BIA: Hell's Highway... Jerry Bruckheimer must have been the historical advisor

Brothers in arms has always been on the top of my list for World War 2 first-person shooters. Ubisofts latest, "Brothers in arms: Hell's Highway" is easily the best in the series, although still not perfect.

Hells highway was preceded by two other games, "BIA:Road to hill 30" and "BIA: earned in blood". Earned in blood was knocked for being relatively the same as Road to hill 30 in terms of gameplay, which is ironic because Hell's highway couldn't have drifted further away from the two.

The series follows the 101st Airborne division during WW2. While the first two were set during the Normandy invasion, Hell's highway is set during Operation Market garden. You play as Sgt. Matt Baker who is troubled by his previous decisions and actions.

The biggest improvement obviously has to be the new cover system seen in Rainbow six: Vegas and Gears of War. While it's obvious they blatantly ripped off those games, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, and infact, works really well. It was a big complaint I had with the first two games, You were crouched behind cover in first person and therefore couldn't see over you. Needless to say, you had to expose yourself in order to move your squad to another position, also, you could never really guarantee your safety as you couldn't see if your head was exposed or not. The new cover system also allows you to see if the enemy is moving out of cover as well so you can engage them whenever they are.

At the start of the game, when being shot at or if you aren't behind cover, the screen starts to glow red to indicate so. The funny thing is, the game thinks it's doing you a favor by doing that, but, call me crazy, it might be easier to find cover when I can see what I'm doing when my screen isn't red. Thankfully you can turn it off, I can't see anyone playing the game going "Phew, I sure am glad the screen just turned red to tell me that I'm getting shot at, otherwise I would never have known, I wonder what other brilliant religious insight this game has".

The basic concept the game tries to enforce is flanking the enemy, which is basically moving around the sides to a spot where the enemy is exposed. Executing it perfectly would have one of your teams pinning them down while you flank them, giving them no choice but to run away and ultimately getting hit in the back. sometimes though, they just sit there even though they know you're on their flanks and wait for you to kill them.

The worst part about the game has to be the god awful "Hollywood action flick" storyline. The game is no longer a gritty, realistic, and dark story. Instead, you get funny moments here and there mixed with intense dramatic moments. It's like it doesn't know exactly what it wants to be. On top of that, if you haven't played the previous two games, you can forget understanding exactly what's going on.

About 25% of the game is Matt Baker by himself, and the rest fighting alongside a squad. This adds to the stupid Hollywood mentality and makes the game feel more like Wolfenstein rather than a squad based shooter. It's painfully obvious the developers wanted to appeal more to run and gun first person shooter fans, which ditches their historically accurate theme.

The graphics and environments have been given a serious next generation overhaul. Instead of bland, bombed out villages, (which you still get but look alot better) the game this time around features more lush, open field environments. Cover such as wooden fences and carriages are destructible as well. The animations, specifically facial, are now alot more realistic and less stiff. The cinematics have obviously improved but when it's teamed with the cheesy storyline it's kind of irrelevant.
 
Overall, the whole game seems alot easier. You're teammates are better shots and if you give them enough time, they'll usually take everyone out, assuming they're in a decent spot. Not only that, but it's ridiculously easy to pick off the enemy when they pop their head up from cover. A neat feature is when you get a headshot or blow up a bunker with a grenade or other explosive, the camera moves to a slow motion, cinematic view that's actually fun to watch.

The squad mechanics have changed slightly. You now command of up to three teams, all of which are separated based on their role ex: Machine gun team, Bazooka team, recon team etc...All of which you can command by manually placing them somewhere or suppress the enemy. The good thing about your squad this time around is that they're much smarter than before. No longer will they stand in the open during a firefight if you tell them to, if they sense they're in danger, they'll automatically take cover. The same applies with the enemy.

Aside from fighting on foot, you also get to control a tank for a short while. Except instead of simply telling your tank to fire on enemies and tediously controlling it one step at a time, you actually get full control of both the turret and machine gun, it's a good mix up from the normal infantry fighting, although you only get a short segment of it and more of it would have been nice. 

The Audio is still terrific as the BIA series always has. Most of the music is along the lines of Saving Private Ryan, sort of slow, dramatic and all orchestral. I won't say the weapons sound realistic like some stuck up kid because I've never shot them, but the developers always record the actual sounds and then add them into the game, so you're getting all authentic sounds.

Since the single player is only about seven or eight hours , multiplayer is still a decent alternative. Still enforcing squad movements and teamwork, multiplayer modes have your squad, either Americans or Germans, battling it out together in various modes like good ol' deathmatch, capture the flag or "King of the hill" type modes.

Overall, I'm really glad to see the developers trying to innovate a series that was starting to get stale. However, while they improved on most of the game, some stuff still needs fixing, most importantly the idiotic storyline. (By the way, by innovate I meen for the series because it's obvious where the "inspiration" came from for the "duck and cover" gameplay) Still the length of the single player and the better multiplayer alternatives (especially on the 360) deems BIA: Hell's highway a solid rental.