Brothers in Arms (BiA) is squad based first-person shooter set in the Second World War. The game is based on the real-life missions of the same unit as in Band of Brothers, the famed Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. Whereas Band of Brothers was based on the exploits of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Easy Company, you'll play the role of the 502nd, Fox Company. The game takes place over seven days, starting with the nighttime drop and ending with the action at Hill 30. Consequently, you can expect early missions to involve linking up with other paratroopers and taking out German defenses. From there you'll move on to clearing out towns, blowing bridges, and keeping Jerry from overrunning your command posts.

Now a lot of FPS fans will be comparing this game to Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. Both very fine games indeed. There are some differences between those two titles and BiA. First off, this isn't some arcadey run and gun game like most other WWII first-person shooters. As you go through the game, you'll have access to various squads. Since you're a squad leader you have to command your squads (Fire Team, Assault Team, and Tank Team) and tell them what to do. Basically, you must order your men to follow, find cover, give covering fire on a target you designate, and then order others to try and flank the enemy so you can eliminate them. Controlling your squad is easy enough. Just tell them where to go with the right mouse button. There's the "Situational Awareness" view (key [V] by default) feature which allows you pause time and get a birds eye view of the battle you're in at the moment. This gave you the ability to anticipate enemy movements as well as possible routes of surprise friendly forces might capitalize on. However, this aspect does not have a free moving camera - the only thing you can see is the positions of your troops and then, if you move the arrow keys, the position of the enemy troops. This simply does not work much well, as it moves so quickly to the enemy position that it is impossible to tell where that position is in relation to your current location. The game's AI is smart enough (most of the time) to do the right thing without you having to be much specific. The men on your screen are fairly alive, both Allies and Germans hide, shoot, swear and run as real people would in the heat of battle. However, Brothers in Arms isn't completely realistic, at least not on Normal difficulty. You and your mates can still withstand inhuman amounts of gunfire damage before falling, although not as long as in some other games. Another essential difference is that you only get one life, so to continue on to the next mission, you have to survive. And you can't get a medic or pick up a first aid kit to extend your health. Just like in real war. Trust me, you won't last long if you try to play BiA like Medal of Honor!

My biggest complaint about the game is that the levels are too linear. There's only a few fixed ways to flank/kill the enemy. There are also way too many barriers and fences so that you can only proceed in one direction. Sometime you feel like you are in a maze with only one correct path. It's pretty lame, especially if the game has been promoted a lot as "the most realistic" war game out there :]

Multiplayer modes in this game are different than what you might expect. It doesn't play like the others games (DM, TDM, CTF or objective-based). Instead, while the game is based on achieving objectives (or preventing it), there are only two to four human players. The players are given objectives such as taking codebooks or destroying german artillery pieces. These maps are all original, and are not copied from the single-player portion of the game.

People looking for more strategy and challenge would do well to try this one, but those looking for another "run-and-gun" shooter should avoid! It is important to understand that this is not another Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. If that's what you want, don't get this game!

related links: patch v1.01, patch v1.02, cheats, homepage

System requirements: 1 GHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon (2.5 GHz Pentium IV or AMD recommended), 512MB RAM (1GB recommended), 32 MB DirectX 9.0c video card *, 16-bit DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card, 4x DVD-ROM (8x or better recommended), 5GB free Hard Drive space, Broadband with 64 kbps upstream (128 kbps recommended)

* Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: ATI Radeon 8500/9000/X series, NVIDIA GeForce 4/FX/6 series (GeForce 4 MX not supported)