Brothers In Arms

[FullAuto]

In case you don't know, BIA is a FPS tactical shooter which (eventually) gives you control of two squads with which to conquer France. It's high on selective realism (Authentic weapons and tactics? Yup. Haystacks that can stop tank shells? Yup) and low on gung ho-ery, though there is the odd John Wayne moment (due to skill more than luck, gratifyingly) where you walk away grinning, leaving a gun pit full of dead enemies behind you.

The shooting is spot on, with incoming digging up sprays of dirt and realistic sway to the weapons as you aim them. Each gun has a different feel and a different usage. Try storming a position with a bolt-action rifle and you'll either die or get badly hurt. Using grenades is a bit of a bugger, there's only one default throw, no 'hold for more power' system and no way to cook them, but you can get along after some practice.

It's a tricky game, and can sometimes frustrate when you wander round a corner and get your head blown off by a well hidden enemy, but war is Hell, right? When things go right, and you flush a squad from cover with a grenade, or hose down a gun crew with your tommy gun, it feels good, you feel like a pro who has Got The Job Done.

Bad points? I'm not going to go into the gratuitous Yankery here, this isn't the place, but I will discuss the slightly homosexual undertone, and no, i'm not joking.

Matt Baker, the character you play, is always whining and monologuing before every level about how he didn't want this command etc etc and quite frankly, playing a whiny sod just doesn't add to the game in any way. I am quite prepared to believe he goes shopping for purses when he's not killing folk, and as for the events concerning his 'best friend', along with the two men in one squad who never leave each other's side, or even the sergeant, who exclaims "I used to think you were just a poetic young man, Baker.", perhaps war is just like prison. You decide.

BIA on PS2, Xbox and PC.

 

P.S. The title doesn't do it any favours either, it makes it sound like a march for gay rights. Not to mention the box art.

 

P.P.S. I'm not anti-gay, i'm just shocked to find it in a WWII game, and so stereotypically. I thought we'd moved past the old notions of homosexuality, but apparently not.

[Slaughter]

Thanks for the heads up. Reviewers seem to like the PC version

[FullAuto]

Talk on the gearbox forums points to some problems with the PC version, but they have put out a patch, I believe. The only difference between the versions I know of is textures. The Xbox version has twice the textures of the PS2 version, and the PC version has twice the textures of the Xbox version.

I really don't give much of a toss. The graphics aren't amazing, but they get the job done. I think the whole industry is becoming unhealthily graphics-fixated and you bump into drooling fanboys too often.

[Slaughter]

Amen to that. X-Com gas good gameplay. Who needs more?

[FullAuto]

Apparently, quite a few people. Still, at least they'll no doubt find the gay undertone strangely comforting...

[Aralez]

Funny and entertaining review, Fullauto! Very surprising, too! I like your honest style.

 

Reminded me a bit of this video: https://www.witze-welt.de/videos/everythinggay.php :lol:

[FullAuto]

Thank you, Aralez. I wouldn't go that far. The Fast and The Furious was gay too, but quite a few people seemed to miss that, so I presume the same will happen here.

[Munkeylord]

well let me tell ya somethin lol.........the whiny bitchy undertone.........is very very real....i dont' think its ever disappeared since well.....war started. everyone bitches, specially when things just utterly freakin suck and your hungry and ppl are trying to kill you.......the only thing to do is bitch about it

[FullAuto]

Bitching is fine, it's a well known pastime, but blubbering like a four year old who's lost his favourite teddy isn't the best way to lead men to war, is it? Especially not in the macho days of the 1940's, when men shaved with bayonets and ate their enemies raw.

[Aralez]

Fullauto, i had the same feelings towards the film "Stalingrad". The german troops there, aaaargh, sounded like a bunch of 3 year-old babys from the Ivory tower on Cloud 9!

 

My grandfather was in Stalingrad, and boy he was a person to be afraid of. He often told us kids how he killed russians with his hands or knife, or how the russians killed his friends etc etc. I think if he had met soldiers like those in the film, well he had shot them for cowardry, no joking here. He was a professional soldier, that's for sure and as he told us that most of his enemies were, too. Films like "Private Ryan", "Stalingrad", "Pearl Harbour" and as you say "Brothers in Arms" show a wrong picture of history, they lie and i think that is dangerous. They don't show you the really ugly face of war and so make them "thinkable" again.

 

Regarding my grandfather: he told us, he even was a "weak" (this means not too strong pro-Hitler+National socialism) soldier compared to his comerades, which thought him to be too friendly, even humanistic (which was bad language back then!)! That and his stories can give you a glimpse of how the war really was.

 

Btw, a "gay" german soldier wouldn't have lived very long, the concentration camp would wait for him (if he was lucky!) otherwise a rope and a tree would do the deal.

[DoomMunky]

Oh, not true, not true. MAYBE for the soldiers, but Ernst Roehm (sp?) was well-known for his homosexual tendencies, and he was the leader of the SA (Brownshirts, aka Hitler's Thugs). In the army things might have been different, closer to the party line, but in the 3rd Reich there was much that happened that was far different than the supposed official line.

 

 

And it seems to me that FullAuto is being a bit sensitive, or something. I haven't played the game but it is based on events well-covered in "Band of Brothers" on HBO and the book by Stephen something. Brothers. These men relied on each other for their LIVES, you think they didn't share poetry with each other sometimes? I don't know, though, maybe there are some overtly 'gay' themes in the game, some un-subtle implications (like in GTA III, with the women in the second island: "Wow, is this your massager? It's nice" "That's not a massager...")

 

Any other reports from the front lines about this?

 

(Maybe this was reactionary: after all, I haven't played the dang thing. The hair on my neck rises when I see people write about this stuff, though, especially when I see gamers write about this...see the other forum I've frequented, pker.org for a classic example of why free speech can make for some absolutely excruciating conversations...)

[Aralez]

Well, Doommunky, guess what happened to Roehm ? (Shot!) And that was even WAY before the war. But there were gays in the SA, you're right, that was one of the main reasons it was replaced by the SS (The official statement was that parts of the SA planned a revolution). And Roehm was the first to learn of that in a very drastic way, they threw him in prison cell and gave him a revolver with one bullet. But he didn't commit suicide, so Theodor Eicke (which later led the "Totenkopfstaffel", the SS elite guards that ran the cooncentration camps) and another SS guy killed him. A lot of SA guys followed Roehm in the grave...

 

Btw, that murder was Eicke's loyalty test from Hitler, he should show that he was "strong" enough to lead the SS troops...

 

Link about Eicke

[Slaughter]

Not sure I want a WWII discussion to start. They have a tendency of ending in WWIII even if they start reasonable

[NKF]

Oh if it degenerates into a discussion about the super efficient prisoner of war camp, Stalag 13, I don't think most of us would particularly mind. (unless there's sniping between the participants in overly serious tones)

 

War is not very pleasant. I'm sure a lot of people who have actually gone to war can get very emotional about it. Not everyone has it in them to kill someone just like them who is unfortunately on the opposite side. Or not everyone can stand the pressure of all the conflict and the senseless and needless death and destruction happening around them.

 

That's one of the reasons why I enjoy computer games. None of it is real - or is at least a fictional recreation of a real event.

 

- NKF

[Matri]

That's one of the reasons why I enjoy computer games. None of it is real - or is at least a fictional recreation of a real event.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unfortunately for us, and the entire computer gaming community of Planet Earth, one particular lawyer (you can't NOT know) disagrees, and he's making sure everyone on this planet knows too, whether they like it or not.

 

 

I'd like to sic Aralez's cast-iron stomach on him

[Aralez]

Yes, Slaughter, you are right, no WWII discussion anymore.

 

I saw BIA in a live review on Gigagames-TV, it didn't look that different from other FPS games imo. I think i'm simply not the type for those games, i like it slow and relaxed and preferably turn-based. Otoh i liked Xcom Enforcer very much.

 

Uh-oh. I can feel the wrath of the Xcom-Hardcore-League coming :lol:

 

Yesyesyes it is no real Xcom game, but a very entertaining shooter, loud, colourful, fast... and easy enough for me

[FullAuto]

Perhaps it's just my stiff-upper-lip background, but I can't honestly believe soldiers who were staring death in the face had time to waste on sentiment. Emotion? Yes, of course. Who could go on, watching friends get shot and blown to pieces, without feeling and showing emotions? It's not the expression of emotion that bothers me, it just seems a bit gratuitous in this game. They've gone overboard on the cliches.

[DoomMunky]

That's not hard to believe at all. There's this dumb, shmaltzy story-telling impulse that raises its ugly head quite often around this type of easily-glorifiable war-story. It says we can't connect to the story of these men doing what they are doing without a central moral to it all, some unifying decency that justifies and upholds the actions that we witness/control. Presumably we can't connect to the simple humanity of these men without these hackneyed, mistrustful-of-the-audiences-intelligence devices.

 

But that is the story we tell ourselves about war, and war time.

[sir-roosio]

It says we can't connect to the story of these men doing what they are doing without a central moral to it all, some unifying decency that justifies and upholds the actions that we witness/control.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think it's a problem with the gaming industry in general, they want to market these games to as wide an audience as possible, only that opens first person shooters & thier publishers up to a whole load of bother from parents and 'moral groups'.

 

So they feel that to get around this they can justufy the shooting element by saying "no, look, the main character isn't a blood thirsty killer, he has feelings and emotions, and he expresses regret" which quite frankly makes for over reliance on hackneyed clice ridden storylines. I don't know if brothers in arms has an age guidance on its UK release, but if it does i would imagine its quite low?

 

The Edge ran a good write up on this subject about 18 months ago. they accused first person shooters like 'Medal Of Honour' of doing this kind of thing, trying to make the process of running round gunning people down as clean and ungory as possible, and in the process sanitizing, and hence desensitizing kids to, war and death. Has anyone made a historical FPS with blood and gore in? if so was it any cop?

[FullAuto]

It has no BBFC certifitcate, only a PEGI rating (which is a recommendation only, not binding by law) of 16+ because there's only some slight blood 'misting' when the bullets hit, nothing else in the way of blood or gore.

I don't know of any shooter that shows war as being even a tiny part as nasty as it really is, because the chances are we wouldn't want to play on them.

[Zeno]

Don't all the people bleed green in German versions?

 

Anyway, I for one refuse to believe that video games encourage warfare, or desensitize people to war and death. It's a game, and if the person can't differentiate between fantasy and reality, then they have a problem outside the existence of the game.

 

If a child has a sick imagination and plays with plastic toy soldiers, painting red spots on the broken ones or melting some of them, does the child grow up to be a ruthless killer? No, because the child knows it's fake.

 

If a child has a sick imagination and ties cats to fan belts, cuts off dog tongues, and puts gerbils in a microwave, then the child has a *problem* and needs *help*.

 

------

 

That said, parents should know the content of a game because it is a parent's decision whether and when their child is mature enough to view certain material. If a parent wants to be proactive about such things, that is.

 

------

 

I'm not really into modern history wargames anyway. I play some historic archaic wargames because I like the tactics involved with maneuver and counter before firearms became standard issue. As for blood and gore, I really don't think anything about it in a video game. My imagination supplies it if it's not there, and if it is, I'm not put off by it. I play games for the quality of the game itself.

 

Brothers in Arms sounds like one I'll pass on. I never got into Medal of Honor, either.

 

--Zeno

[FullAuto]

Anyway, back on topic.

Completed a difficult section and met up with my commanding sergeant, but couldn't actually talk to him (and thereby finish the level) because he was stood face-to-face with the radio man, practically toe to toe with him, so there was no room for me to get in front of him and talk.

I waited for them to finish staring deep into each other's eys, but no luck. Presumably if you wait long enough, they jump into each other's arms and engage in steamy man-love. I don't know, because I got bored with waiting and turned it off.

Even the bugs are gay...

[sir-roosio]

Zeno, not saying i agree or disagree, but i simply dont see why people seem to want to justify killing by giving the character a concience!

 

With you on the parents knowing content of games point tho, no one buys their kid an 18 rated video, then bitcheds to the media that it included sex and violence, yet theyll happily give luittle timmy a copy of GTA san andreas, then ring richard and judy when they find their child battering a prostitute to death to get their money back, it's not even an integral part of the game, their kids are doing cos they want to!

 

Fulauto: Hate it when bugs in games stop you going further! Or just lazyness on the part of the game manufacturers! I remember when i first played through syphon filter, there was a bit where you had to disable a boss, but not kill them, so i proceeded to cap her in the leg, which killed no other bad guy in the game with one shot, and I failed the mission! turns out you could only shoot her gun! PAH!

[FullAuto]

I remember that! The fact that the gun was the most prominent target obviously escaed you.

I just know I'm going to get to the next level and as always, the other characters will stand exactly an inch away, shoving their faces right up to the screen. It's quite disturbing, like going to war with a bunch of drunks who want to kiss you.

[sir-roosio]

Delta Force?