Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (Sony Playstation 3, 2008)

I had high hopes for this title, especially as I really liked the first 2 titles in this series. Unfortunately it falls short. Here's why:

- Graphics are cartoonish and not up to current FPS standards. There is little changed since the first title. Basically 2001 level graphics.
- The player is limited in his actions; you cannot jump, crawl, etc. Also, you cannot climb through windows, or even over/onto the smallest of objects. You can leap over small walls, but that is the extent of the player's abilities. You cannot run through a floor to ceiling broken out window, you still have to find an open door to go through. Call of Duty is better.
- The controls system is 'clunky'. The commands to do many of the actions do not roll off the fingertips. Many times I found myself having to look at the controller to remember what to do, or worse, having to pause the game. Also, I found many times I had to click a button more than once to get the character to do an action. This means the interface/response is poor. COD, Ghost Recon, Bad Company are all better.
- The game is 'buggy'. During one battle, one of my fireteams completely 'disappeared' from the screen. When I gave them a command, I could see the shadows on screen move like they were still in the battle, but the actual men were gone, all that was left were shadows. They would not shoot, just the shadows would move back and forth. I had to completely quit and restart to fix the problem. Unacceptable!
- The player cannot always see what the character is aiming or shooting at. While the character may have a line of sight, the player is blocked from seeing what the character sees and thus is shooting blindly at open targets.
- The multi-player game is very buggy and tempermental. I do not expect many people to play multi-player given the problems with the game.
- A player cannot skip through the cut-scenes. Some are very long and you must watch them completely each time, every time.
- The grenade system is not very good. Even throwing multiple grenades, the character will not toss them where you want them to go. Ghost Recon has a better system.
- The game claims terrain is interactive and destructible, but actually only a very small part is destructible. I found windows that would not break, none of the doors can be opened, nothing can be climbed onto, etc. Bad Company is much better.
- The story starts out well, and then gets 'dull' and then down-right poor. My first time through I was really wanting to skip the scenes, it got that bad.
- Unlike previous titles, you cannot always get your teams to go or do what you want; even multiple attempts result in 'unavailable' notices, to the point where I started to say "oh heck, I'll just go do it myself." This is NOT what fireteam battles are about.
- Overall, poor game. Rent it, or if you gotta have it, buy it on Ebay and then sell it quick before you lose a lot of money. Definately do not buy at full price.

I really like this game. The part I like best is when you get a good clean head shot the action goes into a slow motion mode and it shows his head exploding, or get your bazooka team to fire off a direct hit it shows the guys getting blown up. Basically, I think the levels are challenging enough, but they also offer a reasonable chance to make it through even in the realistic mode.

On the downside, I wish I could pick my own weapons before each mission. There are times when all I need is a sniper rifle or a bazooka. While it's nice to have my bazooka squad doing the shooting for me, I'd much rather do it myself. Besides, when they bazooka guy gets killed, you have to do without. You can't walk over and pick up his weapon. To me, that's a major drawback. I really hate the endless cutscenes between episodes. All I want to do is kill something. I couldn't care less about any stupid story line. As far as I can tell, there's no way so skip past the cutscenes. You just have to put your remote down and take the dog for a walk. If you're lucky, it'll be over by the time you get back.

Overall, I really enjoy playing the game itself. I just hate the useless stuff I have to go through to get to the reason I bought the game in the first place. I'm not the brightest star in the world, so it took me a while to learn when and how to use the various squads assigned to me during each specific mission, but once I did, I enjoyed the game a lot more. The first time I played it, I basically did all the killing myself. Once I learned the trick of the squads, the game became much easier. You can choose your own level of difficulty by how much or how little you use your squad, but either way, there are times when you have to do the job yourself

This is just one of many games made about World War II, and this is by no means the first game to be made about Operation Market Garden. Even though the premise is anything but original, the fact that you are a part of a team - not just some rogue soldier out to save the world - really adds depth to the game. The fact that you have to be aware of where to position your team, and how to use them best to achieve success, makes this game far better than any run-of-the-mill WWII first-person shooter game. Furthermore, the fact that the missions are based off of real sorties from WWII makes the plot far more believable. Adding to that is the fact that the designers included real photos and paragraphs of information about the real missions off of which the game was so closely based.

All in all, this game goes above and beyond the norm of WWII FPS games and sets the bar at a whole new level.

A good fps that takes you back to the dried up old ww2 scenario. With that said it is probably one of the last great world war 2 shooters youll play (hopefully). No coop or splitscreen multiplayer is a real big disappointment for me. Also the controls are rather wonky as well. But outside that, everything else is pretty smooth. The cover system is by far my favorite part about the game. The graphics are good, but youll get the occasional bug or two that will make your NPC faceless(literally). The online multiplayer is cool, but if your expecting call of duty 4, youll be in for a big disappointment. Overall this is a very good and not your completely typical shooter with the ordering squad command and latching onto cover. Will recommend to anyone that loves shooting nazis or anything in general.

This game is terrible. UBI software for any shooting game is great. I don`t know what happened here. They let me down for the first time. The biggest issue that I have with this, its like wathing a movie. Every segment, you have to endure a presentation like a movie that you cannot fast forward. You have to listen to the whole story and its just not the opening of the game. Its every scene. You have to command a bunch of guys and tell them where to go and also when to shoot. Its a poor game for these days that way much better games that provide enjoyment. You know, a game that you just keep playing to the end. Can`t stop. This game drags on and on and on. If you can buy it for $12.00 then do it. Try it then sell it. Otherwise stay away from it.