Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway Comments by Tom Bramwell

Looking forward to this.

Oh and all the "ANOTHER WWII shooter!?!" folks?

Sod off, says I - when it stops getting interesting, then they can stop making them. There are plenty of good reasons to carry on producing these games, both technologically and socially.

And seeing as I watched A Bridge Too Far last night (the BEST pre-Saving Private Ryan WWII film), Hell's Highway is definitely getting me excited!

Indeed. looking forward to this one. very much.

Not another WWII jeez.

Seriously though, the BIA series really pissed me off. They claim its realistic but to me its on par with COD. I was really excited about BIA and its concept but that was until i played it. Germans that spawn when you round a corner and those really really annoying cutscenes with characters i couldn't give a flying F*** about.

Linear maps, crappy story and mediocre graphics, no thanks.

Although i have played COD2 and COD3 recently... i am abit bored of the ww2 shooters.. im still looking forward to splintering a few planks, and blowing the living sh*t outa some more germans...

Very excited

from what ive seen of this moving i reckon it'll be the best in the genre

Oh fluff off Tucker!

ANOTHER WWII shooter!?!

would be better if you could play as germans or russians.

These brotherhood yanks are a bit gay

Thank you, Eraser, for restoring my faith :-)

And BBIAJ really deserves a cookie for the best form of using someone's own name to insult them since they realised what 'James Blunt' was cockney rhyming slang for.

"Linear maps, crappy story and mediocre graphics, no thanks. "

Yup

I still find WWII games interesting and I still want to play them.

Can't wait for this game. Much prefer it over the arcadey, Hollywood, one man army, Rambo-style guff that is Call of Duty and Medal of Honour.

BiA is all about the bond of brotherhood that forms within your squad, and hedgerow-by-hedgerow, town-by-town pitched battles and small-scale skirmishes.

Meh. BiA was a great disappointment for me.

If you're tired of shootin Nazi's you're dead inside. DEAD INSIDE I TELLS YOU.

"BiA is all about the bond of brotherhood that forms within your squad, and hedgerow-by-hedgerow, town-by-town pitched battles and small-scale skirmishes. "

It may TRY to be all that but it sure as hell doesn't succeed. The fact that if your team members die in game then they are alive in the cutscenes makes me cringe.

I remember watching some videos before the original was released and seeing germans dynamically counterattack after you had taken their position andd stuff which looked awesome but when you play the game it was all bloody scripted.

And don't even get me started on multiplayer...

Hey, don't get me wrong, it ain't perfect. Not by a long shot. And hopefully HH will address some of the concerns raised here. But imo, it's still a far more evolved series than the lowest common denominator crap that CoD and MoH are. At least BiA is trying to be somewhat 'authentic' (not that any of us could ever really know), even if the actual execution isn't quite there yet. Still, I really enjoyed the first two games all the same! :)

There are spelling nazis, grammar nazis, etc. I'm the historical-accuracy-nazi. The seats in the last screenie (indoors shot) are of a design that wouldn't exist for another 30 years or so.

Back in your box, TessaTickle:

Cantilever Chair

Invented a good 18 years before Operation 'Market Garden', not in the mid-70s.

Shooting an MG42 from the hip. Hmm. What happend to realism again?

"Shooting an MG42 from the hip. Hmm. What happend to realism again?"

I don't want ultra, ultra realism in my escapist hobbies. I want just enough realism to not make it a jarring, Steven Seagal-esque experience, with enough arcadey-fun stuff that evokes all the great war films and games (video and real-life) I played as a kid.

Shooting a dirty great water-cooled machine gun from the hip of my character = possibly not 100% realistic, but definitely satisfyingly FUN. And forgive me, but I thought games were about being entertained, not walking through an anally-retentive weapon nerd's wet-dream...

There are plenty of games that give you crazy big machine guns you can shoot from the hip.

If this game is going for realism or authentic feel though shooting an MG42 from the hip is just dumb.

I don't give a toss about how anally-retentively modeled the guns are just you either go with realism or you don't as far as I see. Nothing wrong with either approach but stick to one or the other.

"I don't give a toss about how anally-retentively modeled the guns are just you either go with realism or you don't as far as I see. Nothing wrong with either approach but stick to one or the other. "

Right, so what if a game wants to go with a "semi-realistic" feel to it?

And so where is your criticism of every single 'realistic' game EVER! for not including smells and tastes, because that's more realistic? Or how about the fact that you have this wierd swirly-hud thing in front of your vision, showing you ammo status, map direction, etc?

Pfft. is about all I can finish with on this one....

No that is not possible. It's either black or white baby. I say pah to your shades of grey.

"There are spelling nazis, grammar nazis, etc. I'm the historical-accuracy-nazi. The seats in the last screenie (indoors shot) are of a design that wouldn't exist for another 30 years or so."

You need to go back to Nazi school then, or at least attend a decent design history class.

@Fab4

I agree... dont spoil it for me

OK, I suck at the design-nazi so I'll just fall back onto the queer-eye-for-the-war-era-interior-owner cop-out and baselessly claim that as authentic as those chairs may be, they like totally bugger the overall style in the room, dahling. ;-)

Really didn't like BiA a lot - it all sounded great on paper, but in practice it was terribly formulaic. Almost every situation the game puts you in plays exactly the same.

I much prefer a dynamic AI that requires you actually apply different tactics as opposed to the puzzle pattern recognition gameplay in BiA.

Still, I'll keep an eye on this, you never know.

What system was it demoed on?



ANy info Eurogamer???

Personally I think this is one of the few WW2 shooters that looks set to stand apart in the coming onslaught of these titles. I've been following its progress for a while and it looks undeniably beautiful. I also agree that as long as they're fun to play developers should keep making WW2 military shooters, after all what's more fun than shooting a Nazi in the face.

Ultimately those that are sick of WW2 shooters don't have to buy them anymore. There's certainly going to be enough choice of other titles around by the end of the year to keep them busy elsewhere.

I for one will be gladly handing over my hard-earned cash for this, MoH:Airborne and CoD 4 despite CoD3's poor showing. They all currently excite me more than the adolescent monkey-shit fight that will be Halo 3 multiplayer.

Drowning in a pool of pixellated german soldiers

WWII shooters have already stopped getting interesting, we're just on the same old treadmill, with varying degrees of schmaltz: it seems like anything that employs the words 'Hero(es)', 'Brothers', 'Honor' etc etc is going to be just another on-rails nazi plugger, glorified fairground duck shoot which will try to alternate sentimentality with bloodlust and pass it off as historical veracity just because it doesn't look like Beach Head II (am I showing my age?).

Now if they could do something even a little different I might get interested again: a WWII variation of Operation Flashpoint (or ArmA if you don't remember OF) would have me digging out my wallet for certain. Hidden And Dangerous was brilliant, the sequel less so due to the one-man-band missions which reeked of Medal of Honor.

Technologically, pfhh, plenty of other games push the envelope, WWII fps seem to use licenced engines in the main.
Sociologically, games aren't a good medium for education, being skewed to a target market (I remember the Cold War propaganda I accepted at face value from playing all those MicroProse games in the 80's; and look at the dismal canon of Vietnam games and try to find one that presents a non-US viewpoint). As a nurse I tended many elderly war veterans (fewer every year, sadly) and what they tell you bears no resemblance to anything you'll ever play: a real old hard nut Scot who fought in North Africa told me about walking along behind a tank and weeping with sheer terror. You can't simulate that, so why even pretend to authenticity? Give me Return to Castle Wolfenstein anyday.

And as my Dad's generation also gets older and starts to fade away, how about a game to tell people about their war, Korea? The last decent game about Korea was Mig Alley, and that was, what, 6 years ago? More?