Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Worth playing"

Brothers in Arms is a great game. There are just under 20 levels, and the whole game will take around 10 hours to play through, which is a good length for this type of shooter. The main things that differentiate BIN from other WWII games are its storytelling and its gameplay.

The story is told through the perspective of a squad leader named Baker, played by you. It focuses around "Bakers Dozen", which are your the 12 squad members. You are an airborne division, and have just been dropped off behind enemy lines days before the American invasion begins. Since your squad does not change for the entire campaign, you will get to know your squad mates, making it more meaningful when you see them die.

Now the gameplay is tactical and not reflex based, setting it apart from most other shooters. A similar series is the Rainbow Six series, but even then, you could get away with quick reflexes and little thought, especially in the Vegas games. In BIN, your weapons are for the most part highly inaccurate. You will be in command of a combination of suppressing squads, automatic rifle equipped flanking squads, and sometimes even tanks. Most of the gameplay involves sending your squads to suppress enemies while you run between cover to get to the enemies exposed flank. There, you will emerge from your cover and spray at the enemies, hopefully killing them. This is great fun and completely reliant upon tactics, but it is easy to get a hang of for anyone with the patience to learn. Since the game is so reliant upon these tactics, it can get repetitive, but thankfully the checkpoint system makes it easy to stop and pick up again at a later time.

The biggest flaw of this game is that the controls feel very consolized. It took me a good portion of the game just to get a hang of my commands, and many a time I sent the wrong squad in, which lead to unneeded casualties. By the end of the game I had gotten used to the commands, so this probably won't be a concern of mine for the sequels.