Brothers in Arms DS Hands-On

Scheduled to arrive in stores this month, Brothers in Arms DS is a third-person shooter where you'll assume the role of an American paratrooper during World War II. Specifically, you'll be joining the "Screaming Eagles" 101st Airborne Division and battling through three distinct campaigns. These campaigns will be set in the villages of Normandy, the Tunisian desert, and the icy plains of the Ardennes. We recently had an opportunity to play through all six of the Normandy missions. We're pleased to report that we came away from the campaign not only unscathed, but also mighty impressed with what we've seen of Ubisoft and Gameloft's efforts thus far.

Brothers in Arms DS doesn't feature a tutorial as such, but the first mission in Normandy does a great job of familiarizing you with the uncomplicated controls via instructions from the soldiers that you're fighting alongside. You use the D pad for movement and the left shoulder button for weapon firing. But if you're left handed, you can choose to use the face buttons and the right shoulder button instead. Taking cover behind objects is as easy as positioning yourself close to them, and you can subsequently lean around corners or climb over sandbag walls with a minimum of fuss. All of the other controls are elegantly handled using the stylus and the touch screen, which is no mean feat given how many actions you can perform. Moving your stylus around the touch screen lets you look around the environment. When appropriate, you can target enemies with your equipped weapon or steer your vehicle left and right. One button on the touch screen lets you perform context-sensitive actions, such as planting explosives, getting into vehicles, and taking control of gun turrets. Activating zoom mode, which lets you target enemies more easily while you're stationary, is achieved via a second onscreen button. You can reload your current weapon at any time simply by dragging an ammo clip icon from the top of the screen into the center. Touching the picture of your current weapon will call up a dropdown menu of your entire arsenal when you need to switch. It's also easy to throw grenades quickly and accurately by moving the stylus from a picture of a grenade along a strength gauge.

Unlike many squad-based shooters, Brothers in Arms DS sees you assuming the role of someone other than the leader, so to stay alive and complete your objectives, you'll be expected to follow orders rather than give them. Most of those orders will simply be to take up a specific position or to focus on certain targets. But occasionally, you'll be instructed to do something a little more creative, such as using your sniper rifle to shoot at explosive oil drums as enemy vehicles pass by when there's no bazooka available. Waypoints and items that you need to collect are invariably highlighted on the screen after you're told about them. But if they're not in your field of vision, arrows indicating where you need to go will appear on the edge of the screen. We still managed to unwittingly ignore our orders on several occasions while playing. Although we got away with it once or twice, most of our mistakes and attempts to explore proved fatal. Fortunately, Brothers in Arms DS automatically saves your progress quite regularly, so being killed in action or failing to complete a mission-critical objective doesn't mean you have to start from the beginning again.

The missions that we've played through thus far have offered plenty of variety in their objectives. We've provided cover fire for colleagues with a sniper rifle, we've planted explosives on German rockets, and we've raced past enemy forces at the wheel of a four-wheel-drive vehicle. We've also gone toe-to-track with Panzer tanks and blown them up by tossing grenades into their gunner hatches. In one particularly memorable sequence, we were at the controls of a tank attempting to disable an enemy train. But we learned the hard way that the enemy soldiers--whose actions appear to be tightly scripted for the most part--are able to employ the same tactic. Like many modern shooters, Brothers in Arms DS employs a system that lets you replenish your health gradually simply by avoiding enemy fire for a period of time; but of course, the same isn't true for vehicles.

At the end of each mission, you'll be awarded a "fame" score based on various aspects of your performance, including mission time, accuracy, deaths, and kills. You'll also earn medals for special achievements, such as making it through a mission sustaining only minimal damage and killing a certain number of enemies with headshots or using your sniper rifle. Completing missions on the default "normal" difficulty setting unlocks the same missions on veteran difficulty and having beaten a couple of missions on that setting, we can report that an elite option is also unlockable. Approaching the end of the Normandy campaign unlocks the first mission in Tunisia, so it seems reasonable to assume that playing through most of Tunisia will unlock the Ardennes campaign.

We almost managed it, but it's impossible to write about Brothers in Arms DS without mentioning how good the game looks and sounds, even in its unfinished state. Minor camera issues aside, and given the DS's limitations, it's tough to find fault with the visuals. The audio is also noteworthy, with decent speech samples, satisfying gunfire, and a suitably agonizing ringing in your ears anytime you get a little too close to an explosion.

In addition to the single-player campaign that we checked out on this occasion, Brothers in Arms DS will feature deathmatch and team deathmatch support for up to four players. We look forward to bringing you more information on multiplayer support and other gameplay features as soon as it becomes available.