Dragging the overall presentation further from its supposed roots in the realms of believability, the admittedly compelling narrative in Hell's Highway is tainted by appalling screen tearing and texture popping during cut-scenes. Also, gameplay immersion suffers through enemy A.I. that only ever seems to embrace a dumb entrenchment mentality rather than any form of strategy-testing flanking tactics.

Interestingly, one of the blurbs on the game's packaging boasts of "Massively Destructible Environments," suggesting levels that physically react to bullets and explosions in the same way as recent releases such as Battlefield: and John Woo Presents Stranglehold. However, that simply isn't the case with Hell's Highway, which offers little more than wood and sandbag cover that degrades under fire. There's not much destruction on show and very little of it qualifies as massive, with a shortfall that sees windows impervious to bullets, simple stone walls unaffected by repeated tank shells, and simple wooden sheds seemingly coated with grenade-resistant varnish.

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Evidently, Ubisoft's bold claim of massively destructible environments stems from the new Action Camera sequences providing the player with close-up slow motion visuals as German troops suffer bloody head shots or are quite literally blown limb from limb by tank shells and grenade blasts. To say it is unnecessarily graphic would be an understatement. Realistic blood spatter is one thing, but clearly seeing arms, legs and heads torn clean off - in zoomed slo-mo - is reaching some way beyond the boundaries of taste in some quarters. While the shock-value gore sequences and the game's mature NPC language can be switched off by the player, the inclusion of the former is an error on the part of that cheapens rather than enriches the overall experience.

The game's overall presentation is typically slick and follows the blueprint laid down by throughout the series; however, while battle sounds, NPC chatter and accompanying are convincing, emotive and befitting of the World War II setting, the visual credentials in Hell's Highway fail to earn their stripes on the next-generation battlefield. Specifically, Allied character models appear ugly and without subtlety, while enemy soldiers are generic copies that lie like rigid store mannequins when shoved from the mortal coil. Plus, all in-game characters suffer from clunky animation during cut-scenes, which occasionally makes them appear to trudge almost weightlessly across terrain.

In an attempt to stem the tide of repetition thrown up by the single-player campaign, Hell's Highway also offers up an team-based aspect that strives to create an interactive atmosphere capable of papering over the majority of the gameplay deficiencies. Sadly, however, while the increased adrenaline of up to 20 players staves off boredom for a while, multiplayer similarly suffers from a lack of variety thanks to a fairly basic single mode built around little more than six modest maps and a host of integrated gameplay options.

All in all, considering that the overall gameplay mechanic is a rinse and repeat exercise of duck and cover shooting coupled with a partially fractured command interface, it's hard to recommend Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway to anyone other than hardened series fanatics. Regardless of multiple squad controls, when factoring in strictly linear objectives, shallow level designs, disappointing visuals, and a whole host of glitches, Hell's Highway ultimately adds nothing other than a gimmicky gore element to the Brothers in Arms franchise.

68%

By Stevie Mostyn