Customer Reviews
Don't buy new for £35 buy second hand, thats all its worth. - By: A very old ZX spectrum gamer, 14 Nov 2008 
I certainly agree with the first review above. It is a dated game. The trailers make it look great but shows no resemblance. Ubisoft get your act together.
The biggest anticlimax ever!!!! - By: CrazyPaulo, 02 Nov 2008 Considering the amount of time that this game has beenin production & the hype over the past few years, I was expecting great things. As a fan of the original gamesin this series, I purchased an Xbox 360 primarily for this game.
However, that was almost 3 years ago. During the wait, I burned out 4 Xboxes & eventually defected to the PS3 camp.
When the game was finally released, I had it pre-ordered from Amazon. It arrived on launch day, & within 10 minutes I was thoroughly disappointed!
The game sends you down a corridor - you have no choicein the direction & very little opportunity to explore. From the original preview video's released for this game at E3 etc I got the impression that I'd be given an entire town to explore looking for aa guns, with subtle clues along the way to help. No! Just a corridor, with Germans popping out predictably every few seconds.
I can only jump over some of the cover - furniture, railings & other items can't be negotiated by this elite trooper! I thought game designers were beyond thisin latest gen games.
AI of Germans + Allies alike is diabolical. Why would anyone hide behind a white picket fencein a gun battle, not even moving to protect themselves as its being shot up?! The control system has become more fiddlyin that during a gun battle the screen moves around & if you try to instruct your men to attack something you can inadvertantly order them to suicidally charge the enemy. In old versions of the game, I seem to remember that they'd refuse if you told them to do something stupid - notin theis version though. Countless times I've tried to order a fire team to surpress a machine gun, only to see them charge at it!!! It only ever ends one way!
Destructable cover? A major selling point of this game. Have they played Battlefield: Bad Company?? BIA is patheticin comparison.
Disappointingly, I sold Bad Company to fund this purchase. Ubisoft & Gearbox should be ashamed for releasing something so half baked after all of the hype. The bar was high after the original games, but this doesn't even come close.
Big mistake. Fortunately, Far Cry 2 has come out & life is good again!!!
- I've sold the game now & got the lowest resale price for a game yet (and I sell all of my old games). Game quality is reflectedin the fact that retailers such as Amazon are already having to drop the price considerably!
Good fun - By: Mrs. H. E. Gratton, 29 Oct 2008 
Brothers In Arms Hell Highway, is more of a tactical game as opposed to the COD series, which is a shoot 'em up. Although good, COD rarely gives a true feeling of war as you run around aimlessly at times. BIA is very different to this, the enemy, are intelligent & will take cover &in Authentic mode they will try to flank you, so a bit of awareness does help. The cut scenes are great, no matter what the above reviews say, once watching the cut scenes you do genuinely feel bad when a comrade bites the dust because of the personality these cut scenes give to your squad, COD fails to do this & to me, doesn't give a real "feel" of war, which you should expect when playing a war game. Overall, if you're a more "sophisticated" gamer, buy the BIA series, tactical awareness does help. By the way this is a bloke writing the review, just on my Mums account.
Band of Brothers - By: D. Yarnell, 27 Oct 2008 
I never bought this game myself & from what I readin reviews of previous BIA I wasn't going to but my long suffering girlfriend did buy it & I thought it was great. Yes it has it's niggles regarding the fact you can only go certain areas etc etc but I found this a great game. The AI of the troops is good & at first the controlling of your squads is a pain but it sure is satisfying callingin your bazooka boys to take out a MG42 position & I NEVER got tired of the slo mo pieces with bodies blowingin half, legs blowing off or just getting that head shot spot on.
Having seen band of Brothers it made it easier to be immersedin the storyline & for a change I actually enjoyed the cut scenes.
To sum up it's a great game & if you like WWII then you should enjoy this game, I was a little disappointed it came to an end & just wanted to carry on killing the Nazis!!
Best bit ; coming up from cover & getting a perfect head shot
Worst bit; the fact your character can decide he doesn't want to stayin cover & get his backside shot off!!!!
Good but not great - By: R. Carter, 23 Oct 2008 
I have recently completed BIA & read several of the reviews & can understand the mixed feelings. I have always been a fan of the Brothersin Arms series & enjoyed the genuine innovation & tactics of the original PS2 games - but feelin some ways they are still superior to their PS3 counterpart.
On reading some of the reviews saying "a poor shooter" "not as good as COD" etc these individuals are missing the point - it is NOT a shooter, & is notin competition with the likes of COD, Medal of Honour etc - so I will review it on what it should be based on - how it performs as a strategic action game & how it has improved (and not as the case can be!!)
This game will never find a placein the hearts of shooter-junkies & I don't think it will ever try, but this is also where it sometimes fails, as if it is strategy-orientated game -in some place it is not as good as its predecessors.
One area which does need to be addressed again as has been raised by many was the build-up to its release. When a games' release date is put back & back, you would hope this is to perfect the game, & there were plenty of impressive teaser-trailers leaking into the internet that looked frankly very impressive & a genuinely innovation-laden move foward to the series. But after a long delay when finally released, I was dissappointed that through playing through the game patietly - I failed to find at least 80% of the footage I had seenin the trailers - yes, developer would argue not everything will find itselfin the final game but this much impressive content missing was a huge let down I felt somewhat short-changed when I completed the game. It actually did not end up coming across as the genuinely innovative game that we were all expecting.
Looking at the game itself - yes the graphics are not cutting edge - but they are not terrible either - there are plenty of nice touches, lots of attention to detail, the colours can often be a bit too bright & sharp - but as a balance, effects such as fire, explosions, water, movement all look sharp & there is plenty of atmosphere. On the whole the gameplay is intuitive & fluid, succesful strategic assaults & flanking are still very rewarding - but agian there is not much new here -in fact less than before - you can't lie prone any more, you can't melee attack (which was often missed) you can't order your squad to assault(rush) a position anymore(would've helped), & you can't order a tank as part of your squad(again really missed!)
Unfortunately too much emphasis has been put on flashy displays such as slow-mo head-shots, & dismemberment of limbs - which was a silly trade off - effects vs strategic options. The new units bazooka & Machine Gun are good fun though & do offer broader optionsin support for your squad - you never bore of a bazooka shell screaming over your head & destroying a particularly stubborn machine gun nest!! There is lots of narrative about story & the characters - but if you haven't played the other games, this will mean nothing to you. Although the game is all about teamwork, there were, for me, just too many "go it alone" sections - which were long, drawn out - & has probably alienated the aformentioned "shooter-fans" all the more as they prob think this is the direction the game is trying to goin & not doing it that well.
I think because of all the misleading trailers - my biggest gripe is the slightly underwhelmed feeling I got when I completed it (and have not beenin a hurry to play through it again) The game starts off really well, its exciting to follow the story starting off, & playing with the new squads & blowing stuff up & looking agape the first few times you literally blow people apart, but thats only for the first 1/3 of the game. For the rest its just the same over & over, slight variety of weapon you carry & squad you commandin slightly different terrain. The last couple of levelsin the dunes was the only time full effect of your command of a squad really falls into place & is an utter delight - but the last level is a boring & dissappointing finale.
Allin all though I have been a big fan of the series - &in some ways the predecessors are better - more tactical options - less graphical sheen. A lot of fans like me though are going to feel a bit mislead as to the finished article & rather short-changed over all. Ubisoft really need to listen to the critcism here & make significant improvements to a fundamentally good but as yet nowhere near a great game
