the other half use R2. WHY???
- No ability to customize controls (related to above). Come on now! This is a sore point for me. It seems fewer and fewer games allow any type of customization of the controls, yet each one has its own idea of which button should do what. Why do I have to re-learn which trigger is primary fire each time I play a different game??? VERY BAD!!!
- In Realistic difficulty, you don't have any cross-hairs. OK, sounds "realistic", except if you're dug in behind cover and pop out to shoot, since this is a TPS, you can't see where you're aiming!!! Did anyone actually play-test this thing???
- Can't pick up grenades from bodies.
- No jumping.
- No crawling or prone position.
- No melee. All the pics show you have this nasty combat knife, but you can't actually use it???
- Poor AI. Your squads don't use very good judgement about using cover to get to where you want them. You sometimes have to micro-manage their route, or they'll run in front of some cover and get killed.
- In Realistic mode, you have no idea how many magazines you're carrying. I understand you may not know how many bullets are left in a magazine, but surely you know if you only have one left vs 10 left.
- No consistency about what objects you can vault over and which you can't.
- Related to above, when running, bumping into the smallest of obstacles brings you to a complete halt. I've gotten killed numerous times when I was trying to run to cover but nicked the corner of some piece of wood or something, coming to a complete halt. You also can't really turn very well while running.
- There's more, but I don't want to seem like I'm bashing the game.

Overall, I enjoyed the game (except in Realistic mode, due to the myriad of interface and control flaws). If you can pick it up for under $15 or $20, I recommend it.

At first I was nervous about having to use teamwork to advance in a game, since I'm used to go-it-alone type games, but this teamwork makes for a good game. I die a tremendous amount of times, but I still continue because it's all about strategy, but not to the extremely frustrating point. Graphics are good, gameplay is good and action is intense. Bottom line is that it is doable. Might take many attempts, but it's fun while you try. Can't go wrong with this title especially since the price has been falling. Enjoy.

I really enjoyed this game. I don't spend much time on the PS3, but this is the best game I have bought so far. I didn't really rate COD World At War, it felt rushed and basic, but I loved COD4 Modern Warfare. Although this is a different style of play, I think this game surpasses COD4 due to the need to think about the game, not just run and gun. The graphics are great, the story is good, the gameplay could be improved by more involvement in picking your teams specialities and your own weapons, but I would still rate this a 5!

Mixed bag, not as good as advertised, sloppy and linear. Textures not well done, more of last gen then next gen! Rent before you buy

I'll skip the graphics discussion of Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (BiA:HH), and get right to some gameplay observations:

The cinematic cut scenes start the game and are supposed to get you involved in the story. They hardly seem worth the effort that someone put into them, and I never really cared about the characters. Luckily, they are usually short.

There has been some effort to give the missions historical settings in Holland. Like most games of this type, you only have so many ways to move forward, so you don't really have a lot of freedom to move through the map. With a good game, you don't really notice how you are being "channeled" though the map. With BiA:HH, you notice about 50% of the time. The problem is that you're often moving through streets and over fences, and it just seems goofy that you can go though some garden gates and not others.

There is a numbing sameness to the missions. The game designers want to teach flanking tactics, so the preferred method of fighting is: pin down the enemy with one squad, move your other squad to a flanking position, and shoot the enemy from the side. Repeat over and over. There is almost always a flanking position and you just have to puzzle through the scenery to get to it.

The big problem is that you don't actually have to bother with flanking because you can always shoot every enemy by yourself. You do it this way: watch where an enemy sticks his head up, aim, fire when he sticks his head up in the exact same place, repeat until he's dead; move to next enemy and repeat; endlessly. The Germans are like pumpkins, other than ducking back and forth to shoot, they never, ever move. Occasionally, a group of three new soldiers will move into a position after one squad is eliminated, but that's rare. There are also a couple of scripted charges, but that's it, and they lack the intensity of the enemy charges in the Call of Duty (CoD) games. In BiA:HH, once an enemy gets into position, he ain't moving. That's really the problem with the game. The CoD games may not have had the smartest AI in the world, but there were so many scripted events involving enemy soldiers moving around that you often felt like the battles were dynamic. With BiA:HH, it just feels like moving from static battle to the next.

I thought that BiA:HH had avoided the trap that the CoD games fall into, of adding a segment that just doesn't fit the rest of the game (such as the jeep driving segments that get thrown into the CoD games). But, alas, BiA:HH has the burning building segment where you have a "dexterity race" of quickly running, ducking, and vaulting your way through a burning building as it falls down behind you.

In summary, if you just got to play a military shooter, get BiA:HH (especially once the initial release price drops). On the other hand, if you don't feel like you have to get BiA:HH, pick up CoD 4 (or 3).

Brothers in Arms has long been one of my favorite WWII franchises. It does an amazing job of connecting all the games across platforms to pick up where the previous left off. Every time I play one of these games I think of how similar it is to Band of Brothers developing environments, characters, and making the player really feel connected and absorbed in the war.

Hell's Highway is a great game. It is not about running and gunning, nor is it about showing off the best graphics around. What it IS, however, is a powerful story enabling players to see, and potentially feel, the pain and suffering this period of time caused the world.

The game revolves around strategy. You command different squads ranging from machine gunners to bazookas in order to complete real-life battles. You are able to view the map and scout out places of cover, good striking areas, etc. While there is always the foolish option to try and gun down enemies head-on, this is often impossible or simply detracts from the purpose of the game. In a way, it's the Metal Gear Solid of WWII games. While you are allowed to let squad members die (they miraculously return at the next level), I often found myself restarting if one of them did. It really added to the challenge. There are also numerous intelligence reports that can be obtained throughout each mission. These provide fun challenges as well as fascinating real photographs and facts from the war. It also provides an interesting blend of 1st and 3rd person action.

HH is a good length. I didn't feel it was dragging on forever nor like it wrapped up abruptly. It's the type of game I set down after beating but pick up to play through again down the road.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is one of my favorite games. Simply put, I love WWII video games, and this one has lots of variety in terms of different types of combat and scenery on the different levels. One thing I love about the game is the ability to give tactical direction to special teams so you can advance through a level.

Use your squad wisely or you could end up dead. I have entire BIA series on PC and I also have this on PS3. Unlike the usual FPS (knock, knock COD and Killzone franchises), this game gives you the concept of teamwork, how to develop a strategy to outflank your enemies, and command your squad and when to shoot (something you can't do on Rainbow Six). I love the third person shooter gameplay when crouching or hiding against the wall, and shoot from there. Though this is less difficult game than the two previous BIA: RTH30 and EIB, the storyline and voice acting are a lot better on Hells Highway. Wait till you get to play the abandoned Hospital campaign -- -things can get hairy in there.