Yes, I've deliberately made that sound stupid and abstract, because it is. Basically you shoot in the direction of the red spots floating in mid-air, get your squads to do the same, then when they turn grey, move around until you can get clear hits on the German soldiers beneath. Unless you've played a Brothers game, the all-important suppression mechanic is initially odd, until it makes complete sense. Then it's about trying to find a nurse who'll wank you off in a hospital bed. War, hints the title, isn't about duty or honour: it's about brotherhood. Games are fun), while the next mission loads up. Then, when the fighting's over, you can question the futility of it all (war, silly, not the game. Whilst Call of Duty and Medal of Honor continue to do charge heroically down FPS alley, Brothers prefers you lay down suppressive fire, keep the enemy occupied while you or one of your squads goes round the side and sticks it to 'em like proper soldiers. On the face of it, this third Brothers game isn't much different to the first two. It certainly helps if you want to grasp the characters under your command rather than just control them, so that, even though you can't change whatever fate may have in store for them, if nothing else you'll have a decent narrative to wrap yourself in, inbetween trying to shoot the bad guys that are between you and your objectives. The bunch of soldiers in question are survivors of - and replacements to - the recon squad that so gallantly fought across Normandy in the first two games.ДЄs such it's advantageous, though not strictly necessary, to have a grasp of what happened in The Road to Hill 30 and beyond. Which in the context of '40s foreign policy, mainly involves killing Krauts. Hell's Highway isn't so much about Monty's 'Glorious Failure' as it is a story about a bunch of soldiers doing their job. As it turned out, what was buggering things up was the single road and the thousands of troops fighting their way up it, of which, in this latest WWII shooter, you are one. Had there not been a war on, it might have just worked. Monty had some daft plan to drive into Germany and have the war tied up by Christmas, but he was aware that if the Germans snagged onto his kooky nonsense, they'd put a stop to it by blowing up the bridges along the way. That said for a couple of weeks back in September 1944, it was rather backed up with traffic.

It has its moments, but it's far from hellish. Odd then, that the road referred to in the title of this latest game, today largely part of the A50 from Eindhoven to just west of Arnhem, is given such a bad rap. Not as well administered as your high-end German autobahn, but definitely a damn sight more pleasurable to navigate than a motorway here in England. We'll finish off this analogy by simply stating Brothers in Arms is Marmite, while Call of Duty is Nutella.ДЄctually, the typical Dutch snelweg is a pleasure to drive along. Or even just go back to the nostalgic days of chunky Medal of Honor peanut butter, or the jammy texture of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It just leaves me bitter when I could be enjoying the sweeter taste of Call of Duty. Either way, it's got that beefy taste that I don't want in my gaming spread. It does seem to be one of those games that tastes of Marmite.

Yet they're so, so, so much more fun than Brothers in Arms and it's brethren.

However, aren't games like Call of Duty just as arbitrary, just in different ways? I mean, they're intensely funnelled, linear shooters that don't make their own nailed-on 'you must do this' mechanics as blatantly signposted. I just think it's all a bit forced, a bit, as I said, arbitrary. I get bored of whittling down a 'scare-o-metre' over some Nazi's head, before walking round the side and shooting him. I get bored hiding behind cover for arbitrary reasons. I should like them, ignoring any ingrained hatred of the constant stream of World War II games that have been piled on top of me over the years. I Don't Know what it is about them, but I just can't get on with the Brothers in Arms games.

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