You know, most people think of traffic jams when they hear Hell’s Highway. Where you’re stuck in a traffic jam for miles on end, seeing nothing but grotesque human beings in the cars around you and idiots picking their nose as they flick it out their window. With you banging your head against the steering wheel or against the dash until you start bleeding brain matter.
However, if you’re a gamer, you just might think of a game released a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
This is Puddle Jumper for Greyarch Entertainment with a review of the 2008 videogame:
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway.
The game takes place after Earned in Blood, centering around Operation Market Garden in the later stages of the second world war. Matt Baker reprises his role as the main character. This time however you don’t just watch the entire game through his eyes, story segments and all. Gearbox this time used cut scenes that could have been taken straight from an epic movie like Saving Private Ryan or a series like Band of Brothers. The feel, the looks, the sound, … everything is absolutely amazing. You can clearly tell that this is the third installment for the consoles because the voice actors and the developers have this thing down to an art.
Not only are the cut scenes top notch, but the story is absolutely amazing as well. This is one of the rare games that actually had me shed some manly tears. If you’ve already played this game, you probably know which scene I’m talking about. With Baker and Hartsock.
To add to the realistic feel of the game, the developers remade Holland quite well, having Dutch characters talking actual dutch as well.
And then there’s the great soundtrack that is just perfect of a World war II shooter of this scale.
In the end however, there’s a still a few things that need to be mentioned. The graphics show that it’s a 2008 game, though it’s still amazing. The voice acting might be superb but the weapons sound funky. And you need to have played the previous games to really get the full experience of the story, even though the game does a dang good job of keeping you informed.
So now we know how it looks and sounds, but how is the gameplay?
At its core, it’s a Brothers in Arms game. But what does that mean to those of you who don’t know squat about these games? A quick recap:
Brothers in Arms is a series of games that focuses on squad based combat where you take control of a single character in first person view that you can control like any other first person shooter but you have the advantage of being able to command one to three teams of three people who each have their specialty. Thus it is your job to guide these men from point A to point B, fulfilling your job along the way.
Everything is basically the same as in the previous Brothers in Arms game with a few exceptions.
Aaand here they are!
There’s a Ring now that displays where you grenade is going to land. Ish anyways as throwing is still incredibly difficult, what with the ring warping from one spot to another if you want to actually aim.
There’s no longer a general fall back or take cover button, making you have to manually move your teams every time.
Finally, there’s a cover system. No longer do you have to crouch to cover, you can just start hugging the wall like a needy school girl seeing that emo vampire from Twilight. You can also aim over the wall, to the right of the wall and to the far right … or left …. Ya know.
Finally, no more health bar. It’s regenerating health time. Though in this game it’s quite welcome, as you will no longer have to restart to a checkpoint because some Nazies could hear you coming even though you circled them by a mile and there’s more noise than at a rock concert.
Now, the game takes your from set piece to set piece, going through loads of Nazis by using your strategic mind. To aid you in mapping out a game plan, the game offers you a map, on which you can see you, your teams, enemy teams, objectives and every hedge, road, building or things of the sort. Plus the map, the game also offers you suppression meters above the enemy teams so that you not only know if they’re suppressed or not, but where they are as well. That’s always useful plus you will use this more than you will use the map, since it doesn’t require you to break up the game.
Here are my final thoughts. Now this is the part where you need to pay attention kids.
Right, the game is by far the best of the series. Everything about this game warrants its starting price and the current price. The gameplay is smooth but faulty at points, though nothing that can’t be forgiven. There’s no trophies on the PS3 but there are now Achievements on the 360. They’ve taken the previous game and they improved them immensely. The story will be with you for a long, long time. And there’s even something to lengthen the game, namely that you can collect Killroy’s, drawings that you need to complete that were actually drawn by American soldiers during World war II.
In the end, this game is a definitey buy.
This has been Puddle Jumper, I’ll see you later.
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