Brothers In Arms DS (Nintendo DS) Review

Brothers in Arms is very much a coffee Revel, it's not as divisive as Marmite but it's close. The review copy actually passed between two other people before being pushed through my letterbox purely because they didn't like the game and didn't want to bother playing it enough so that they could write a review for it. Personally I enjoyed it (I like coffee Revels).

I'm going to cut straight to the point, BiA is a DS version of the numerous WW2 games you see cropping up on the PC. It's a tired genre with little to no originality in the storytelling department, you play an American soldier doing missions for the Allied forces, which seem to be made up purely of Americans. I'm sorry, but claiming you are fighting for the Allies but only fighting alongside Americans is like taking a bag of Revels and taking out every variation except for the crispy ones; that's not a bag of Revels, it's a sodding bag of Maltesers.

Sorry for the rant, but as I said it's a tired genre and I didn't want to waste page space explaining the “plot” to people who've never encountered a WW2 shooter as they are few and far between. Now while that particular style of game has grown stale on the PC front, it is still relatively fresh on the hand-held side so porting the game over is not such a bad thing.

Everything about this iteration is deeply rooted in PC gaming, the graphics are top notch and push the envelope for the DS. Yes, there are better looking games but fewer more authentic-looking games. Brothers in Arms clearly suffers from brown and green syndrome which, while quite fitting for a game situated in this time period, has been over-done so could be seen as a bad thing - but this actually works in its favour. The DS's graphic capabilities are inferior when compared to the PSP so we rarely see companies that try to do realistic 3D games on the system, instead giving us brightly coloured, basic 3D and 2D images. Brothers in Arms bucks the trend by not only going down the realistic route but by actually succeeding. It would be very easy for a game with such a limited palette and less graphical detail to become murky and lack definition, but these images are clear and rarely cause a problem that you wouldn't already experience in a PC version. Definitely a toffee Revel.

The audio is almost of the same quality as the visuals. Technically the sound is superb, voices and sound effects are as crystal clear as the DS's speakers allow and the music is rousing but its awfully generic and sparse, and quickly becomes background noise punctuated by the common bursts of machine gun fire and the chatter of fellow troops.

You are probably getting the gist by now, but while everything seems to be going well in the game but there are niggling issues and they seem to derive from the game being firmly based on its PC roots, none more so than the control method. It's one of the best replications of the keyboard and mouse control methods I've encountered on a console, be it home-based or hand-held; the D-Pad replaces the WASD buttons on your keyboard, you move the stylus across the bottom screen to aim much like a mouse and you use the L-Trigger instead of the L-Button on the mouse to shoot. You can also do a quick reload, weapon change, zoom in/out and throw grenades via the touch screen. The problem is that it is a copy of the PC control method and doesn't feel right - this can easily be put down to the ergonomics of the DS itself but it's still a problem for the game, essentially you are trying to aim with the stylus in your right hand while your left hand is trying to thumb the d-pad to get your guy to move, finger the L-Trigger to fire and support the console with the rest of the hand in a stable manner so that if you push too hard with the stylus the entire console doesn't go crashing to the floor. The controls themselves also feel fairly clunky; how much that has to do with the holding of the console and how much is to do with the game I'll never know as Nintendo, in their wisdom, neglected to include a thumb strap in the DS Lite, which would make playing this game considerably easier. Thanks a lot Nintendo.

One other little, niggling issue that I encountered which I find fairly funny in a bad-definition-of-irony sort of way is that considering this game has so much in common with those made for PCs, it also has a common PC related issue. Yep, this game crashed on me. During the penultimate mission on the first campaign you have to destroy two tanks by sniping fuel barrels as they pass, and if you fail a cut scene ensues, meaning you fail the mission and go back to the last checkpoint. On my copy, every time that cut scene played the game would freeze and I'd have that awful stuttering noise emitting from my DS's speakers, the console would have to be manually reset and the game would reload from the last but one checkpoint, meaning you'd have to constantly replay the same section of the mission you completed over and over again. The only two ways to avoid this problem were to either skip the scene before it started or to not fail the mission (easier said than done). Ubisoft didn't have any stock to replace my copy with and they were quick to point out how to rectify the issue (restart the mission from scratch which is fairly annoying in itself, as the crash occurred over three quarters of the way through the level), so I can assume it's not a one-off issue but can't really prove it. It isn't a deal-breaker as there's always a peanut in a bag of Revels - I'd just prefer it not to be there.

Other than those two issues, the game is extremely solidly built. The pacing is well suited to the game, with checkpoints littering each level; this may make it sound like it's easy, but bear in mind it's a portable game and there's nothing worse than playing a game during your lunch break or on the bus on your way into school and you need to switch the console off but you can't find a checkpoint. The game's difficulty is a good medium with a lot of hectic set-pieces punctuated by calm periods which is normally where the checkpoints are, and when you complete each mission, as well as unlocking the next one, you also unlock the same level but at a higher difficulty. Brothers in Arms does a good job of keeping your attention as each mission is composed of various smaller objectives, so one second you are gunning down Nazis with your machine gun, the next you are whizzing through a field in a tank blowing up a convoy train. Once you've completed the first campaign you can unlock two additional ones; they don't add much more than different scenarios but the change in location and level layouts brings new challenges which offer a slightly different playing experience which goes some way towards expanding your enjoyment time with the game.