Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway

Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway.

I am rarely moved by computer games. Which is a shame really, gaming is just another way of telling stories, and there aren't enough games with characters that you either sympathise with or, overall, actually care about. However, this game in particular made me play in a different way to how I normally play; and here's why.

The Brothers In Arms games follow the real life exploits of the American 101^st Airborne. In fact, these games are so true to life that the developers decided that the story would follow the exact soldiers; they even based the facial modelling on photographs of the men themselves. Originally I thought this was a disrespectful of the dead, but after some thought I came to the conclusion that it is in fact nothing of the sort. By making this not about a faceless private, we can see what these people actually went through (well... as much as you can, sitting at your desk).

The game itself is a squad based FPS. The essential tactic you need to master is suppressing the enemy and flanking. Sounds easy, and to be honest, it's not that difficult to get the hang of. In most missions you will have two squads: a support group and an assault group. The name of the game is to get your support group hunkered down in a good position and let them take care of most of the suppressing while you and the assault team will hop fences and other chest high obstacles until you either get the assault team close enough for them to use grenades or (the much more common tactic) you quickly flank the enemy, and gun them down in a hail of hot freedom loving lead.

The game itself draws a lot of inspiration and style from the Band of Brothers series and tries to keep the game itself as cinematic as possible. Certain events such as headshots or a successful grenade are rewarded with a slow-motion zoom in (which resulted in me usually sitting back shouting “HEADSHOT” in the manner of Unreal Tournament) and a satisfying amount of arterial splatter.

The campaign is unfortunately far too short, maybe 4 – 5 hours at a push, and that's even with the perfectionist mentality of “NO MAN LEFT BEHIND”. However, even if you do try to push ahead despite any losses, once you hit a checkpoint, they get back up again and join your squad; kind of defeating any point of really caring about characters in-game. Which is a weird sensation to be honest, especially with all that which I said earlier. During gameplay any one of your team members can hit the deck and you might not care at all, but if one of them should get shot during a cut-scene, you're sitting there with single manly tears running down your cheek.

Overall this is a fantastic WWII based shooter that (in my opinion) is a much better display of war and comradeship than anything that the Call of Duty franchise has produced. Unfortunately it's marred by a criminally short campaign and a slightly flawed by NPC's magically healing from lethal wounds whenever you go through a checkpoint.

Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway - 86%

Darkstar One

How to start a review for this game? Well I suppose saying its a bit of a freelancer clone is a good one. However thats not really a bad thing. Let's be honest, Freelancer was a brilliant time sink of a game that was YEARS ahead of its time, and now its time for other games to try and do the same as this game did, back in the 80's.


You play as Kayron, who is avenging his father... or something, to be honest, the storyline is a bit tacked on. Which is odd, to say the least, to say that the main story is a bit... well hammy. It reeks of the kneeling the rain screaming "FATHER I WILL AVENGE YOOOOOOU!" sort of thing that was so prominent in the 80's and early 90's but to be perfectly honest, you're not playing Darkstar One for the story thats already written, but for the story that you write yourself. Another point is the irritating as hell co-pilot you pick up early on in the game. She constantly reminds you that "There's a Terran on our tail!" well, yes, thank you irritating woman, I know that because he's BLASTED MY REAR SHIELD IN HALF! Memories fly back to that whole "Hey, Listen!" thing from Ocarina of Time, but its not nearly as murderous rampage inducing.

It is a fairly standard space trading/exploration/bounty hunter/pirate game. It's  free roaming but you unlock more planet clusters with advancement with the storyline so you can put off the story as long as you want really. At the moment, after about 4 - 5 hours of play, I have probably spent about 1 hour actually doing the story. The other 3 - 4 hours I have been setting my reputation out as a Mercenary/Bounty Hunter/Smuggler, and to be honest, thats much more interesting to me than the poorly scripted half baked story the developers have come up with.

Graphics wise, the game is fairly beautiful. Each area is in the orbit of a planet and the planets look stunning. This however is let down slightly with the strictly early 2000 style cutscenes but once again, we're not really paying too close attention to the storyline.

One main criticism that I will hold is that this game defiantly throws you into the deep end. Without knowing the game, it demands that you figure out the HUD with no real tutorial, or guide. It demands time an patience before you can actually play the game properly, but like all good games, it rewards you for the initial bump with a brilliant game that could easily swallow months of your time.

Oh, one more quick note, this game is best played using a joystick, I recommend one that has 6 axis and as many buttons that you can find. I use a Sweex 6 axis with rumble that I also use for IL2 - Sturmovick.

Final Verdict - Brilliant space trade/exploration game where you can make a name for yourself in the universe as either a Merchant, Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Killer or Pirate that is let down slightly by its cheesy storyline and irritating characters - 75%