While the Call of Duty series took a huge step away from its WWII roots and did a bang-up job at showing gamers what modern warfare is like, there are still some games out there intent on reliving the past. Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway revisits the ultimately doomed Operation Market Garden, which was supposed to end the war in time for the vets to go home and dress up as Santa for their kids. But you’re here for a video game review, not a history lesson, right? Well, suck it up, soldier; you’re going to learn something either way. Does Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway deserve the Medal of Honor or is it FUBAR, AWOL, and SNAFU?

BIA:Hell’s Highway is the thinking man’s WWII FPS. And not just because the game play forces players to strategize and plan out every attack or that you’re often in charge of two or three support teams, barking orders to each individually in the middle of an intense firefight, but because the subject matter and story strays far from the somber pomp and muted celebration of other war games and focuses squarely on the loss, despair, and weight that comes with fighting. You and your squad spend more time with their heads in their hands pondering the war than high-fiving each other over the corpses of Nazi soldiers. Some thoughtful cut scenes juxtapose the paltry remaining beauty of the Holland countryside with the psychological struggles of Sgt. Matt Baker and his band of brothers. This high-brow approach to the genre is refreshing. Sadly, not every aspect of the game is as fine-tuned.

An issue that plagues the otherwise solid shooting segments is the one feature that is also the game’s defining characteristic: The squad-based combat. Moving up a MG team to suppress a group of enemy soldiers while ordering an Assault team towards a flanking position to take them out is satisfying, as is blowing a bunker sky high with your Bazooka team, sending Nazi limbs flying in all directions. Unfortunately, two problems pop up way too soon - repetition and rote multi-tasking.

Once you get the hang of using suppressing fire and flanking, you know all you need to win nearly every skirmish. Whether your CO wants some 88 flak guns destroyed or you need to lead your squad through a heavily-fortified street, your tactics rarely change: Suppress, flank, kill, and repeat ad nauseum. The repetitive combat isn’t helped by the sometimes iffy squad/enemy AI. I’ve witnessed my Bazooka-carrying pal refuse to fire even though he had a clear shot, as well as miss his target by a mile. Once, he nearly blew me up with a particularly ill-placed rocket. Sadly, I wasn’t able to return the favor to my clearly cracked comrade. Once I set him straight, however, it was easy to take out any enemy in my path. No wonder Germany lost the war - its soldiers found sandbags, dug in, and refused to move even as rockets breezed by their heads.

It’s surprising that although Gearbox included all the necessary WWII trappings (authentic locales, weapons, and atmosphere), they missed an opportunity to nail the game play. Controls are sometimes unresponsive, shots that you swear hit the enemy don’t, and the constant switching between aiming down the iron sights in first-person view and picking off Nazis in third person while behind cover becomes disconcerting. Add in the at first high learning curve and repetitive missions (I know that taking out 88s was a key role of WWII ground forces, but this is a video game…please stop making me destroy 88s every other level!) and you have a title that appeals to WWII history buffs and only the most serious of gamers.

Plusses

Attention to detail. You can tell that Gearbox put their heart and soul into this game even if it didn’t pan out perfectly. The deft recreations of actual battlefields from Operation Market Garden are a sight to see.

A good story in a WWII game? Surprisingly, yes. Characters are crafted in a way that makes you care whether they live or die (and they will die). There are some moments throughout the 10-12 hour campaign that will stick with you after completing your mission: A soldier rushing through a city engulfed in flames, holding the hand of a young woman in white wearing his helmet, and a young boy forced to defend himself by taking up arms.

The Action Camera shots. Yes, all they basically do is zoom in on and slow down particularly grisly moments, but they’re damn cool all the same. Thankfully, they aren’t overdone either.

Minuses

Repetitive in-game dialogue. None of the quips by your teammates are especially witty (think, ‘Jerry’s really starting to piss me off!’ and ‘Keep those Krauts off me!’), but the lack of variety means you’re going to be hearing the same lines over and over again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ordered my Bazooka team to fire at soldiers only to hear “JASPER! TAKE OUT THE BUNKER!” Fellow Minus Worlder Jasper is getting equally aggravated with me, since I’ve been communicating with him in the same manner recently (JASPER! GET TO WORK ON THAT PHOTOSHOPPING!). And you thought it would be cool to have a game character share your name.

Online multi-player is relatively bare bones and simplistic, which runs completely opposite of what you’re saddled with during the single-player campaign. Instead of taking the best bits of the campaign’s complex game play, multi-player boils down to a laggy twitch shooter with limited options. Don’t expect to put away Call of Duty 4 or Rainbow Six: Vegas for this.

Searching for hastily scrawled faces (called Kilroys) on walls throughout the war-torn countryside. This is a WWII shooter, not a Mario platformer. What’s next: Find the hidden Nazi gold? What’s worse is that there are 360 achievements tied to this task.

BONUS MINUS:

There is an achievement for simply playing this game on September 17th, the anniversary of Operation Market Garden. The problem? The game came out on September 23rd. WHOOPS!