If you played Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and did not like it, then you
may as well stop reading this review – Earned in Blood is very similar to its
predecessor, but is a good deal more challenging. Still with me? OK, good. First
let me bring those who did not play Road to Hill 30 up to speed and then I’ll
take a close look at what’s new in Earned in Blood.
Brothers in Arms is not your typical World War II shooter, and not just
because it is based on the real-life war experiences of American GIs in
Normandy. Rather than take the Rambo-esque, one man against the Nazi war machine
approach typical of WWII shooters, Brothers in Arms opts for a more realistic
take on the war. The gameplay follows the US Army doctrine of “find, fix, flank,
and finish.” This means that you will need to move cautiously through fields and
villages until you spot the enemy. Once you find the enemy, you need to order
your squad to pin them down with suppressing fire as you maneuver your way to a
flanking position – i.e. while they’re hunkered down dodging bullets you sneak
up on them from the side or behind. You then gun them down before they know what
hit them and this is where the “finish” comes in. In Road to Hill 30, most of
the battles played out as a series of puzzles or training exercises. Each German
position could be fired on from a secure location and there was always a path
where you could sneak up on their flank and finish them off. Well things are not
quite that straightforward in Earned in Blood…
The goal in Earned in Blood is still to suppress and flank the enemy, but
this time out the enemy is less cooperative. They’re more apt to see you coming
up on their flank and react, and even when they don’t see you they react to your
presence a lot faster. If you come up on a whole group of German soldiers, odds
are at least one of them will start shooting back at you before you can pick
them all off. Furthermore, they’re not above making a hasty retreat if the odds
don’t look good. At times you may find all of your work setting up suppression
fire and maneuvering into position for naught as the enemy refuses to stick
around for the payoff. There will even be times when they turn the tables are
work to flank your squad. Lastly, a lot of your encounters with the enemy will
not be set piece puzzles with ready made cover for suppressing fire and
protected flanking lanes. There will be times when you’ll be forced into
face-to-face shootouts with the enemy, and the survival rate of these types of
encounter is not good. The problem with this, beyond the obvious need to do a
fair amount of reloading, is that the maps are still pretty constrained even
though the gameplay has been opened up a bit. Artificial constraints such as low
walls or barbed wire fences cut down you options significantly and far too often
funnel you towards enemy kill zones. I really enjoyed the tactical aspect of
Road to Hill 30 but in Earned in Blood I found many frustrating moments.
One of the strong points of Road to Hill 30 was the AI of your squad. Order
them to a location and they were smart enough to find cover and respond to enemy
fire on their own. This is still the case in Earned in Blood, but I noticed some
occasional issues with their behavior that I didn’t see the first time out.
Perhaps in opening up the options for the enemy it left room for confusion to
creep into your squad. Some of the problems that I ran into included a squad
that got lost and refused to regroup until I went back and collected them and a
squad that took up a firing position from which they couldn’t get a line of fire
to the enemy even though they would have had a clear shot a few feet to their
left. Where in Road to Hill 30 I could always count on my squad, I played Earned
in Blood with a nagging doubt stuck in my mind that forced me to constantly keep
an eye on my squad instead of focusing my attention entirely on the enemy.
Page 2 of 2 »
