“With Brothers In Arms Hell’s Highway, Gearbox is investing everything to take next-generation gaming to an entirely new level,” said Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software. “For Brothers In Arms Hell’s Highway, the Unreal Engine 3 powers real next-generation graphics and the most intense, action-oriented recreation of true history ever offered as interactive entertainment.”

“Since the series was introduced last year, Brothers In Arms has consistently excelled at delivering a new style of tactical shooter wrapped up in an authentic WWII setting,” said Francesca Reyes, editor-in-chief at Official Xbox Magazine (OXM). “As fans of the Brothers In Arms series, OXM is incredibly excited to be the first to reveal to readers the world-exclusive first-look at Brothers In Arms Hell’s Highway.” The issue is available on newsstands since April 11, 2006.

The game is scheduled for a holiday 2006 release. This title has not yet been concept approved by Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

• First Brothers In Arms for the DS System: Exclusively designed for Nintendo DS with easy-to-use, stylus-based controls such as using the Touch Screen to aim, with the camera following the stylus.
• Impressive, Realistic 3D Graphics: Incredibly detailed environments with highly believable characters and enemies, cinematic camera angles, and great animation.
• Drivable Vehicles: Drive a recon car or a Sherman Tank. Use a wide range of weapons such as bazookas, sniper rifles, grenades and more to destroy your enemy.
• 16 Missions and Three Different Campaigns: Relive the intensity of WWII through three different campaigns, from Normandy to North-Africa and Ardennes.
• Redesigned New Multiplayer Experience: Fight major multiplayer battles with three of your friends in different multiplayer modes, including Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch.
• Contextual Movements: Gameplay adapted to the Nintendo DS hardware with auto-cover behind walls or auto-recovering life system. 

• Next-Generation Brothers In Arms - The award-winning WWII franchise comes to the Wii system with all of the action, story and authenticity that has critics and fans eager for more.
• Combining All 31 Playable Levels: Play as Sergeants Matt Baker and Joe Hartsock, leading your squad behind enemy lines through the Normandy invasion.
• Unrivaled Authenticity: Fight actual Airborne Infantry battles of D-Day accurately recreated using thousands of official photos, maps, After-Action Reports and eyewitness accounts under the direction of Military and Historical Director, Col. John Antal.
• Challenging and Dynamic Combat: Featuring close-quarter urban environments and a next-generation artificial intelligence system, Brothers In Arms Double Time promises to take authentic military action to the next level on the Wii system.
• Enhanced Control Scheme: Issue orders and perform military gestures to command and lead your team using the Wii Remote.

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood is the sequel to last year’s surprise hit, Road to Hill 30, which puts you in the role of Sergeant Joe “Red” Hartsock and the 101 Airborne during World War II. This time you’re taking Red through to the liberation of Normandy in some of the most confrontational battles in history.

Earned in Blood brings you back to the familiar and simple first-person shooter elements combined with strategy and team-based action. Though the innovative gameplay is solid, the game features way too many obvious problems to be any more than a below average World War II shooter.

The first thing that is great about Earned in Blood is the wonderful, easy-to-pick-up controls. They are exactly the same for Road to Hill 30, combining first-person shooting with strategy.  By pushing L1 you can direct your troops anywhere on the battlefield to lay down cover fire on an enemy or even rush a location. Other buttons include X to jump, circle to swing your gun butt, square to reload and triangle to throw grenades. The select button enables players to pull out and see the whole battlefield to draw up your moves. Overall the controls are very easy to adjust to whether youÂ’ve played the first game or not.

Another solid aspect of the game is its sound. When on the battlefield, players will yell out commands. The voicework is actually pretty solid, too, with lots of different voiceactors and well-written dialogue. If that werenÂ’t enough, each gun sounds very different, thus keeping the authenticity. When youÂ’re on the battlefield, youÂ’ll hear explosions and bombs dropping around you that sound very realistic.

The graphics for Earned in Blood are pretty good as well. The war-torn environments look realistic with deep colors and a haze over the entire battlefield. The trees and bushes also look very impressive. The cutscenes are solid, too, although they occasionally seem to be slightly off between what is said and lip movements. Though much of the graphics are very good, some of the textures and overall movements of characters are a little rough and thus the game isnÂ’t really smooth.

Finally, besides single-player, there’s also a skirmish mode available. This game comes in timed assaults, objective based games and defense mode. There is also a “tour of duty” mode for the hardcore fan that has you battling through five missions without dying. There are also a total of 10 games that can be played split-screen.

Being that Earned in Blood is a strategy game, itÂ’s surprising that the developers donÂ’t allow you a lot of options on the battlefield. YouÂ’re mostly stuck going many times one way to accomplish the mission and take out the enemy. You canÂ’t cut through bushes or even jump over fences as the game is designed to limit where you go to accomplish your goals. This ruins any open-endedness in the game and defies logic in battle by forcing you to go the way the developers designed it. ItÂ’s surprising that they wouldnÂ’t allow a more open-ended experience because the whole idea of the game is to figure out tactics to get an advantage on the enemy.

If that wasnÂ’t a big enough problem, the artificial intelligence is also very poor for the PlayStation 2, and thus ruins any chance for the game. Your squad mates are terribly inept, as they stand up fully running through major combat instead of lying low and the result is certain death. Another problem with your teammates is that if you tell them to take cover behind an area they still will not follow commands appropriately. The enemy AI isnÂ’t much better, though they will cover when fired upon; sometimes they actually rushed me when I was firing at them and they would even come out in the open to take me on. Another problem with the AI is that when your squad team actually does its job and holds down enemies, oftentimes when youÂ’re getting in position to take out the enemy even if you donÂ’t make any noise, youÂ’re noticed. This is incredibly frustrating.

Though Earned in Blood features a nice new skirmish mode, the online experience is miserable. The game lags, drops and there are only four-player online games even if you do get a chance to play, because itÂ’s hard to find people online to play against, which essentially makes the online experience is almost unplayable.

Finally, the last real problem with the sequel is that itÂ’s too short. There are just over 10 missions and the game should take no more than approximately 10 hours to play. For a $50 game, thatÂ’s very poor.

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood continues the story of Red and like the original, the game features very intuitive controls, wonderful sound effects, great voicework and pretty impressive graphics. The problems, however, are that the AI is terrible and the game is limited as to what you can do. To further exacerbate this, the online mode – which could have been a wonderful attribute – is unplayable and worthless, when it could have added some nice length to the game’s overall brevity. Earned in Blood still has the good elements of first-person shooting with strategy and if you liked Road to Hill 30, you’ll probably enjoy this, but there are just way too many issues at hand to recommend picking up this sequel until it hits the bargain bin.

Controls are easy and intuitive both in terms of shooting and strategy.

The graphics are solid with good looking chapter designs and deep colors. Smooth textures.

Great voicework. All weapons have different sounds and explosions sound impressive.

Not a game for everyone and to a lot of people the strategy wonÂ’t be fun. Frustrating AI.

Online is unplayable and limited to four-player action. Very short single-player mode.

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