GC '07: Brothers in Arms Double Time First Look

LEIPZIG, Germany--It may be a little-known fact that Brothers in Arms is coming to the Wii because Ubisoft hasn't revealed a thing about the first game in its WWII tactical-shooter series for Nintendo's quirky console since the game's announcement in April. Nevertheless, BIA Double Time is already in certification at Nintendo and is due out on the Wii next month. We got the briefest of looks at the game today in advance of a presentation on the next-generation game, Hell's Highway. This one turned out to be a retread of last month's Electronic Entertainment Expo material though, so we'll have to wait for more on that one in the coming weeks.

In any event, Double Time retains the core shooting and squad-ordering mechanics of all the past Brothers in Arms games. You'll still be ordering your teammates to move to cover positions, as well as checking enemies' suppression level via their overhead icon, and so on. Of course, you'll naturally control the game with standard Wii first-person shooter controls, using the Wii Remote to direct your targeting reticle and so on. The big changes here seem to be that you can use gestures with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to issue those squad orders, as well as to use your melee attack. The game also has a new grenade-targeting system that lets you simply switch to grenade mode, which puts a grenade icon in your target reticle. Then you simply throw the grenade wherever you're pointing the target. This looked like quite an intuitive scheme, though it isn't dependent on the Wii controls in any way.

Double Time's visuals were consistent with what you'd expect to find on the Wii and looked roughly on par with what you'd expect to see on the PlayStation 2 or GameCube. Unfortunately, the size of the demo audience prevented us from finding out what the specific content of Double Time will be; that is, whether it's based on Hell's Highway or (more likely) a previous iteration of the franchise. We'll attempt to uncover more information on the game in light of its release next month.