1. Northern Journey (PC)(FPS)2. Hatchpunk (PC)(FPS)3. Might and Magic IX (PC)(RPG)4. Star Wars: Empire at War (PC)(RTS)5. Chasm: The Rift (PC)(FPS)6. Real Heroes: Firefighter HD (PC)(FPS)7. CULTIC (PC)(FPS)
8. Consortium (PC)(FPS)9. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (PC)(FPS)
10. Forgive Me, Father (PC)(FPS)Some things never change. I continue to play FPS.
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30The first Brothers in Arms game released in 2005, right in the midst of a glut of FPS games based around World War II. Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, and Battlefield 1942 were the big names, and by this point many had multiple releases or expansions in their series under their belt. And that's not counting the lesser knowns, like Mortyr or World War II GI. So how did Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 stand out from the pack?
It went tactical.
Road to Hill 30 incorporated squad mechanics based on US military doctrine during the second World War. You play a sergeant who must lead troops into battle, sometimes as part of a combined arms strategy. To take down enemy forces, you send your squads into cover, have them suppress the enemy, and then outflank them with another squad. If the enemy is looking weak, you can also send a squad in to assault the position directly, though this has inherent dangers unless the enemy is severely depleted and suppressed. Conversely, you may have access to friendly tanks, so you can use these as mobile cover, a means to hit entrenched forces such as a machinegun emplacement, or a simple distraction while you hit from another angle.
Of course, you're in combat, so realistically you'd be under the effects of adrenaline, fear, and combat conditioning. The developers though it best to represent this with a shaky and inaccurate aim. Even looking through iron sights, your weapon will swing, and if you're under fire, you're hardly able to keep track of your foes. That said, you can and will learn to compensate. I found I was so often the best shot of my team that I'd direct my squads to suppress while I assaulted positions on my own. Yeah, the AI'd yell at me, but with the Germans dead and us moving forward, who cares what the AI thinks?
There are problems with this approach, however. A few levels have infinite enemies which continuously respawn, so you have to figure out the best way to maneuver through the "right" path until you find how the game wants you to proceed, particularly if the game has machinegunner emplacements, which simply autokill you if you get too close. Also, there are some surprising tools lacking, like the ability to go prone and crawl or fully run. You're limited to standing and crouching, and you can't book it, so you always need to find the best way to utilize geometry for blocking enemy fire. Also, zig zagging really does help save your butt when out in the open.
The AI for your squad is also limited, so if you tell them to shoot at a target, they won't always be able to figure out how to do it. I recall one action where I needed them to provide covering fire against an entrenched position, only for them to yell that they couldn't see the target, despite all they needed to do was move two feet up a shallow slope to a wall to have a covered position from which they could shoot. The solution? Literally tell them to move up the slope to the wall by clicking right next to them. In fairness, at the time of release, the AI was considered quite good. It's only with time and further development in AI squad mates and tactical FPS that the problems become apparent.
You may find while playing that level design eventually feels samey, and well...it is because it was. One of the major perks to Road to Hill 30 is that developer Gearbox spent a lot of time visiting, mapping, photographing, and relying on historical photographs, blueprints, and maps to give as realistic a layout as possible. You see the same fences and building designs because those were common architectural designs in the relatively small portion of France you are battling in. Reviewing how much the developers were dedicated to providing a more historical approach to the game, my sense of respect grew for Road to Hill 30. Yes, it's paratroopers in the same D-Day operations you'll have played through if you touched Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, etc. But it is portrayed with a historical accuracy that was highly prized in 2005, particularly in a genre that was so heavily saturated.
As a result, I would highly recommend Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 to anyone interested in WWII or Tactical FPS games. In fact, I kind of wish this was a co-op experience, so a group of us could play together. It's a shame the series didn't add that until later, and then only for two players apparently.
Forgive Me, FatherThis is an example of a game I want to like a lot more than I do. In fact, there is a lot about it that I genuinely do like: it's beautiful to look at, the sound design and music works well, enemy designs are creative and have some tricks I absolutely adore, and many of the levels are genuinely interesting. But it doesn't last. There are balancing issues between the two playable characters, the upgrade tree is heavily lopsided in favor of certain weapons, and enemy projectile fire is a frustrating conundrum. Eventually the game relies on poor platforming segments, and level design falls into a slow slog of frustration.
The game ties into the Lovecraft mythos, with you playing either a priest or a journalist who returns home to discover a crazy cult and horrible monsters have taken over. As you take down monsters, you gain experience, which can be put towards radically changing and evolving your arsenal, building your character's stats, or making your special abilities more powerful. Unfortunately, the priest is flat out the better of the two characters because his special abilities are significantly better. He can become invulnerable, heal, gain infinite ammo for a short while, and stun a crowd. The journalist has a time slow ability as well as an AOE attack, but her corresponding stun is limited in its area (albeit limited in other ways), and her other ability requires she enter melee, which is a poor choice because you're gonna be taking hits. The one place she excels is in a better light source, but that's only useful for exploration at certain times. Also, her dialogue is often out of place. She uses slang that's way too modern for the 1920s, and I found it distracting.
Since both characters use the same weapons, it's worth noting that there are a lot of options, and with the upgrades, you can further change some in radical ways. For instance, you could make the tommy gun into a beam cannon...which you should absolutely do, as all auto and multi-burst weapons have horrendous recoil that make them largely useless in comparison to your pistol, shotgun, and harpoon gun. Even the secret Tormentor superweapon has such terrible kick, it's only worth grabbing to conserve ammunition. Because the game throws hordes at you, so you're going to need to conserve ammunition.
Level design starts solid but wears down over time. My absolute favorite levels are countryside settings that appear at the start of Act 3 and feel like some of the greatest moments of games like Dusk and Cultic, but they soon devolve into sewer levels and mines, and these seem to go on forever. By the time you reach Act 5, they're temples in a void of time and space, and they just start feeling samey and full of backtracking. I would much have preferred to be back battling in the streets, cemeteries, or in a cornfield again.
There is a lot of brilliance to the game though. For example, the most basic and common enemy in Act 1 is a zombie who sometimes holds a severed head. Blast off their heads, and they put the severed ones on their necks and just keep coming. It's an inspired design to keep you on your toes for what is a trash mob, and I loved it. Many of the enemies are memorable, though eventually the game just throws speed at you or random spreads on attacks, once again showing that the final act feels tacked on.
I struggle to recommend this game, because as much as I find to enjoy about it, I find something that equally frustrates me. But I don't despair of having gotten the experience. The highs are really high. I just wish the lows weren't so bad.
