Amazon.com: Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30: PC: Video Games

63 Reviews

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

Average Customer Review

3.2 out of 5 stars (63 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

186 of 198 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Country Needs Your Trigger Finger!, August 19, 2004

By	AntVector (NY) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

Ingredients:

Large cup Band of Brothers
Pinch of Command and Conquer
Generous slices of history
Garnish with authenticty

Second World War games are no stranger to the PC - indeed, the First-Person shooter market is positively swamped with them. Medal of Honor, still a fine game after all these years, gave us a crisp, detailed and immersive slice of being a part of the greatest war in history. Battlefield 1942 let us play around with planes, tanks and great big ships in an online sandbox. Recently, Call of Duty assaulted our senses with a vision of war at it's most visceral and crucially, developed the idea that you the player were far from alone on the battlefield. Computer controlled squad-mates charged into the fray along side you, a gratifying and certainly more authentic experience. Now, Brothers in Arms from UbiSoft takes it to the next level with it's implementation of full infantry combat where YOU call the shots. Played principally from a first-person perspective, Brothers in Arms clearly draws from the same graphical pool as it's forebears - gritty, lifelike animation, sound effects that will rattle your speakers and plenty of neat touches - dust, explosions, sun glare and weapon flashes all look and sound great, and WW2 buffs will be able to salivate over a wide range of accurately modeled weaponry. As in other games, Brothers allows the player to commandeer enemy weaponry and gun emplacements in order to give 'Fritz a taste of his own medicine. The player can also duck behind cover or lie prone, which in this mostly-realistic world of bullet damage can make all the difference between a live paratrooper and a letter home to mom. So far, so Call of Duty.

The ace-up-the-sleeve for this game comes in the form of your GI comrades. The player is typically accompanied by 2 computer controlled fire teams. In combat you can give orders and instructions to your troops using a simple, context-sensitive command system. Placing the command cursor, similar to aiming crosshairs, over the terrain instructs your troops to move to that position - once there, they are smart enough to find appropriate cover and begin to scout for enemy positions. Under attack, they automatically return fire, cover each other while reloading, and stay hidden and defended if the going gets really rough. The AI is leaps ahead of previous games, and it's a tremendously satisfying sight to watch your troops take care of themselves without you having to hold their hands. The 2 fire teams are split between a rifle squad, who are able to lay down supressing and covering fire with their M1 Garands and BAR, and an assault element, who, with grenades and machine guns are used to flank and destroy the enemy - a classic infantry tactic that the developers have researched in order to get it spot on. A typical engagement sees you the player supporting one of these 2 teams, which really allows you to play in your own style - budding commandos will enjoy rushing right down the enemy's throat, Thompson Sub blazing, while thinky types will relish the more strategic side of planning the attack.

In order to simulate the intense pre-mission preparation that paratroopers underwent, Ubi has implimented a unique command-map that can be opened during play. The area around the player can be viewed from an aerial vantage point, and partial zoom and rotation allows the player to plot their next move. The map terrain for each mission has been modelled from historical photographs, and the development team actually visited the battlefield to get a feel for how it must have looked. Best of all, each member of your team is based on a real soldier who fought in the campaign. It's at once rewarding and curiously spiritual to know that you are leading representations of real young men into the jaws of death, and when one of your guys goes down in the field, you better believe it tugs at your heart in a way very few games can achieve.

Like most modern games, Brothers in Arms requires a decent computer, with a gig or so of hard-drive space, a quality graphics card and plenty of free ram. However, you don't need a supercomputer to have a great time - my machine is a P4, 1.4, 9600 pro and 512meg of RAM, and this game remains smooth even when the fight gets close and personal. I highly recommend this game to anyone after a fresh take on an exciting genre; one that takes risks, pushes the envelope and offers a powerful, moving, and above all fun experience.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

87 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, but poor execution., March 24, 2005

By	Greg Thacker "The G-Man" (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

I was really looking forward to getting this game... the media blitz really had this game super-hyped and I was hoping for a rival to Call of Duty. Sadly, the hype was hardly deserved.

In terms of hardware reqs, this game is pretty forgiving. I'm playing on a P4 2.8 with 1 gig of RAM and an iNvidia FX5600 card with 256 MB of on board RAM. I've had very few glitches and the frame rate has been perfectly fine.

Game play is where this title fails. As others have noted, the game is horribly redundant and overly scripted. Every map, every mission, every engagement with the enemy is the same -- fix the Bad Guys with supressing fire, then move the assault team in for the kill. The first few times it was pretty cool: look at 'em go! Just like a real combat unit! After a short while, though, the whole process becomes boring.

I've also found the hit probability to be frustratingly low. You can stand 20 feet away from a German, get him in the sights of your M1 Garand, aim at center mass, and still miss with the first three rounds. I'm sorry... but I have an M1 Garand. It's a very accurate rifle and really shouldn't be missing its point of aim from 20 feet or 200 feet. You can fidget with the point of impact properties in the bia.ini file, but you shouldn't have the tweak the program like that.

The are only two good things about this game, in my opinion. First, it's an entirely new look (different maps, good character/weapon renditions, etc.). Second, the computer controlled team mates actually seem to exercise intelligent (if scripted) thought -- they'll move into a position and seek cover right away, they'll engage the enemy without being instructed to do so, etc.

I didn't find the language to be terribly offensive -- nothing worse than you'd hear in Band of Brothers. I have no doubt in my mind that many of the troops fighting in WW2 had potty mouths. If I had been there, I'm sure I would have, too.

Aside from the language, the "M" rating is largely unwarranted. The blood and gore that was so greatly hyped is hardly anything to write home about. In my mind, blood splatters are hardly what I'd consider over-the-top in terms of gore.

I'll finish playing the game (I'm on D-Day +5 at the moment), but I seriously doubt I'll play it much after I've completed it the first time. Call of Duty has far greater re-playability (if that's a word) and will continue to the the game by which all other WW2-era FPSs are measured.

Comment Comments (3) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a completely different experience, March 3, 2006

By	Whose Line? "Kevin" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

I'll just get it out of the way. BIA, in my opinion, is the best World War II FPS ever. Sorry all you Call of Duty lovers (a group i include myself in), but COD doesn't hold a candle to the immersive, dynamic, more realistic, and at times disturbing gameplay of Brothers in Arms.

COD is a blast to play, that's for sure. The words "run and gun" come to mind in every level. COD is paced at warp speed and never lets up on the bullets and body count until you arrive in Berlin, and we love it. I can play through the whole game in a few hours and not be sick of it by the end. It has great environments, good voiceover work, and passable AI. Only problem is, BIA makes COD look like a kiddy carnival.

The sign for me that Brothers in Arms is a great World War II shooter is the mere fact that I can't play it for more than an hour and a half at a time. It's exhausting, emotionally and mentally. The game makes you see the disgusting side of war, and yet you can't stop coming back to it.

I've never been a huge fan of strategy based games, but BIA transcends the genre by seamlessly combining FP fun with squad-based maneuvering that is so intuitive on the PC to pick up, in no time you will be commanding a tank, your fire and assault teams like a seasoned veteran. It keeps you constantly thinking - your position, possible cover, optimal spots for suppressing fire, potential flanking maneuvers, guarding your own flank from the smart AI. It forces you to be deliberate, like in actual combat. Plan your moves, and execute them carefully. This leads to sharp bursts of excitement when you pull off a filthy flank on the Germans and wipe out a machine gun nest. I haven't experienced anything like it in any other video games to date.

BIA makes you work for every kill. I hear people complain about the aiming system all the time. I must say, it is not that bad, especially on the PC where aiming is even easier as compared to console games. Granted, you can't expect to hit anything with your thompson from 100 feet away if you spray and pray, and its not very accurate from that distance if you aim down the sights...so be smart about it. Yes, even the M1 Garand will miss sometimes from close distances, that's war. But patience is key for this game. If you want to pick off some enemies before trying to flank, find an optimal position, kneel down and squeeze off careful shots when a German pokes his head up too far. It will probably take a few minutes. I've hit Germans on the run shooting from the hip, so it's not that the weapons are grossly inaccurate, it's that they can be unpredictable.

The game environment is amazing. The look and feel of the French towns and countryside remind me of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers - the grays and browns of old townhouses against the well detailed trees and sky make for a perfect game setting. Better have nice speakers for this one, all the gunfire, explosions, curses of your fellow brothers, yells of the enemy, and your own characters sturdy commands to his men will give your sound system a good workout.

BIA doesn't shy away from the graphic violence of war. Unlike COD and MOH which opt for the "blood puff" effect, where the soldier gets hit 4 times in the chest, falls down, gets up, and starts shooting you again, BIA is much more true to real life. Most times one shot will take the enemy down, and it is not without a gratifying spray of blood. Particularly disturbing is when a German is standing in front of a wall when he is shot and the blood splatters on the wall behind him. Bodies also tend to remain visible once killed, unlike the lovely "ghost" effect of previous games ("Wow I just killed 4,000 soldiers on my way out of this secret German submarine base and all the bodies are mysteriously missing!").

The fact that the game is based on real events and real people only sucks you into it more. You end up caring about the lives of your men, mainly because you realize you won't live without them, so they really do end up becoming your brothers in arms. You learn their specialties, personality types, a little about their lives back home, and it all serves to create one hell of an emotional roller coaster the whole time. Early on in the game, a mortar crew wiped out my fire team before I could even move them to safe cover. Extremely pissed off and upset that I let it happen, I whipped around the flank of the mortar crew and unloaded with my thompson before they could even react. Without stopping, I repeated the act on the second mortar team to complete the level. Only then did I unglue my face from the computer screen and let my breath out. Right there I knew the game was special.

If you like World War II shooters, buy this game. If you like strategic games, buy this game. If you are a World War II fanatic, buy this game. If you loved Band of Brothers, buy this game. I can't say enough about it. It doesn't even run that great on my outdated Radeon 9000 video card, with frame slowdowns every once in a while, but I don't care. I'll play this game anytime, and you better believe it has incredible replay value, with wide open levels, and several ways to approach each battle.

I'll say it just once more and then I'll shut up. I haven't had a gaming experience like Brothers in Arms ever before.