After years of linear, heavily scripted first-person shooters in which the action unfolds the same way every time, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 may very well represent the next big thing in the action game genre. Brothers in Arms combines the fast-paced World War II action found in games like Call of Duty with the tactics and squad controls of last year's revolutionary Full Spectrum Warrior. What this means is that you will not only shoot at the enemy with bullets whizzing over your head, but also you'll have to constantly analyze the battlefield and issue commands to your computer-controlled squadmates. Brothers in Arms impressed us when it was unveiled last year, but developer Gearbox has kept the multiplayer component of the game a secret...until now. We recently had the opportunity to get our hands on Brothers in Arms' mutiplayer game, and we've got a full report as to how it plays out.

Developer Interview

Gearbox's Randy Pitchford gives us some final thoughts as the game nears completion.

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As members of the development team told us, what they wanted to do is avoid creating the same old multiplayer gameplay found in so many other shooters. It wouldn't have made much sense to shoehorn Brothers in Arms' innovative single-player gameplay into a conventional multiplayer game. So instead of the typical multiplayer modes, such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, or capture the flag, the yet-to-be-named multiplayer mode in Brothers in Arms will let up to four players battle it out, but in an entirely new way. Instead of just running around shooting at one another at random, in Brothers in Arms, each player will control a fireteam of artificially intelligent soldiers, almost like in the single-player game. The main difference is that in the single-player game, you're the squad leader. Consequently, you can issue commands to a fireteam (whose job it is to pin down the enemy) and an assault team (whose task is to maneuver to close range to destroy the enemy). In multiplayer, you'll only have command of a fireteam or an assault team. You can play as the Americans versus the Germans in a head-to-head game, or you can go two versus two, with each player controlling a team of his or her own.

The innovative fire-and-maneuver gameplay will give you command of an infantry fireteam.

We got our hands on the Xbox version of the game, and the good news for Xbox fans is that the controls are practically identical to those in Halo and Halo 2, which means you can pick up and play Brothers in Arms with relatively little effort. However, it will take time to figure out the tactical nature of the game. The only key difference is that the left trigger doesn't throw grenades: the black button does. Instead, the left trigger is used for calling up the context-sensitive command icon, which you use to direct your soldiers. For example, if you drag the icon behind a wall or a behind a building corner, you'll order you troops to seek cover there. Drag the icon over enemies and it will turn red, indicating that you want your team to fire on them. Meanwhile, the back button is used to call up the situational-awareness screen. In the single-player game, situational awareness allows you to pause the game to view the battlefield from a bird's-eye perspective. Obviously, situational awareness won't pause the game when you're in multiplayer, but it will let you see where your teammate may be, as well as the location of known enemies. You can also use the directional pad in situational awareness to pan to each of your mission objectives.

One thing that you don't really notice until you're in the game is that there are no aiming reticles or target cursors. This is a nice touch, because it no longer allows the hyperfast, run-and-gun-style shooting that's prevalent in most shooters. Shooting in this game feels incredibly realistic, because it's difficult to hit anything farther than 10 feet away by shooting from the hip. Instead, you need to tap on the right thumbstick to zoom in on the iron sights for each weapon, which makes it easier to aim. Even then, there's no guarantee of getting a hit due to the recoil of the weapon and the other variables that go into actually putting lead into a target. That just makes it all the more satisfying to see one of your shots fell an enemy.

Your soldiers will behave like real human beings, which means they can break under pressure.

When you're killed, you have a couple of options at your disposal. Assuming there are still surviving members in your fireteam, you can take control of one of them to continue fighting. But if your team is wiped out, you can use a reinforcement point to respawn at the original base. You only have a limited number of reinforcements per game, so you have to ration them out carefully. One neat touch is the way the server handles a player who drops out of the game. In other games, when a player departs, he usually leaves his team holding the bag. If you're playing a two-versus-two game in Brothers in Arms, and one player leaves, the departing player's reinforcements will be inherited by his teammate. In essence, the remaining player will get the spawns the departing player left behind. In addition, to keep things balanced, the remaining player may get an extra man for his fireteam, or the opposing fireteams will shrink in size to compensate.