Brothers in Arms: D-Day
A broken best-of collection is still broken.
Published: December 23, 2006
I really have a problem with the Brothers in Arms series. I feel I should put that out there from the start so there's no confusion about why D-Day sucks. My feelings on the series as a whole, and the very notion that a bunch of guys under covering fire, crouched and avoiding shots from one direction should take half a clip to die when I'm looking right down my sights at them, they don't really play a part in why I didn't like D-Day. It's that the game, a collection of levels from both Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood, tries to condense things into a sort of greatest hits version of the series concentrating on D-Day.
The problem is that even though you're playing as both games' lead protagonists, Joe Hartsock and Matt Baker, you're still stuck with the game's funky mix of strategy and action, and on the PSP especially, neither really works like they should. It's not that the idea of commanding a squad of soldiers, laying down suppressive fire and flanking enemies to get the drop on them is a bad way to do a tactical shooter, it's just that on the PSP, which already has issues with first-person shooters in the first place, holding the face buttons and using the analog nub to issue orders is a complicated, clunky process, and it's even more annoying in the heat of battle when precise targeting is an issue.
To complicate things further, both the AI of your own team and of the enemy is fairly brain-dead. This was something of an issue in the PS2 versions of the game, but it's even more pronounced in the PSP. Enemy troops will stand around waiting to get popped (but of course you'll have to sight in on them and plink away for quite a few rounds still), and your own teammates have a hell of a time acting on their own ignoring cover and soaking up shots like they're hopped up on PCP.
And then there's just the fundamental issue of the game feeling far too on-rails. The basic tactics you're given; scope out the enemy with the Situational Awareness feature (tapping select pauses the action and gives you a very limited view of where sources of incoming fire are and where you can use cover to get the drop on the enemy), order your squadmates to a specific location to pin the bad guys down with fire, and then move around to hit them from the side or behind.
Things like grenades are largely useless, and the game often feels less like you're actively exploring the levels and more like you're being run down a specific channel, finding the proper place the developers wanted you to move to, and starting the whole process anew. This was an issue with the console versions, and it hasn't improved in the move to a portable format.
The game is also something of a technical headache. Though it's impressive that some of the levels made the leap largely intact, and there's no denying that there are a lot of them for the $40 entry price, the texture resolution and overall look of the game is a mess. The framerate is all over the place (but usually rests in the crap end of the spectrum), the textures are muddy, mottled messes and the detail in soldiers really only shows itself when you're nose-to-nose with your comrades in preparation to jump into the next set of skirmishes.
If it weren't for the fact that the game loooves to let your team talk over each other when individual comments are important, and hitches from time to time as they're buffered in, it would actually be aurally solid. The voice acting and banter between your compatriots is often at very least entertaining, and the weapons actually sound nice -- if a little on the weak side. Ambience, such as it is on the battlefield, and music both add a little to things, but again, it's not executed well enough to hide the fact that the PSP isn't especially adept at interweaving multiple audio bits.
My gripes with the basic gameplay shouldn't be the deterrent here; more than a few people are fans of the core gameplay and that hasn't changed. It's the presentation, from blah visuals to clunky sound, and above all the controls which simply don't work as an FPS or a tactical shooter, that are really the culprit here.
I might whine about having to take down enemies with half a clip or that the levels are really nothing more than a pre-set clump of chess-like moves, but the simple fact is that this isn't a series that carries over well to the PSP, and in fact it's far worse. There's a lot of content to be had for the sticker price, but you'll have to fight some horrid controls to enjoy it, which pretty much ensures that you won't enjoy it, doesn't it?
The problem is that even though you're playing as both games' lead protagonists, Joe Hartsock and Matt Baker, you're still stuck with the game's funky mix of strategy and action, and on the PSP especially, neither really works like they should. It's not that the idea of commanding a squad of soldiers, laying down suppressive fire and flanking enemies to get the drop on them is a bad way to do a tactical shooter, it's just that on the PSP, which already has issues with first-person shooters in the first place, holding the face buttons and using the analog nub to issue orders is a complicated, clunky process, and it's even more annoying in the heat of battle when precise targeting is an issue.
To complicate things further, both the AI of your own team and of the enemy is fairly brain-dead. This was something of an issue in the PS2 versions of the game, but it's even more pronounced in the PSP. Enemy troops will stand around waiting to get popped (but of course you'll have to sight in on them and plink away for quite a few rounds still), and your own teammates have a hell of a time acting on their own ignoring cover and soaking up shots like they're hopped up on PCP.
And then there's just the fundamental issue of the game feeling far too on-rails. The basic tactics you're given; scope out the enemy with the Situational Awareness feature (tapping select pauses the action and gives you a very limited view of where sources of incoming fire are and where you can use cover to get the drop on the enemy), order your squadmates to a specific location to pin the bad guys down with fire, and then move around to hit them from the side or behind.
Things like grenades are largely useless, and the game often feels less like you're actively exploring the levels and more like you're being run down a specific channel, finding the proper place the developers wanted you to move to, and starting the whole process anew. This was an issue with the console versions, and it hasn't improved in the move to a portable format.
The game is also something of a technical headache. Though it's impressive that some of the levels made the leap largely intact, and there's no denying that there are a lot of them for the $40 entry price, the texture resolution and overall look of the game is a mess. The framerate is all over the place (but usually rests in the crap end of the spectrum), the textures are muddy, mottled messes and the detail in soldiers really only shows itself when you're nose-to-nose with your comrades in preparation to jump into the next set of skirmishes.
If it weren't for the fact that the game loooves to let your team talk over each other when individual comments are important, and hitches from time to time as they're buffered in, it would actually be aurally solid. The voice acting and banter between your compatriots is often at very least entertaining, and the weapons actually sound nice -- if a little on the weak side. Ambience, such as it is on the battlefield, and music both add a little to things, but again, it's not executed well enough to hide the fact that the PSP isn't especially adept at interweaving multiple audio bits.
My gripes with the basic gameplay shouldn't be the deterrent here; more than a few people are fans of the core gameplay and that hasn't changed. It's the presentation, from blah visuals to clunky sound, and above all the controls which simply don't work as an FPS or a tactical shooter, that are really the culprit here.
I might whine about having to take down enemies with half a clip or that the levels are really nothing more than a pre-set clump of chess-like moves, but the simple fact is that this isn't a series that carries over well to the PSP, and in fact it's far worse. There's a lot of content to be had for the sticker price, but you'll have to fight some horrid controls to enjoy it, which pretty much ensures that you won't enjoy it, doesn't it?
