Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway First Impressions

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Hell's Highway, as you might expect, mixes up the formula quite a bit. One thing that fans cheer about is that the silly restrictions on which obstacles you can jump over have been removed - so no more frustrating moments when a highly trained soldier baulks at hopping over a pair of sandbags.

According to Pitchford, that's all part of a wider attempt to let players "solve" each situation in creative ways, rather than funnelling them down a single path all the time. In the previous games, he says, "we were so interested in pushing the tactics of fire and manoeuvre, of flanking, that we created a lot of mathematical systems to almost force that. Every combat was a puzzle - there was one solution, and it was our solution."

In contrast, "in Hell's Highway, we're being very open. There are a lot of different ways to play, and we've changed the mathematics and the simulation such that if you want to play the game as a run-and-gun player, you can find a way to succeed. If you want to play the game very tactically, you can find a way to succeed. If you're having difficulty with one way, you can try other ways - and you can find a way to succeed. It supports a lot more play styles."

Brotherly Love

Bazooka teams are another new addition. See those guys running away? Trust us - they're not running fast enough. Muahahaha.

Gearbox's tweaks to the formula definitely make Brothers In Arms into a more immediate game, reminiscent in some ways of Gears Of War's control system - leaping over low cover and charging out from around corners, for instance - but without losing any of the tactical appeal of the series. The limited set of encounters we got to play through were fantastic, each one requiring genuine thought about how to move your squads across difficult terrain, how to pin down the enemy and how to limit their options so that all they can do is run - preferably straight into your line of fire. It's gripping stuff.

The storyline, too, promises to be gripping - a welcome respite from the limp-handed narrative grasp of most World War II games. Market Garden itself is a dramatic enough backdrop, but if a tantalising introduction level is anything to judge by, there are strong suggestions that the game will plumb some dark depths as it progresses - with Baker's own sanity crumbling under the weight of his responsibility as squad leader.

As for multiplayer, no next-gen title would be complete without a full complement of options, and Pitchford claims that Hell's Highway will be "getting back to the roots of good team combat games, good team multiplayer games like Counter-Strike". All three versions of the game - PS3, Xbox 360 and PC - will support up to 20 players online, and, according to Pitchford, some unique features will set it apart from the competition.

Oh I'm sorry, was that your roadblock? Come to think of it, is that you, hurtling through the air like a broken doll? Bazooka teams: for fun and profit.

For a start, the squad command interface translates into multiplayer as a system for telling your team-mates what to do - giving you the ability to "tag" the landscape along with your voice communication. "It gives me extra tools, like we have in real life, to gesture along with our language," Pitchford explains. "In real life, we use terms like 'go over there', or 'use that tool' - I couldn't do that in a game, because I couldn't gesture. Now I can."

"Another neat feature," he continues, "is the destructible cover, which we don't really have in other games. I can shred the cover the enemy is behind, and that changes the options. There's now a difference between cover and concealment. In this game there are things that I can move behind, or hide behind, and he can't see me - but there are some that he can shoot through. Maybe I see you, and you duck down and move along a fence - but it's a wooden fence, so I'll just shoot along that fence, tear it up, and maybe I'll get you. It changes the game significantly."

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is still a few months away from completion, and the version we played - while very promising - demonstrates that the team has much work left to do. Graphically, it excels in some areas, with faces being especially well rendered, but the overall visual effect is unspectacular. Some weak frame-rate and nasty screen-tearing will, hopefully, be fixed up before launch. Pitchford is pragmatic about the fact that the game currently has more than 3000 issues in its bug database, and we don't doubt the ability of a developer like Gearbox in terms of fixing and polishing the game for launch.

Just in case you thought this was all about fun, we'll finish with a picture of some dead soldiers, their glassy eyes staring at you in stark recrimination. Forever.

What our brief playtest definitely reveals, though, is that there's plenty of solid ground underneath Pitchford's claims that World War II remains a fruitful bounty of material for videogame makers. By focusing on storytelling and characters, and developing a unique play style that mirrors the reality of war more closely than any straightforward FPS ever could, Gearbox is building a game with a sense of authenticity, tension and emotion that go beyond merely using WW2 as great scenery.

Wherever rival franchises may go, Brothers In Arms' roots run deep - and by offering something unique and different to its rivals, the franchise manages to stay fresh, interesting and compelling even on its third iteration. We're looking forward to a longer tour of duty with Matt Baker and his men early next year.