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In Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, the third installment in the Brothers in Arms series, you're invading the Netherlands and Market Gardens, in what was the largest airborne invasion in history, as part of a recon squad. According to the Lead Game Designer, the goal with Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway was to give the player the opportunity to experience what it is like to "be in the squad;" to deliver the more human experience, so absent in other military games.
Brothers in Arms features authentically detailed maps, taken from a combination of actual photographs and aerial photographs, as well as information gained by interviewing actual soldiers who fought on both sides of battles in the areas used in the game.
This is not a typical FPS. It is full of combat-related tactical puzzles and features a very dynamic A.I. that makes the gameplay different every time. To help keep players submerged in the action, Hell's Highway features a minimalistic UI, focusing instead on what you would actually see if you were there. Where most games have a "health" meter of some sort, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway blurs the screen and tints it in red to warn you of impending death. While other games may have similar features, the explanation in Hell's Highway is not that you are actually getting shot, but that it indicates the danger you are in, or the increasing chance of being hit. Either way, it makes its point without cluttering the screen with meters or gadgets. One interesting thing to note that actually supports this description of what the red tinting is actually indicating is that it's not the screen that is tinted, but only the area of danger on the screen. For example, if you are looking over a low fence at a group of enemies who are firing at you, the red tinting and warping effects may be in full effect above the fence line, but you don't see any of these effects below the fence line. The idea is that if you actually were to be shot even once, much less a few times, it wouldn't be a matter of simply finding a canteen somewhere, you'd be out of the fight. Instead, this treatment is based on the fact that only about one bullet in a thousand actually connects with a human target in times of war.
A personal favorite feature of mine in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is that you can actually pick up and move "mounted" weapons, and even fire them from the hip, although with a much lower accuracy. |
