I have to admit I played too little of the first Brothers in Arms. But its sequel, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway is giving my a good ride so far. Im playing it on my PC.
The only bad thing about playing a sequel so cinematic like this one is that I dont get shit about what the hell is going on with the characters and the story that was on the first BIA... from time to time I get a cinematic with screens from the original game, or something that happened on the original game, also with some character conflict, etc, etc... but who knows, I dont know what the fuck are they talking about, I only know that my objective is to kill nazis, and thats allways a good thing.

The BIAHH has a good idea behind, like the first one, not beign the simple WWII shooter it gives you a shooter with some tactical goodies, very nice tactics overall make it quite addictive.
If you dont understad the tactic thing that Iam talking about lets go over it:
You can shoot nazis, of course, but if you try to do it on your own, behind cover is game over.
You are in charge of sometimes up to two squads, one can be a assault squad with firepower to match infantry, the other one can be a bazooka squad or a machine gun placement. So lets suposse you have a situation, the nazis are over a field of cows, you can kill the cows and place the squad with the machine gun behind cover, command them to keep the nazis pinned down and then with the help of your tactical map and your assault team: flank them.
That´s overall the main idea of BIAHH, you have to use your brains, is a FPS with elements drawn from RPG´s like Company of Heroes.



But its not allways tactics, so far I have managed to get to a point or two when you have to take a solo ride. It stills plays good, but doesnt loose that thing that tells you: this is not a WWII FPS, you have to take cover, aim for the head, keep enemies pinned down, try to use granades to help you deal with more than a couple enemies, and finally if you rush into a fight you will probably loose.

In such a tactical scheme controls have to be good. They are, but still I feel somewhat dissapointed with the decission of the developers of not allowing me to remap the keys. I mean, in a PC game you allways have to have a lot of options, not ony graphic options, but you have to let me remap my keys at least.
From scratch is kind of a challenge, I have to command a couple of teams, place them wisely and keep my head down, is cool thought: the AI of this game is VERY good. Which is kind of suprising that my mates are not a gang of suckers with their collective cocks hanging like their guns, I have only to issue a command or a position and they will take care of keeping out of trouble and get the job done.
You should be, in 2008, somewhat used to maps you can destroy things. For example if my guys are behind some wood cover they will remind me that they are exposed, so I will have to move them to something more solid.

Im playing the game in a Core2Duo 2.33Ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb hdd, Nvidia 8800GTS under Win XP. With everything on high in my default definition (1152x864), it looks very nice and runs good.



It looks nice:


So overall this is a solid title. Good action, some things I quite dont get why they didnt work on them a bit, but they are minor, you can bet your money on this title if you liked the first one, and if you didnt played it, then you are looking forward to a different kind of WWII challenge.

This game had a very long development cycle, I actually thought that it had been released a while ago...