Brothers In Arms

[PanzerJaeger]

Anybody got it? Want to do a quick write up for the rest of us? (PC version plz)

Thanks..

[Voigtkampf]

I will be getting it today afternoon, and I will write a review for the PC magazine I tend to write when I get the time. I might as well write one for the Org, since I see it coming as a flash test (the paper will go to press in a two or three days, tops). As a Call of Duty veteran, I’m looking for some fresh blood right now.

Few more sleepless nights… Beer, smokes and FPS experience ‘till dawn babe!

[Beirut]

Details brother, details!

I'm looking to get it so please dwelve into the minutia as you see fit.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Its out?
I have a copy reserved ;)
Cant wait to play it online.

[Fragony]

Why have I never heard of this game before? I have been waiting for a realistic war themed shooter since operation flashpoint! Graphics look amazing, anyone here played it allready?

[Voigtkampf]

Got the game. I will do a flash review tonight for the magazine and make one for the Org as well.

Guys, don’t let your hopes soar like an eagle. It looks and plays like a console game. I have a bad feeling about this.

Stay tuned.

[Voigtkampf]

Got the game, played it and reviewed it. If you allow me, I’ll do the same here for the Org.

I won’t include any screenshots, they are quite dull.

…


So, basically, we have a WW2 shooter that starts off with the invasion of Normandy. You are Matt Baker, a member of 502 from the 101st Airborne. The game depicts the seven days of fighting with the showdown at Carentan.

Well, let’s cut to the chase; I don’t like the game one bit. I was hoping it to be a new Call of Duty, and it turned out to be very much apart from that. In this game, you can’t go to prone stance or crawl nor can you lean behind corners of buildings to recon or shoot. Basically, the console philosophy has made it a mediocre version for PC at best. The aiming is awful, and your iron sight dances around as if you were drunk; it is quite obvious that you are supposed to counter that via analog stick on your console controller, but it doesn’t work well with an optical mouse. While in CoD I usually take one shot, killing the target right away, I came to empty entire clips in my opponents from point blank range and hit nothing, while they would pick me off with two shots.

You do however command two teams, ordering them via point-and-click procedure to go to that specific place, open fire on enemy or charge at them. Basically all opponents have circles above their heads, or so called suppression indicators; when they fire freely upon you and your squads, the indicators are red, but when you or your brothers in arms lay suppressing fire on them, the circles turn grey and they are pinned down. Basically all you do is pin the enemy down, flank them and shoot them down, then cross the street and repeat the procedure on the other side. When you get a small tank to command, the tactics get quite challenging, and you send your troopers against anti-armor guns and your tank against machinegun nests. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Graphics are not satisfactory; most of the missions have some glowing nebula quality to them, as if you did too much crack before jumping off the plane. Also, PC requirements are enormous; while minimal demand is 256 MB RAM, they recommend it to be played on 1 GB RAM machines. I have one, but I don’t think I am in majority here. Music and sounds are mediocre at best, while the gaming difficulty is substantial. You get killed a lot, and I mean a lot; if you raise your detail setting, your last position will be loaded 20 times slower, I kid you not. Bad sniping won’t help the game.

Basically, BIA is a game for consoles that became somewhat of a zombie on PC. MP is ridiculous; you have 2 or 4 players commanding teams, trying to fulfill objectives like delivering a message to a certain point. Forget DM, TDM, S&D, capture the flag…

Honestly, I cannot recommend it. It is an unsuccessful compromise between PC and consoles, and it gets tedious very fast. I will be off now to deinstall it right after I write this post, and I am not kidding. If you do buy it and subsequently don’t like it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It is a short review, but it doesn’t deserve more space than it already got. Open and shut case.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

[Quid]

Wow, seldom have I seen a game ripped to shreds so quickly. Will wait for more feedback until I may or may not buy it. I was actually looking forward to this one but it seems it does not, in the least, hold the promise that it was granted when first reviewed.

Thanks for your insight, Voigt.

Quid

[Voigtkampf]

Well, I plowed my way through a LOT of games and after two years of writing professional reviews I got the basics together. The goal is to objective, analyze the game and refer to the substantial parts of it. It may have appear that I was being to harsh on this game, but I rated it still some 83 %. A review on IGN gave the game 9.1 (the readers, however, rated it 8.5), so don’t take my word for granted.

Interesting to see that on IGN the reviewer says how good it is, but actually spends a lot of time afterwards saying “well, this ain’t so swell, and that too, while that too could have been better”.

But I can tell you that it is a safe bet to claim that this game will be forgotten by most of us within the next two weeks. It is certainly not something I would recommend to anyone. What I can guarantee you for sure is that the information I provided is true; would you want your new shooter without all those things you are so accustomed to do, from movement to the MP game types? I don’t think so.

[Navaros]

i've seen a lot of people all over the net slamming this game and saying it is total crap

[Kongamato]

Someday soon, the industry is going to run out of phrases like "Medal of Honor", "Call of Duty", and "Brothers in Arms" and will have to start naming their games "World War II game #33787" and so on.

[Fragony]

Well, I plowed my way through a LOT of games and after two years of writing professional reviews I got the basics together. The goal is to objective, analyze the game and refer to the substantial parts of it. It may have appear that I was being to harsh on this game, but I rated it still some 83 %. A review on IGN gave the game 9.1 (the readers, however, rated it 8.5), so don’t take my word for granted.

Interesting to see that on IGN the reviewer says how good it is, but actually spends a lot of time afterwards saying “well, this ain’t so swell, and that too, while that too could have been better”.

But I can tell you that it is a safe bet to claim that this game will be forgotten by most of us within the next two weeks. It is certainly not something I would recommend to anyone. What I can guarantee you for sure is that the information I provided is true; would you want your new shooter without all those things you are so accustomed to do, from movement to the MP game types? I don’t think so.

You work for a games-magazine Voigtkampf?

[ShadesWolf]

Got the game yesterday, havent had enough time to play it yet. Ive enjoyed it so far though.

What I really like about it is the fact that not only are you playing a first person shooter, you are also in control of the squad.

[Voigtkampf]

You work for a games-magazine Voigtkampf?

Yes, but it is not my main occupation; I do it for fun mostly. I review few games per month, four or five, sometimes less if I don’t have the time, for one magazine, and I write articles for another PC magazine, which are of serious nature and involve various areas from news from the latest developments, problem solving and other areas like video-editing or web design.

@ SahdesWolf, you might have liked Star Wars Republic Commando better, where you also have a control over a squad and are able to order more complicated orders like defend this position, advance aggressively, form up, take up sniping position, hack that computer console, open that door, blow that obstacle… It also has far more enemy forces involved, while BIA is generally with far less opponents, and the AI of your squad in Republic Commando is undoubtedly far more sophisticated than in BIA.

This game has been a grave disappointment for me; I expected a CoD kind of game and got a console game masked as a PC game, the highly restricted pattern and forms of movements, the extremely high imprecision of your character when he is aiming and inability to hit anything further than ten meters away made me shun this game. In the entire COD and FPS scene around me I heard no one utter a positive remark concerning BIA.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Glad I read this. My birthday is coming up and now I know what I don't want.

[Dorkus]

If you play multiplayer fps's regularly (unreal, quake, cs), bia is really really boring. Console fps'ers might like some of the squad tactics, but that type of thing has been available online (with real people) since quake1. And since the action is pretty dull, as fps's go, the (poor) squad control is all it's got really...

[ShadesWolf]

Ok first thoughts - I like it.

After playing about ten missions (ish) ie I now have a squad of three men (Was four but one died) and a Tank.

Each mission seems to be very similar to the last, and I hate the shooting controls, I also agree you cant hit anything at a distance. I also find it is hard to shoot anything up close. Middle distance is ok it is fairly easy to kill the enemy

Thanks for the info about republic commando, almost got it on sunday, wish I had now.