Brothers in Arms Hell’s Highway Review

It always struck me as odd that Brother’s in Arms Hell’s Highway took place during the ill fated Arnhem offensive. The last major Axis victory of WWII proved appropriate to the somber tone of Gearbox’s third entry in the Brothers franchise.

The story picks up in the middle of things, with characters already established in the first two games, and it threw out a quick previously on Brothers in Arms before the fighting begins. It had a good amount of cut scenes to tell the story of the squad’s daily life throughout operation Market Garden.

The player character, Matthew Baker, was haunted by the ghosts of those lost under his command.

This was undermined by the fact that Road to Hill 30, and Earned in Blood were released in 2005. Years later, it’s hard to remember exactly who was who and the brief callback at the beginning wasn’t enough to smooth this over.

A few technical issues haunt the player however. The game was rendered with the Unreal Engine 3 and shares some of the problems of that engine. Most notable was the bad case of texture pop-in.

Sometimes this leaves faces, maps and other odds and ends an indistinguishable blur at first glance. Furthermore the rain makes people look really weird, like they have ooze on them that’s supposed to represent wet.

That action was quite enjoyable. The return of squad command requires a good degree of mental Juggling to every firefight. Each time you encounter the enemy you have to use your squad to fight them as if they were an extension of you. It takes some time to get used to managing this but after a while you will be doing it as an old pro.

Unfortunately every so often the game throws in a solo mission that plays out a bit like Call of Duty with Cover and it’s kind of blah.

The environments look spot on once again. The last game impressed me for being such an accurate representation of places from Normandy that I could recognize the real locations from the game and I would not be surprised if not a windmill was out of place from how things look in Holland. The level of detail was very attentive feeling.

I did not really want to be bothered to play game’s multiplayer as I got it for the single player. It’s a bit short like the previous games which made it a stellar rental just to play through the campaign. It may be a bit to self-referential for someone who hasn’t played the first two games but all in all I had a lot of fun and hope they do the Battle of the Bulge sequel that seems so inevitable given the hints at the end and course of history for US Airborne.