Brothers in Arms DS - Review
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DS RRP: £29.99
Out 8 Jun
Tactical shooters are a strange animal to breed successfully. Marrying almost chess–like methodical planning with full-on action is hard to pull off, but the Brothers in Arms series has pretty much always succeeded. Past games like Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood are critically acclaimed for redefining the genre and bringing fantastic realism and intelligence to WW2 battles. The PSP game D-Day suffered from overburdened controls with too few buttons to deal with too many different tasks. The DS version, however, takes full advantage of the touch screen, allowing for much more instinctive control over your character and squads.
There’s an interactive heads up display on the bottom touch screen which shows your weapons, ammo, and grenades, and you simply tap them with the stylus to pick which one you want to use. Pull down on the ammo clip to release an empty magazine and a new one will appear. Tap the grenade and a bar appears dictating how far you throw (think golf games). You just move your stylus around the screen to look around and to aim while the d-pad takes care of moving forwards and sideways. It works excellently despite taking a while to get used to.
You’ll work through three campaigns in Normandy, North Africa and Ardennes, controlling tanks, cars, bazookas and sniper rifles along the way. There are also top multiplayer modes for up to four players including Team Deathmatch. Playing with real opponents really brings the game to life, but you do need a game card each.
The DS handles a lot of what BiA has thrown at it remarkably well, but it was always going to be let down by the graphics and this does detract from your enjoyment of the game. It’s great to see games like this coming to the DS, and if you can handle some rather blocky-looking Nazis bearing down on you, it’s a great buy.
7/10
Review by Kirsten Kearney
