War was certainly hell for the Allied troops in Operation Market Garden — a scenario that Gearbox head Randy Pitchford calls “the Empire Strikes Back of the Brothers in Arms saga.” In 1944, U.S. and British troops executed an ambitious plan to seize a series of bridges in the Netherlands, intending to gain clear access across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany. What was planned as a two-day mission that could turn the tide of World War II became a brutal eight-day struggle for the Allies…and ultimately, a bitter defeat.

That’s the backdrop of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, and from our exclusive hands-on time with the game, we’d say it’s a good one. Franchise fans know that the first two BIAs — the original Xbox’s Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood — offered a shooter/strategy mix where players commanded teams of squadmates and had genuine control over their fate. Those elements return in full force with a shot of realism and ante-upping that only the leap to Xbox 360 could provide.

Reinforcing the series’ ongoing story, Highway begins with a brief cinematic that recalls the events of the earlier BIA games as returning character Sgt. Matt Baker sets the stage by intoning: “I never asked to be squad leader. But I had no choice.” After a short tutorial mission set in the middle of Operation Market Garden, where you (as Baker) and fellow returnee Sgt. Joe Hartsock are trying to escape an abandoned hospital in Eindhoven, the game jumps back a few days to the beginning of Market Garden. In cutscenes, the soldiers discuss their plans to “open up a highway” into Germany, and before long, Baker and his squad are in a glider — part of the air-dropped forces that made Operation Market (the first half of Market Garden) the biggest airborne operation in military history.

“CAN I CUT IN?”
Once your glider lands, your primary objective is to secure the landing site for other incoming gliders — and at this point, Pitchford handed over the controller and our actual hands-on time began. Though Highway eventually gives you control of three fireteams (compared to the previous games’ two), the game starts you off controlling just one fireteam — a two-man machinegun crew — to give newbies a chance to adjust to BIA’s tactical squad combat.

After positioning our fireteam to pin down the first group of Nazis with suppressing fire, we moved around the side to flank them, and used our Thompson for some rapid-fire justice. Realizing that several nemeses were nearby, we flung a grenade at one of them — and got to see a zoomed-in view of exploding Nazi via the Burnout-style action cam, which automatically activates when you land “sweet grenade kills, bazooka kills, and headshots,” Pitchford says. Like everything else in the game, grenades are no-holds-barred: in this case, our dead enemy had his legs savagely blown off.

Now overconfident, we ran straight toward another group of Nazis without moving up our machinegun team for support — all of which gave us the perfect opportunity to study Highway’s red-screen effect. When the screen grows red and blurry, it indicates risk, at which point you need to take cover, shoot at nearby foes, or send in a fireteam to eliminate nearby foes. Ignore it at your peril; in our case, we ran around foolishly in a circle instead of seeking cover, and were shot dead. Though our head-on approach got us quickly killed, Pitchford notes that you will be able to play the final game with a run-and-gun style if you choose — “much more than [you could] in the other Brothers in Arms games.” Gearbox is still tuning the game’s difficulty, and at the moment, it’s balanced for squad-style tactics but not run-and-gun tactics. Pity for us…

Upon reloading, we called up Highway’s Situational Ordnance view to assess the area. Improved since the earlier BIAs, it shows you objects in your environment, enemies you know about, and the locations of various objectives (e.g., a Dutch-resistance member you need to meet with). Humbler and with a better sense of our surroundings, we approached our next adversaries more strategically — placing our machinegun team and assault team (once we gained this second fireteam) on one side of a field while we sniped the Nazis from the other side. We learned in short order that using a wood fence for cover was a poor choice: with Highway’s highly destroyable environments, wood and other weak materials can be shot to bits fairly quickly, and our cover was shredding fast. We sprinted to a brick wall, ducked behind it, and now better-protected, resumed firing.

Though we lost our assault team in that firefight (which involved defending a glider crash site), we discovered something else in our playtest: these next-gen Nazis are pretty smart. When an enemy realizes he’s being flanked, he’ll often flee — running away and diving behind another piece of cover from which he has a better firing position. We saw this behavior numerous times, and it’s fairly impressive, although it does make the battlefield a much more dangerous place for you and your men.

OTHER STOPS ON THE ROAD
Though our playtime encompassed only Highway’s first chapter, we did get to see several other portions of the game, which has nine chapters and one “mini-chapter.” In an Operation Garden mission, Baker and two fireteams try to flush out Nazis in a real-life Philips factory in Eindhoven, securing first the ground floor, then the top floor. “It gave us an excuse to do a crate level,” jokes Pitchford, while also allowing the developers to take BIA’s traditionally outdoor action into a more claustrophobic indoor location.

As Baker used an assault team and a base-of-fire team for some close-quarters flanking, a German Panzerschreck detonated nearby, producing an intense ringing sound that simulated what you’d hear if you were near the impact. It’s one of many examples of grippingly realistic audio heard throughout the game; the sound of whizzing bullets, pouring rain, and explosions booming in the distance are just as startling in their authenticity.

In another chapter, “Black Friday,” you and your teams have to repel the German advance on Veghel — a battle that involves destroying Nazi flak guns, a firefight in a church, and other memorable moments. As Level Designer Carl Shedd ordered one of his in-game teams in a certain direction, one of his men complained, “This is f------ pointless” — a subtle but unmistakable way of telling the player that his men are in a stalemate with the enemy and need to be redirected to be useful. These helpful A.I. comments are also triggered by your movements, as we observed in another mission when Baker was moving into an unsafe position and one of his men groused, “Baker, are you trying to get shot?”

Our final glimpse was of the game’s penultimate chapter, “Hell’s Highway,” where you and your men are fighting up that storied stretch of road. Set at dusk, this mission puts the Unreal Engine 3 to spectacular use, with smoke billowing from burning buildings and the setting sun casting stark, foreboding shadows on the surrounding plains. By this point, it’s clear that your struggle is coming to a head, paving the way for the game’s closing chapter, where — having mastered use of the fireteams —you’re finally given control of three of them for what’s presumably a major confrontation.

Operation Market Garden was the mother of all battles, and that makes it a good fit — Hell’s Highway is looking like the mother of all World War II games. Gearbox has been working on the game since March 2005, and the time and effort are really starting to show. War’s never something you look forward to, but this looks like it may prove to be one hell of an exception.