It’s a real shame that Gearbox has made the latest Brothers in Arms into a run of the mill first/third person shoot them up.

What were they thinking?

The first two games in the series were fantastic. Gearbox did their best to make the game realistic and followed what historically happened to the 502nd from the 101st Airborne.
When you were looking down your sights, you never knew if you were going to hit your target. Even up close you weren’t guaranteed to hit your target.
And when you played in authentic mode, you didn’t have any checkpoints to save your sorry arse.

But, for Hells Highway, Gearbox did their best to make it unrealistic.
It’s definitely a console game ported to the PC.
A stupid made up story about some pistol with “Brothers in Arms” inscribed on the side. Seeing phantom German soldiers that don’t exist as well as seeing Leggett’s.ghost in the church grounds.

You can’t miss. Every shoot, and I mean every shoot, hits its target. And there’s no swaying when looking down the sights (That’s when you have sights).

And what’s with all the rubbish third person view?
If you “DIG IN” you can’t look down your sights. Instead, you get a third person perspective view, which is made even worse if you don’t have the cursor option switched on in the game options as you have to shoot wildly in order to hit anything. In authentic mode (nothing authentic about this mode) the cursor is disabled.
There’s also a third person view with no way of zooming in when riding the on the back of a tank (Bring back first person view).

There’s also an annoying “threat alert” which turns the whole screen red even when your not in the line of fire. This can be switched off easy enough in the game options. What was wrong with the much better threat alert from the first 2?

There’s a new health system which makes the game more like other generic FPS’s/TPS’s and makes the game far too easy to complete.
Personally, I preferred the health system from the first 2 games which offered more of a challenge.

I replayed the first two in authentic mode after playing Hells Highway and loved every second. I’m now playing Hells Highway with no keys mapped for “dig in”. But there are still times with certain weapons when the game goes to third person view even though I’m not dug in.

Pros

Game looks absolutely beautiful.

Cons

1. Boring and pointless sub-stories that do absolutely nothing for the game.
2. Big mistake with the third person view while being dug in or riding tanks.
3. Guns are far too accurate and they don’t sway while looking down the sights in first person view.
4. Tank missions are pretty crap.
5. No unlockable extras
6 Gearbox have changed things for the sake of changing things and not always for the better.
7. Dumbed down console game ported to the PC.
8. no sprinting in the game
9. no leaning in the game

I pop back to see if maybe gearbox decided to change anything with a Patch?

But no, and it`s been months. Nothing we wrote in detail has been responded to. Nothing. Guess this one was a true failure then.

This is not a PC game. It's a mass market console game ported to the PC platform.

If you have a lot of PC game experience dating back at least 10 years, you know what I'm talking about.

If you don't have that experience, then there's no need for you to make any contrary comments, as your 9th grade debate teacher has surly already told you: "If you don't have the facts, don't say anything or you'll you'll show your ignorance."

My idea of a combat game does not turn the screen red to let you know you should take cover: it lets you get shot instead so that you can learn. It does not show you the location and mood of every enemy soldier, even if they are behind cover or out of your field of view: You know if they're suppressed or not by the fact that you are either being shot at or you aren't, and you know where they are by observing them.

I could go on, but those two babysitting, spoon-fed, hand-holding factors alone had me uninstall the game 10 minutes into it. If there was a way to disable all of that without first playing the game all the way through, then I'd be more interested.

As for the FOV being narrow and someone saying that it makes it more "in your face", all I have to say to that is, they have a name for games that are designed to be narrow and in your face... you find them at the arcade and you put quarters in them. There's nothing wrong with the game clipping half of your view out so that the aging console GPUs don't get overloaded and so that you can still see things from the couch, but as I started... those are not PC games.

-Doc

quote:

Originally posted by Doc.Caliban:


I could go on, but those two babysitting, spoon-fed, hand-holding factors alone had me uninstall the game 10 minutes into it. If there was a way to disable all of that without first playing the game all the way through, then I'd be more interested.


-Doc

I AGREE TOTALLY. But, just to be fair you can remove those handholds you mentioned in the options before starting your first game, you obviously missed it - except for the silly red screen thing.

However, it doesn`t matter as the game is still terrible anyway. Made, as you said, just for consoles. Those of us expecting anything realistic like Earned in Blood, the previous game, and bought Hell`s Highway, will be sorely dissappointed.

Basically, we were tricked and they ran off with OUR money (and they complain about Pirates). I, and I`m sure, many others on PC, won`t be tricked liked that again.

Hello... I have owned the game since it was released.. and only recently went ONLINE .....

I have a SERIOUS complaint about ppl EXPLOITING the Panzershreck / Bazooka ( it is the ONLY WEAPON ppl are using.,... making it IMPOSSIBLE to play a normal game... ( running up against a team of Bazooka players isn't FUN.,.. ( the Splash Damage makes it IMPOSSIBLE to even RESPOND>.. 1 shot kills...

could this please be addressed .... ( I've really been dissapointed by the players whome are Exploiting the bazooka ( limit it to 1 per team)

Please take this into consideration... ( I hope SOMEONE does as this is RUINING the playability of the ONLINE aspect... ( after 10mins I quit becuase Im fed up with the cheap 1 shot kills )
Thomas

Suppose i ought to post my thoughts on the game, having played it a bit:

I must admit i quite liked Brother's in arms Hell's highway, not having played the previous games there were some obvious holes in things, but all in all, i didn't really feel any significant loss becaues of it as the game was quite good in filling it in

Gameplay wise i liked it as well, not really a twitch based game like Call of duty, but a much more tactical experience where flanking and good use of the squads where of much greater use.
Which was quite nice actually and if i was stuck, a glance at the tactical map would allow for me to come up with a better plan to take out the enemy.

The squads themselves were quite nice and it was interesting to have access to a variety of them and thankfully they would rarely get in the way and were quite capable of finding cover on their own if necessary, there were times where they would not do as i instructed, but that was more the exception than the rule and i am aware that sometimes the AI will just bugger up :P

The enemies were interesting enough, although it would have been interesting with a more marked difference between the troopers from the wehrmacht and the Wafffen SS in fighting style and insults thrown, as it were there really wasn't much difference except uniforms.. which was a bit dull.

Also it would have been nice if they themselves had officers to direct their squads in the fight against oneself, so as to get a more agressive fight out of things instead of as it were here some pretty defensive ones except in the defence sections, which were rare and in which the enemy wasn't of much opposition, smoke deployed could have been interesting. Just a thought on that bit

And tank wise.. well a few more types would have been nice, although i am not asking to have Tigers thrown at me all the time either, but a single panther here or a single tiger there would have been a nice touch or some armoured cars, halftracks..

Also i suppose a luftwaffe field division could have been interesting to go up against :P or fallschirmjaegers

Regarding the tank sections, there were a nice touch and allowed for some diversion from the regular squad based gameplay and allowed one to wreak havoc with a firefly tank.

A few comments though, first of all, considering i was driving a tank, there were plenty of things that did not get crushed on my threads, which i found to be rather odd when something as a stonefence for example did not get crushed, which also made moving around a bit difficult at times. And as above, some variety in enemies could have been nice, here armoured foes like different tanks, or tank hunters..

Regarding the graphics, they were nice and it was a good use of the unreal 3 engine, took me some time before i actually spotted it, so good job !

The campaign itself was good, albeit oddly paced at times, plus you rarely if ever got the impression you were in any actual battles, but just happened to be in some skirmishes, not asking to be thrown directly in to huge battles.. but being able to see that you aren't the only ones doing the fighting would have been nice.

And again regarding the pacing, it felt odd as i never really knew when the game was going to be over, and by the end of Eindhoven, i actually thought it was.. but then it wasn't there were some fun missions, but then by the last mission, there was absolutely no indication as such that this was the end, nothing that i could feel or sense it just felt like an interlude mission leading up to something big.. and then.. it all ended, campaign over.. Which was kind of offputting to me actually. So that would be something to look out for, that is, pacing it correctly, no need to spell it out directly that you are at the end, but some hint would be nice.. and let it end off with a bang instead of having the climax be several missions earlier.

But overall, a very good game and certianly one i would get the sequel for if there ever was to come on

Quite happy with th game in general I'm on my second play through in 3-4 days.

- Not happy with the length

- I understand that its just about the trip down Hell's Highway but I completed the whole game in less that 6 hours (that's nearly as bad as CoD4 - completely in 4 hours)- but there was a lot of fighting in Holland prior to the Battle of The Bugle that could have been covered.

- don't like that I can aim down the rifle while dug-in.

- I miss the situational awareness but I understand that the men fighting in Holland didn't have the same degree of prep as they had for D-Day.

- Unhappy with the graphics - love the people and gore and physics - yet the backgrounds and item details (octagonal candles - don't understand that one) is far below what I would have expected Unreal 3 to be able to produce - I'm running the game on High the detail looks about average.

- I love the in-jokes, the cut scenes (the fact I can skip them if I want) I'm gald the story element is still there.

- the replacement of Recon Points for difficultly completion rewards for each chapter is nice.

On the whole I did like the game.

i would like this things to be done for a next patch:
1.a rank up system in multiplayer
2.add all weapons from single player into multiplayer
3.more game modes
4.co-op
5.attachments for the weapons for multiaplyer and singleplayer
thats all!