Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Xbox 360 Review

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Xbox 360 Review


Liked:

1. Graphics are good but nothing mind-blowing.

2. Sound effects are fantastic.

3. Gameplay is generally fun and enjoyable.

4. Action camera is fuckin' badass! I can't get enough of seeing enemies get their faces and limbs blown off.

5. Story is ok. Kind of like a poor man's Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan.

6. Most achievements you get simply by playing the game. Nothing wrong with rewarding players for playing your game.

7. Good voice acting and soundtrack.

8. Not one single word mentioned about the "Holocaust". Thank fucking God.


Disliked:

1. I can't stand Leggett. Always hated the mother-fucker and this game just makes me hate him more.

2. Textures sometimes take too long too load, and you end up looking at a very blandly rendered model. Particularly bad on the characters' faces during cut scenes.

3. Some gay glitches... Pathfinding is bad sometimes, and both enemies and friendlies get stuck on scenery or run around like a dog chasing its tail.

4. Too much of the emotional impact of the story relies on the player having played the previous two games.

5. Minor gripes: These are a bunch of little things that when added up made me take away a point from the game. I felt it would be unfair to remove a whole point for each one of these things.

Did the Germans run out of grenades by September, 1944? The enemy AI never uses grenades. (this could be a good thing too)

Speaking of the Germans, they are the typical Hollywood propaganda style Nazis who seem to enjoy shooting Dutch women for pleasure.

Some of the achievements are just plain crazy. Like the one where you have to play for 100 days straight, and the one where you have to remember to play it on Sept. 17 next year... Can't cheat with that one either, since you have to be signed into Xbox Live to get it.

Sometimes the cut scenes seem to just "jump" right into a completely different scene. A good transition or fade would have looked better and been smoother.

Sometimes your squaddies will "teleport" to you or in front of you rather than run. That looks really shitty and can sometimes get them killed if they happen to teleport out in front of the cover.

The game uses those "quick flash frames" to represent madness that so many games have started using ever since F.E.A.R. started it all... Enough already.

Finally, and I don't know if this is a bug, or just AI behavior, but often you can give your men orders and they won't follow them.


Yay: The action cam and the intensity and sound of the fighting definitely make this a great experience. +1

Gay: I'm getting tired of every WW2 FPS trying to be Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. Enough with the sappy emotional stuff. Story and emotions can be good, but for fuck's sake all the kids are going to start thinking that World War 2 was fought by a bunch of Emos and the war started because Hitler threw people into Concentration Camps. -1

Final BS Rating: +3 HARDCORE

Notes:

I didn't even bother trying the multiplayer, it simply didn't interest me. This review only considers the single-player campaign.