Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood

"Big improvment from last game"

A few months ago Ubisoft came out with Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. It was great on the Xbox and still pretty good on the PS2. A few months later Ubisoft comes out with a sequel.

Gameplay: Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood is a tactical shooter and is played with tactics rather than going Rambo style. The main way to kill the enemy is to suppress, shoot at them and make them take cover, and then flank them, go around and shoot them in the back. Overall this works very effectively. One problem is that sometimes the flanking doesn't work out as much as you want it to. Sometimes before you can squeeze a shot of the Germans magically turn around and start shooting you. This is an annoyance that happens but usually you can get around it and it is not a major problem. Not only is this game realistic it is also difficult. Sometimes you will have to repeatedly load the game up when your stuck, but this is also good because you are able to try different things to get around this problem. Overall the gameplay is fresh and original and makes this one of the better WWII games.

Story: Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood's lead character is played by Cpl. Joe Hartsock "Red". In the earlier game you were in the role of Sgt. Matt Baker, and at the end of that game you learn that Hartsock is promoted and is now in charge of 2nd squad. During the whole game you are being interviewed and the gameplay takes place in a flashback sort of way. You flashback to when you first landed on Normandy, when you are promoted, and other times in Hartsock was fighting.

Graphics and Sound: The graphics for this game are good for the PS2 but the could be a little better. Last game the graphics were not so good, the lighting was not well done, and the frame rate was slow. This time the graphics were improved, the lighting was excellent, and the frame rate was fixed. The sound was also improved for the last game. Last game the sound was only available in stereo and mono, this time around the sound was done in Dolby Prologic 2, which is a big improvement. Overall the sound and graphics were good, not great though, but most important were improved.

Re-playability: The game in whole take around maybe 7-8 hours. The re-playability..well is okay. The split screen multiplayer(1-2 players) consists of head to head matches and co-op matches. The head to head matches were a big improvement from last years laggy matches. The co-op [skirmish mode(1-2 players)] is what , in my opinion, the thing i was most looking forward to. This was a big disappointment. First of all the skirmish mode is literally unplayable with two players. The lag is so bad you can only move around at literally 1 mph. With one player is moves a lot smoother and is actually a fun experience. But if your the person who wants to play 2 player co-op this is not the game.

Overall this game is well done. The single player is done nicely and story is great. The replayability could have been done better if the frame rate was fixed on the multiplayer. In conclusion this game is a major improvement from last years.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/05