Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway Preview

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Your squad's clever enough to do a lot of things on its own. Approaching Germans with their backs to you, a hush falls on the group. "Notice the whispering again," says Pitchford. (Thank god he's not whispering - UbiDays is like a sewing circle of wind tunnels.) "I didn't press a button for stealth - these guys are trained soldiers, they know what to do. They know when to be quiet." When they engage, they give up the stealth. "No value in being quiet any more," Pitchford adds.

Tactically the game's evolving too. The two teams under Baker's control here are Assault and Bazooka, led by Jasper, whose weapon is called "Stella". He's even written it on the side - try to get that to look convincing at less than 720p. Pinned down by a machinegun nest in a church tower, Baker moves the Bazooka team into an advanced position, draws fire from the nest by taking pot-shots at it, and then watches as a fiery thrust from Stella rips the bottom of the tower open. Sandbags dangle down like guts tumbling out of someone's stomach. "My bullets don't go through sandbags; they just stick in the sand," Pitchford says, illustrating this as he advances down a narrow road with minimal flanking potential. Stella looks set for a decent workout - and other teams likely to come under your control will have machinegunners, mortars and radios for calling in off-site artillery support.

Expect to get to know these guys well if you haven't already. As Pitchford often points out, they're real people.

You still rely on suppression (with that telltale red icon that becomes white when the enemy's fully suppressed), fire-and-manoeuvre tactics and of course flanking to take down the enemy, but tellingly we only see this once or twice in our 30-minute demo. Wood's not the only casualty of your firepower now, either, which seems to have opened up the game to a broader range of approaches. Armed with an MG42 machinegun ripped from a German emplacement, Pitchford's able to shoot it from the hip, or mount it anywhere on a bipod. Doing so, he sheers the head off a statue and cuts down retreating Nazis as they leg it into a herb garden seeking cover.

There are subtler technological tweaks and aesthetic changes at work, too. Shell casings spout from the side of your gun in a stream of smoke, and a depth-of-field effect gives you a sort of warrior's tunnel-vision when you're under fire. Pitchford uses this to illustrate how the game emphasises safe haven when you're in trouble. With no health-bar, the screen goes red when you're being shot at. "That means risk, danger - that's a threat," he says, although we sort of got that. Lower down the screen though, a stone wall is normally coloured. Dive over it and you're safe. Another thing we like is what happens when Baker reaches a transition point. "He's a reconnaissance squad-leader, so he needs to check his map every now and then to find out where he is, what's going on, and report back to headquarters," says Antal, who's been surprisingly quiet after all his yelling at the previous evening's press conference. The map's an actual paper map in Baker's hands, rather than something that draws you out of the world - you can see your units, any remaining enemies, and objectives.

The ability to lean against cover points gives the game a feel closer to Rainbow Six: Vegas in places - particularly indoors.

It should all look more or less the same across PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 when it emerges later this year, says Pitchford. It's currently aiming for November. Whether it convinces my own brothers in arms - messrs. Clare and Reed - is another question, but I'm up for it. When I finally retreat across the Channel as UbiDays winds down, it's a game that sticks in the mind more than the rest I've seen. Although given that my return journey is a sticky six hours of broken trains and shouting teenagers, that might just be the "Hell's Highway" moniker. We shall see.