| Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway (PC) |  | From: Ubisoft
Category: Video Games
List Price: £34.99
Buy New: £17.97
You Save: £17.02 (49%)
New (10) Used (6) from £14.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 332
Platform: Windows Xp
Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Media: Video Game
Age: 11 - 18 years
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.2 x 0.6
EAN: 3307211614277
ASIN: B000FN7JKG
Release Date: October 3, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
In a nutshell:
After a successful tour of duty on the current gen consoles Brothers in Arms returns in the ultimate WWII squad based shooter, set during the closing months of the war as you take part in the crucial Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. The lowdown:
Although there were many astonishing looking games at the recent E3 event this was for most people the most graphically amazing next gen game seen so far. The levels not only look near photorealistic but the game world is huge and almost completely interactive. The gameplay works in the same basic way as before, with an easy to use onscreen cursor enabling you to direct your men with a single button press. New movement types now exist though, allowing you to specify stealth or patrol postures depending on what you’re doing and how fast you need to move. The only problem is the enemy have the same abilities and their artificial intelligence is advanced enough to make proper use of them. Most exciting moment:
Not only are the enemy intelligent but they’re also well trained, reacting just as a real German soldier would. They’ll hide in doorways, ambush at road junctions and even, in one memorable encounter, hide behind a washing line – where your only warning is from a Dutch civilian at a window above. Since you ask:
Everything in the game is as realistic as possible with streets and house copied exactly from photos taken at the time, while all weapons and vehicles are modelled to work exactly as they did in real life. The bottom line:
The most realistic WWII game ever – in terms of history, tactics and graphics.
HARRISON DENT
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 The Problem with Narrative November 18, 2008
The progress of this series reminds me of the `Medal of Honor' franchise, which began with two excellent Playstation titles, but then changed for the worse when it moved to the PS2, becoming pre-occupied with narratives of heroism, with bugles and flapping flags, a pre-occupation which has overtaken exciting gameplay as the signature of the series. `The Brothers in Arms' games have always had narratives, but in earlier games the focus on individual characters was offset by really challenging level design - later levels in these games were chaotic and extremely difficult on the default setting.
In this game levels on that medium setting were not nearly as engaging or difficult and were interspersed with long cut scenes that developed a backstory which was as confusing as it was unconvincing (the variety of facial scars and accents did nothing to convince me that I was dealing with a group of `individuals'). Instead of building upon the game's unique combat system and the believability of its environments the developers have tried to push the idea of a narrative into which all the action of game fits.
In so doing they have ignored the historical narrative which made the earlier games so satisfying: to understand what it must have been like to stand next to a Sherman tank and feel the earth shake as it fired its main gun; or to understand why it was that German 88's were so feared by the Allies, especially when they commanded high ground. In the earlier games the developers were meticulous in bringing facts like these, the `real' narratives of WW2, to life; in this game those narratives have been sacrificed (tanks are now ridden a la COD and 88's are about as threatening as a garden hose) for a made up story about a gun or a coward or something.
A huge dissappointment.
A great game November 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
No doubt great gameplay, great graphics, got Far Cry 2 at the same time & hardly played it, online side is pretty poor & the worst part for me is how short the game is, I hardly get a chance to play & yet completed it in what seemed only a few visits to the pc, great game so 5 stars for fun but very short so only 3 stars overall.
Long cinematic scenes that really did my head in, they start, you can go to the loo, make a tea, eat your dinner, come back & it will only be halfway through one, yawn, if you port a game to pc at least give us the option of to watch all that or not. Same thing did my head in playing Assasins Creed, no need for it.
 Joy stick playable November 13, 2008
I am sincerely hoping someone has a heart and can help me. I suffer from MS and find games using keyboards difficult. Can you play Brothers in Arms with a joystick/Gamepad if not can someone recommend a great game similar to this one
Good, but no real advancement from previous versions November 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hells Highway is much the same as the previous releases, and if you enjoyed those (or want something a little more cerebral than the usual run and gun shooter) then this is the one for you.
Hells highway extends the previous versions through better graphics (it now uses the Unreal 3 engine), and a better storyline, played through via nice in-game cut scenes.
My only real issues with the game are perhaps a series of personal points -
1. Maps are still linear
The game doesnt utilize the new engine in anything other than better eye candy and physics. The earlier games were criticized for not allowing free roaming - you have to take a town using a set direction and can't (for example) skirt and attach from another direction that the enemy don't expect. You are stopped from doing things like this via really odd obstacles - a gate that looks like you should be able to jump over, or a corn field with a little stream running through it that you don't seem to be able to wade through. The U3 engine should be able to handle larger maps with multiple forking paths, but this is never developed.... So although you have an authentic squad based system, you cannot define an overall attack strategy (direction of attack, working out the enemy weak point, etc). the best the game offers is flanking paths (run down the back side street to catch the enemy from the side, rather than attack the whole town from an unexpected direction).
2. The game doesn't simulate true fog of war.
Every map feels like a series of puzzles rather than a battlefield. You HAVE to suppress particular enemy in a particular sequence to win, and you HAVE to move to certain positions to advance. This just feels wrong when compared to authentic squad simulations (such as Armed Assault), or even other shooters shuch as Medal of Honor: Airborne (where, although the squad based system doesnt exist, the enemy do actually respond to your tactics a little better, and there is a real sense of fog of war - mainly because there are larger sized squads). Hells highway is still a heavily scripted shooter rather than a sandbox military simulation that it pretends to be.
3. The enemy AI feels scripted rather than responsive.
The enemy never have their own goals, and this means that they rarely do anything other than try to maintain their positions and kill you. They do occasionally flank, but this is scripted - they always do the same thing. What they don't have is any real predefined goals that conflict with yours, so the battles can feel a little flat.
4. Simplified tactics.
Although the game uses what purports to be true squad tactics (suppress. flank), it only simulates a very cut down version of it. The squads do not know about other important military doctrines such as combined arms for example(tanks and troops never act as a team), and as mentioned earlier, you cannot impose an overall strategy, particularly direction and time of attack, and neither can you define squad loadouts.
So given all that, why do I still give high marks? Well, once you realize the limitations and take Hells highway as what it is (a thinking mans FPS rather than a fully featured squad simulation) it's actually a lot of fun... and I had a lot of fun playing through it. Perhaps the coolest new feature is deformable cover. Shooting a fence away with a high calibre machine gun to kill the soldier hiding behind it has to be cool! Behind that fun is the feeling that the game mechanics could have advanced a whole lot more, particulalry when the technology certainly allows it.
Disclaimers and setup:
I have played through the full game before review. I used version 1.0.0 (unpatched initial release) of the game.
I used a Radeon 4850 (1GB video ram) Q6600 (quad core) processor, 2GB system ram. I experienced no crashes or glitches (and I saw good framerates throughout) at 1920x1200. All graphics set to full except anti-aliasing.
A fun and solid gaming experience, but ultimately the lesser of the series. November 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I completed it just now and err I was kinda disappointed. The Game itself was great and I liked the storyline (though it kept reaching highpoints midway which sorta made the ending a bit dull and disappointing in itself). But it really embarked away from the whole realism vibe it had going with the first two, it seemed like they were trying to satisfy the CoD4 crowd or something. You no longer really have to flank the enemy, you just snipe them 1 by 1 or get a squad to rush and nade them. They also got rid of what was a pretty solid system (DUCK) and replaced it with a Gear of War/R6: Vegas cover system which means you spend most of the game in third person, which I didn't really like. I did like the general polish and graphics of the game, added with the sound, the specialist team (MG/Bazooka) was also a welcome addition. However, they took away tanks and now any "tank" sections are spent in a VERY ARCADEY COD2 RIPOFF 3RD PERSON TANK EXTRAVAGANZA! Add to that the fact that the authentic mode has to be unlocked and you have an ultimately mediocre game. The multiplayer is what angered me the most; it's pretty much made for Xbox Live to the degree that there are no dedicated servers and they're all temporary player ones. The lag problems for the PC version return and the ... Read Moreentire game mode relies on players actually listening to the Squad Leader's orders; which rarely happens. Frankly the old multiplayer system from RtH30 and EiB (small number of players but each player had a squad) was far better, the multiplayer might entertain 360 players but a PC player can just go play Battlefield (and at least in that you can respawn!).
Ultimately it provided a solid and fun gaming experience that took up large blocks of my gaming time for 2 days, I disagree with those who say the game is short, for me it was about average. You're never really left frustrated like in Call of Duty when you fail as there's always a a different way to approach situations, even if the end conclusion is usually always flank and spank. From me, Hell's Highway gets 3/5, it's a good game, but in this credit crunch scenario should not be top on your wish list.
Also, a quick note to anyone who buys this for PC, the game requires the LATEST PhysX drivers and many consumers (including myself) have not been able to play the game, instead being stuck with an error message on the desktop, however this issue can be rectified simply by updating said drivers.
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