by:	March 28, 2005

Yippee another War World II game, how fun (sarcasm)…After the past experience I have had with WW2 games I did not want to try my luck on this game but I said to myself “What the heck, I rather give it a try” and never regretted it. Obviously, the idea of command and order came into the Ubisoft developer’s head when they made this game. It is similar to Full Spectrum Warrior except your handed mediocre guns and you can shoot people to death.

The story behind Brothers in Arms is you playing a person named Matt Baker. While playing he tells his story of his journey through War World 2 and talks through the turmoil he has to go through. After going through several missions, you start to notice him depressing on going dilemma of being a team leader and his down beat attitude to everything. Though he is in a war to, I guess that is quite accepted. His objective is to get to take siege of towns in France with his comrades but is face with Nazi Germans in the way causing problems for your American troops to achieve success. The game itself is base on real life missions of Matt Baker and offer extra features of the real life areas if you beat the mission on a certain difficulty.

Now to start off in the beginning of the game were you are in a stand off battling field unknowing what to do and everyone screaming. This is enough to grab my attention and immerse me into game play. I was in complete aw after seeing the tank blasting me away and ended up fading away. First thought came to mind is that I failed the game and had to start over again but it was actually apart of the game which takes you through a cinematic movie felt of developer credits. Well I think we spent enough time on spoilers and on with the innovation of Brothers in Arms. The first thing that separates Brothers in Arms with other World War 2 games is the idea of command and shoot. You at times as squad leader give directional orders by holding onto the L trigger and moving your analog stick to a certain area to gain cover and shoot. Able to do this helps you consecrate your attack where it mainly needs to be focus on instead of the NPC running around and suddenly getting killed. Everything relies on you in taking command and you are to blame if someone dies. Another feature added is the suppressed and unsuppressed bar added on small groups of enemies. You cannot just run and shoot enemies unless you want to take damage or death but hold them in one spot. When you direct your group fire on a certain enemy group there suppress meter begins to fall and turn grey. This means that they are covering under fire and will stay still at that location till your team stops firing or lessens substantially while your group reloads. This is were you Matt Baker begin to flank the enemy and find an area where your enemy is uncover to fire and kill them. The whole game deprives on you flanking your enemy which is harder to do then it seems since the map are not linear and enemies can appear from anywhere. Unable to flank properly will cause certain death unless you are playing on easy mode which is not easy at all. Your also allow a outward view of your field when your in battle to see various cover areas to use and utilized it your advantage. There are also extra features you can unlock by completing a mission on a certain difficultly level (Easy, Normal, Difficult and Authentic which is lock.) There are 17 missions (chapters) so completing it to unlock them all is going to take a very long time. After completing several levels you are allow to command an Assault team, Fire team, and a tank. The Assault team is basically use for flanking your enemies and Fire team is use to suppress your enemy. The tank is use for heavy fire upon group of enemies and you can use the machine gun on top of the tank in first or third person mode. The single player campaign can be somewhat strenuous at times but finishing the game is well worth it. The same goes with Multiplayer on Xbox Live which tick me off. It is so hard to get into a room that is full after loading, you being in an already started game (spectator) or having a 3 out 4 room and can not find a fourth. I spent up to 38 mins trying to find a room ready for launch. A suggest to those who planning to get this game is when you find a room that your apart in then stay in it. Other than that, everything works out well but it gets seriously annoying when you are on the Loading screen. I wish the Brothers in Arms utilize the Xbox side more because the loading screen is possibly the most annoying, frustrating part of the game.