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Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Gearbox Software
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Release Date: September 23, 2008
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC
Reviewer: Eric
 World War II has become its own genre in the video game industry. From Call
of Duty to Brothers In Arms, these games have all had WW II games. The Brothers
In Arms series has yet to break out of WW II game type. Is Hell’s Highway worth
another trip back into World War II or is it time to live in the present?
Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway deals with the 502nd Parachute Infantry, 101st
Airborne Division from World War II. The game takes you on an adventure through
these men’s time during this forgotten time in WW II. All of the men’s thoughts
and actual events have been recreated in Hell’s Highway, giving gamers a true
glimpse into what really happened during the event known as Hell’s Highway.
Hands down Hell’s Highway has one of the best storyline’s from the World War II
genre. The games story is pretty graphic at times and the language is pretty
bad, but mainly with the content they are talking about. Guys during this time
were lonely, but when they were being attacked everything got series. You can
see this in the game and amazing visuals.
As amazing as the graphics are there are some framerate problems. The game
sometimes has to catch up with itself, leaving you with solid colored
backgrounds for a brief few seconds. This is a problem during the games
cutscenes because it can ruin what is going on with the games story. Hell’s
Highway suffers way too much from these problems, you would think Gearbox
Software would have fine tuned everything before the games release since this is
the games only major problem.
The game controls just like every other first-person shooter. I was upset to
find out that I could not jump, the only real jumping I could do was press the A
button when near walls, making your character go through a lame event where they
hop over the wall.
Still this is a minor problem; Hell’s Highway does make up for this by adding in
tactical aspects to the game. You can control different groups of soldiers. By
simply holding in the LT button you can move around your men (a blue flag shows
you where they’ll move). It is simple to cancel these orders if you need to and
you can have your men attack the enemy while you run around the corner and take
them out for yourself.
Hell’s Highway has a good amount of weapons at your disposal. Trying to reload
is a problem, once your clip is done you either have to hit the reload button or
you have to press the shoot button again. The game doesn’t seem to automatically
reload for you while you’re attacking, causing problem during huge battles.
Grenades also seem to be pretty useless and it takes longer than it should to
toss them.
Enemy AI in Hell’s Highway have perfect aim. Each and every time they shoot a
single bullet it seems to find you. You have to use the LB button to hide behind
corners, walls, or boxes. If you don’t then those bullets will hit you, even if
you are crouching down. To make matters worse the enemy AI has the ability to
walk through walls, which in reality means there is a problem with the game. I
had to continue more than enough because an enemy came through the wall. If I
would have cleared the last area then this wouldn’t have happened, but I must
have forgotten about that one guy.
 Killing enemies is hard too. You have to shoot your enemy more than enough if
you don’t hit their heads. I didn’t realize I had to shoot the enemy seven times
to kill them, to me that seems unrealistic.
Online play is not what you would expect from a first-person shooter. Maps feel
way too basic and with up to 20 characters this is a problem. Hell’s Highway
feels like it took a few pages from Call of Duty 3’s online play and if you
played that game online then you know it wasn’t that great.
Final Verdict
As a solo game Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway is amazing. The game has one of
the best first-person shooters in the World War II genre. Online play is a
problem, along with the framerate problems the game, mainly during cutscenes.
Overall I think this is a great game, WW II nuts should defiantly pick this one
up immediately.
Rating
8 out of 10
Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway Trailer
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