Written by Hurredly I went off to my local Gamestop and got my copy of it. And in the same manner I came back home and popped it into my Xbox. In the opening scene you’re at Hill 30, under a major german offensive. You fight for a bit, then get knocked out by a German tank shot.
Then you encounter you’re first cutscene. By pure definition, it’s not a cutscene, but more of an interlude. This is where the main character that you play as, Sgt. Matt Baker, tells through his journal, his worries of not being ready to lead his platoon with his newly recieved rank. The times in which you hear Sgt. Baker reciting from his journal entries are extremely powerful, and fit right in with the rest of the story, which is also powerful in its own right by the time you get to the end.
You then start off the game at the proper point. Kinda like Quentin Tarantino in a way.
You find yourself on a plane (with hints at Medal of Honor and Conker: Live and Reloaded with some dude puking). All of this game takes place in the first person view, except for this opening sequence on the plane where it zooms out from the back of the plane to the front, then focusing on your dirty little mug before going into first person mode. By now you’re in the game, just unable to control yourself, because you still have to jump out of the plane. As you’re platoon seargent starts to ready you and the rest of your men to jump, the plane you’re gets hit by Anti-Aircraft flak, and you are forced to jump early. Your squad lands in bits and peices everywhere, with you losing all of your equipment to a tree. You soon find yourself with Mac, the platoon Seargent. He gives you his pistol and you move on from there.
The main problem with this game is that it is way too obvisouly linear. With a few exceptions towards the end, there is usually only one trail for you to get to where you need to go, with little or no yeild.
This, thankfully, is saved by those areas that aren’t linear. These areas increase in quantity the farther along in the game you go, with maybe one exception while looking for support at Hill 30. But that’s just one small area where it doesn’t matter.
The gameplay is quite nice, with impressively detailed guns that each have their plusses and minuses, and controls that are smooth and easy to get used to. The big fall-off point for the gameplay though, is the fact that it’s too overly repetitive. You set one person to cover you, while you personally go in on the flank and kill the enemy, or you set one group to do the cover and another to do the flanking. Though effective it can cause some major troubles when you’re surpressing 9 different men at once and you personally have to go in and kill them all. In most cases this isn’t really a problem because most of the groups are in groups of two and you can easily snipe them off when they stick their heads out to check. Though it does get repetitious, you will find yourself coming up with alternate ways of keeping the enemy occupied right up to the point where you kill them.
The strategy portion comes into play with the flanking though, with you hitting the white button placing you into a birds eye view of the map in it’s current mode, with enemy locations (specific if they are firing at you, or general if you haven’t encountered them). Though helpful in finding ways around the enemy, there are just too few situations where this is true. Because if you go on the flank and pass right by, you either find yourself in the middle of an open road with snipers in the buildings, or facing a tank that you had to get the correct supplies to destroy it with by going through the other resistance point that you just bypassed, meaning you have to go back, kill them with twice the risk to yourself than before, grab the panzerfaust (tank destroyer thing), and risk getting hit again by the tank before destroying it. But again, as you move along you will find other ways of destroying things with the weapons avaliable to you.
Aside from those things, the gameplay is actually kind of bland, with few truly fun moments of where you have to run and gun with the spray and pray mind set. But that’s on the easiest level. As you get higher and higher, you are constantly thinking about where you’re hiding, checking your angles making sure there are no enemies that can get you from behind.
The music of the game is practically non-existant, using the sounds of nature to get ambience for the game itself. The only pHeaces you do hear music is in the loading scenes between levels, which in and of itself is a time-line of what you’re doing, who’s alive, and who’s dead. It’s actually a quite interesting way to load levels.
The multiplayer option is actually quite interesting. Placing you as the leader of either the axis or allies with a fire team of 3 bots, and a base team of 3 bots. The great thing about this is that all the maps are small incredibly centralized causing for quick action that will have you frantically looking for another route to flank your friend on a relatively small number of 11 maps. The amount of maps are no matter though since they each have their areas for doing maneuvers to trick out your friend, and will keep you well occupied into the night.
As probably the most accurate WW II FPS on the Xbox right now, it certainly lives up to it’s title as a historic shooter. A must get for any nostalgic person who likes history and violence. If you’re not one of those, then just get it for the multiplayer.
Overal Score: 8.9/10
