Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway

Posted 4 years ago By - Brian Edey

Brothers in Arms is one of the best World War Two video game series on any game platform, combining smart and adaptive artificial intelligence, emotional gameplay and a great cast of realistic characters. These and many more features show how powerful this game series has become. From the original Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and its sequel Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood, Hells Highway is a brilliant third game in this classic series, building off of the first two games in style.

Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway starts out in a brilliant manner in a TV series style “Previously… in Brothers in Arms”. From this opening scene which does a good, but not great job of explaining the very deep story from the previous titles and bringing you into this powerful third act you know you will be in for something special from the very start.

If you are new to the Brothers in Arms series, I can easily describe the game similar to a playable Band of Brothers (the mini-series) with some serious and emotional story lines with tactical base gameplay to top everything off. Using realistic squad based tactics to suppress and flank the enemy during Operation Market Garden, one of the biggest victories the Germans saw during World War Two and easily the biggest failure by the allies. Yes, you play a game where the final part of actual event the game is based on was a failure, but there was a human story to the war and you will experience one side of that.

Once again you play the role of Staff Sergeant Matt Baker, who appears to be suffering from some form of post traumatic stress disorder, he keeps seeing men he killed and the men he served with who died under his command. Matt also has another problem, he still has his fathers pistol which his men believe is cursed because everyone who uses it ends up dead and with his hallucinations things are not going well during this critical time during the war.


Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 did not create the tactical squad gameplay genre, but it did give us something new by adding a realistic suppression system. This suppression system makes it way to Hells Highway and it has not changed much, except now we see the type of unit we are suppressing, such as a bazooka team, something you will have to suppress quickly when you are using a tank.

Suppression is just as it sounds, by using gunfire and explosives you engage the enemy and force them to keep their heads down and limiting their ability to take an accurate shot back at you and your men. Some of the cover is actually destructible, especially with explosives and heavy machine guns and you use them to tear apart fences, benches, wagons and more. This is important, because you must and I stress must watch out for, when you take cover it will not last long and you will be forced to move again and usually this means you will die, especially when you have the difficulty ramped up.

Just like a real squad commander, the Brothers in Arms experience is all about how smart you are and how well you handle the pressure of combat. During the game there are chances to set up before combat starts but often you enter an area and have to take cover and sending your men to take cover them selves, although they are very smart and take cover automatically. When the fun starts, you need to tell your squad or squads to suppress and then either stay there or move to a flanking position while another squad or you yourself keep the enemy pinned down. The enemy is just as smart and can easily suppress you and your men and then they will counter move or even flank you, do not worry too much about this during the easy difficulty, but as it gets harder the fight become very realistic and very intense.

This is one of those games where the Artificial Intelligence can sink the game and make it a worthless coaster. Fortunately Brothers in Arms has some amazingly strong AI on both sides of the fight, with your own men taking cover and returning fire if you did not order them to, they will yell out during combat what is happening and when you tell them to go to a new location, even if you are off from the general area, they will take the appropriate cover when they need to. The enemy is also very smart, using the same tactics you need to use by suppressing, falling back, flanking, constantly moving and attempting to gain ground on you. Beyond the odd glitch with the AI, this aspect to the gameplay is near perfect.

Multiplayer wise the game is not as complex as many multiplayer games and its 10 versus 10 death matches are welcome, but something more in-depth would be appreciated in the next game. I would have preferred to have seen a co-op mode added as well, but again maybe in the next Brothers in Arms title.


At first, too be honest, the graphics were not exactly blowing me away with their quality. I found the textures to be lacking, but as I played the game I saw the art style as an attempt to give the player the sense of being in a World War Two movie, like Saving Private Ryan. A gritty, muddy graphic style and after the first couple of levels the games graphics became so much part of the Brothers in Arms experience I could not imagine the game with a different art style.

Now the graphics are not perfect, in fact you will notice several small glitches in the game from weapons floating off the ground, destructible cover which is jumping around all over the place and some times the Kilroy’s are in very dark areas and this makes them impossible to see.

The level design is extremely well done with several ways to advance as a team or through flanking maneuvers. Unlike many games you are not consistently fighting through the same looking levels with just a different layout, but in Hells Highway the levels range from farms, small towns, cities, factories, hospitals, night battles and more. This dramatic change in the games level of art style in each level keeps the game looking very fresh and you will not get bored with it because of this.

One great aspect to the graphics is the true gritty and bloody nature of the battles. You can literally blow heads and limbs apart, explosions will tear soldiers apart and sometimes all of this is shown in this beautiful cinematic slow motion segment. These cinematic moments remind you that war is more then a guy just dropping to the ground from a single shot, but bloody and realistic. Of course being a game, it is not completely realistic, but it does not pull any punches either.


Very few games have the level of quality in the audio department of Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. The music is outstanding and emotional, the sound effects are intense and eerie and the voice over work brings the men of the 101st Airborne Division alive. Especially Matt Baker who is a living and breathing character on the screen and you hear the emotion in his voice.

Every sound effect in the game has this sound like it was recorded during a real war. You experience the sounds of men dying or yelling at each other, the crack of a sniper rifle, fighters and bombers flying over head, fire burning around you and even empty bullet casings hitting the ground. This is the first World War 2 game in my mind to reach the audio quality of Band of Brothers (mini-series, watch it) and Saving Private Ryan (movie, watch it as well).


If you are familiar with the first two Brothers in Arms games (Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood), you know there are plenty of ways to beat each level and Hells Highway is no different with plenty of secrets to find with Recon Points and Kilroy. With an interesting multiplayer game and a stellar single player title the value is extremely high. Adding more points to the mix are the multiple difficulty levels, especially “Authentic” which is by far the most fun I have had playing a video game on the hardest difficulty. No HUD, no crosshairs, nothing to show how much ammo you have or when you need to reload and nothing to tell you if you have a team suppressed or not. This gave my second time through the game a much more rewarding experience and when I completed a mission I felt like I earned it.


One of my favorite World War Two video games on any system, if the couple of glitches were fixed it would be my favorite over Call of Duty on the PC. But for your home console, buy this great game and enjoy it. Hopefully they are working hard (after a vacation) on Brothers in Arms: Battle of the Bulge which is the last big fight the 101st was part of in World War 2.

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