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worst possible game ever?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 46
Date: November 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

ok here my "TRUE REVIEW" :this game is beyond whacky-when you shoot an enemy there is no reaction!I stood face to face shot at least 1o times all hits/but they dont react?!!!!suppressing fire ruins the whole thing,you must"suppress"every idiot before they can be shot(total stupidity at best)also confusing health meter am i hurt? cant tell how badly hurt.got perfect victory level 1 so what!level 2 so dumb turned off game PERMANNENT.and that is the truth.not even worth renting.peace out jp

Tired of all the hype and BS.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: March 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You know, I am sick of all the hype about this game by a bunch of weenies that don't seem to know real combat, real weapons or realism of any sort beyond what they see on their TV screens.

This game is not the authentic real life war on-the-battlefield war game that all the geeks are hyping and signing the party line the company puts out.

I bought two of these games after reading the reviews and I have to say that you people don't know what you are talking about.

There is pseudo-realism and that is about it. Sure the maps are close, the look and sounds of the weapons are close and even the dialog is about right, but that is about as far as it goes.

These games fall down severely on the accuracy/authenticity in several key areas.

1.Ludicrous restriction on the tactical options available to the soldiers and the squad leaders. Some of this is bad level design, some of it is probably trying to make up for the limitations of their AI, and some of it is just plain dumb.

2. Ridiculous limitations on interaction with the environments. You cannot open doors or windows. You cannot climb fences. You cannot use the wire cutters that every paratroop carried. You cannot go under a normal barbed wire fence, which thousands of hunters do several times a day in america.

Barrels and crates don't blow up or even move when hit by a tank. You can't even climb over a low wall that some other men just went over.

Perhaps most unforgivable of all, you cannot go into a prone position or crawl. You know, the stuff they teach everyone in BASIC TRAINING!

3. The gunsights are ludicrous. The amount of creep even in a crouching position is ridiculous. If I was that shakey I'd head for the retirement home.

4. Terrible path blocking and object collision detection. Quite a few times when I had a perfect view of a target and as perfect a sight picture as you would ever want I could not hit the target no matter how many rounds I fired. In real life I would have put a round through both ears of my target.

5. Absurd size of the weapons relative to your field of vision when zoomed in. Come on folks this is ridiculously UN-authentic. There is a reason for the open sights on fast action weapons like the Thompson and other SMG weapons.

6. Really stupid scenario designs. There are several instances where you are put face to face with tanks and no tactical options except to run for enemy panzerfausts. Making this worse of course are the level designs that force you to follow a relatively linear and restricted path to said anti-tank weapons. This is completely ridiculous.

7. Poor level designs. Too many places you cannot go or step when you should be able to. Places you cannot jump over or crawl under where you should. Only in EIB do you get to even blow holes in the hedges with the TNT that all paratroops carried as part of their standard pack during that theater of operations, and then only in key places and one whole scenario.

8. Situational awareness mode. Give me a break. This is supposed to substitute for the advance study done by the troops? It's not even as good as a raw topo map dump. You are chained to camera angles around key points and there are no indications of any significant type for changes in elevation and quite often the terrain features are faded out due to the choices made for the camera angle.

9. Another limiting factor is that you cannot issue movement commands to a location you know is there but are not lined up on directly yourself and you had better be on the side away from the enemy when you issue the order. This could have been easily fixed by using some option to issue commands while in situational mode, especially if that were better done.

10. Lastly the much hyped authentic tactics. Authentic, sure, in a very introductory and watered down way, severely limited in permutations, applications and variations due to all the other limitations of the game.

By the way, I am both a veteran and an experienced programmer and I am highly disappointed with this game on both counts.

If this is the latest in realism then it shows what a sorry state the gaming industry really is in. Of course I still haven't seen AI in a commercial game yet that matched up to what I saw undergrad programmers doing in college during the 80s. We deserve better and it's not that hard to do. It's time we stopped allowing these companies to hype this stuff up like it is so great when it's all fluff like pretty pictures and sound.

Oh, one PS. The AI cheats. You can observe how the enemy becomes magically aware of things completely out of the blue, such as someone being behind them, not moving or firing, and behind cover. This is inexcusable.

2 for the Graphics.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: December 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Graphics are amazing, however the ai's are very hard and the game itself is way to hurried and very unfun. not a good game.

Brother's in Arms: Earned in Blood

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 12
Date: May 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Wow, am I the only one that doesn't like this game besides Jeff Peterson? It sucks! I am a new gamer so when I bought my X-Box in Jan '06 I bought this game based upon what I had heard. I agree with everything he states. Suppressing the enemy to kill them? The movement of my guy is slow, firing at enemies is like spitting in the wind; don't know where the bullets are going to land, and shooting at the enemy fact-to-face doesn't kill the enemy. Also, it takes a ridiculous amount of time to learn this game. I like high-learning curves on games, but this is stupid. One last thing, the game offers a story-line to follow like a movie. If I want to watch a movie, I'll rent BIA but I am too impatient to play a video game and to watch a story line at the same time. I get on X-Box to play!

Maybe I don't like this game because I like COD: Big Red One because that game offers immediate, high-gamer action.

I bored easily with BIA: Earned in Blood. The graphics however are an 11 out of 10.

Rent this game before buying and find out if you like it.

Good game for Two people

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was a little predictable but was good for two player action. The graphics are not all that great however its cool that you can play on either side of the countries.

split-screen co-op review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

with shooters, I only play split-screen Co-op games with a friend - stuff like Halo and Wolfenstein. This game has a mode that lets you pick 1 of 5 maps, choose your difficulty level and whether you want to be the good or bad guys. You each command a 3-man team. AI is pretty good and the game is more difficult comparatively than Halo. The maps are pretty varied and fun. Definitely worth 20 bucks.

Not much of an improvement over the Road to Hill 30

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Earned in Blood, not Brothers in Arms 2, just Road to Hill 30 and beyond... as Sergeant/Corporal Joe 'Red' Hartsock.
Well, everything such as graphics, sound, and gameplay is pretty much the SAME. I didn't notice much difference in those fields. A few new weapons have been added, the M3 Grease gun, and the FG42, WOW BIG DEAL. The FG42 is fun to use, the M3 is boring, except you only use them in a few levels of the campaign. Some of the old characters come back, while your squad is a bunch of guys you didnt meet in RTH-30. New abilities like magically recieving ammo from your squad, and talking to them by pressing 'X' have been added. You guys act like the guys in Hill 30, swearing, arguing, and just talking. Instead of the 'briefing' of every level being a sort of narration by the main character, its become aa SLA Marshall interviewing Hartsock, not as interesting, but a bit more informative than Bakers telling. The game is just as hard as Road to Hill 30, unless you found it easy, but its not as long, its got more scenes where your just watching. And instead of creating bakersdozen as your profile name to recieve cheats, you should enter '2ndsquad' instead, same cheats. There are a few new vehicles in Earned in Blood, and there is some more variety given theres Urban combat, a wasteland of rumble where you experience 'closer combat' and get to take out some tanks on the way. More fun times to kill Panzer tanks! And sometimes they give you a stash of panzerfausts to take out several PANZER TANKS. A new mode, 'Skirmish' has been added, its just 5 levels of different objectives to choose from, I found it similar to multiplayer, except longer, you can also co-op in Skirmish. Everything feels the same, just some new goodies added, and this time... the cover is a helmet! It definatly earns the M rating because it has all the blood, violence, and curse words from Hill 30... unless you dont care.

Awesome Sequel!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 31
Date: October 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was a huge fan of the first Brother's in Arms (Road to Hill 30) and this sequel (Earned in Blood) lives up to the original and surpasses it!

First, let me get the negatives out of the way...

1. There are some sound issues when firing the weapons. Occasionally in the heat of battle, there will be a delay in sound when firing your weapons. This only occured a few times when I played through the game. (probably like 4 or 5 times....it's no biggy)

2. There is also some slow down (with the frame rate I think), usually when there's a lot of enemies and guns firing all at once. This is probably the most annoying problem in the game but it's not bad enough to affect my score. This problem occured about 6 or 7 times when playing through the game and it only lasts a few seconds....so it's no biggy either.

3. The squad mates aren't as funny in this sequel. No conversations to laugh at :(

Now, the positives...

1. The level design is better and the levels feel bigger

2. The Battles! (The battles this time around are more action packed and feel like actual battles)

3. Better A.I. (The enemies will try to flank you when ever they get the chance and this makes for better, more realistic battles)

4. More of a challenge (the difficulty level has definitely moved up a notch, probably as a result of better enemy A.I. and the inclusion of more enemy tanks and armored vehicles in this game. The germans also use a new artillery gun, the 88mm.)

5. More weapons (there's a little new sub machine gun, "The Greaser" and some other new german gun which the fallshrimjager carry. One version of that gun has a scope and the other version doesn't.

6. More vehicles (the germans can now attack you with half-tracks and even more tanks this time around. One level I went through had 4 enemy tanks! There are even horses in another level. You also get to control a new tank yourself, nick named the "Wolverine."

7. New Skirmish mode adds to the replay value. The skirmish mode objectives are pretty tough and were definitely a challenge for me...even on the easy difficulty setting.
In the skirmish mode, you can also play as the germans which is a cool bonus.

Earned In Blood meets my expectations and surpasses the first game, Road To Hill 30. The 2 glitchy technical problems I mentioned before are forgiveable and don't occur too often, so other than that the game is just about perfect!

If you liked the first Brother's in Arms, then this game is a definite must have.

Every bit as satasfying as the original, and then some....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 21
Date: October 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Earlier this year, Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30 amazed gamers with its incredible detail and historic acuracy. Earned in Blood doesnt carry such a wow factor as it is more of a continuation rather than a whole new game. This time around, Ubisoft and Gearbox put you in the boots of Cpl. Joe "Red" Hartsock. Your path meshes quite intricatley with the path you took as Baker in the first game. There are many cross over levels that bring back some lovable characters such as Desola, Allen, and Garnett. However, the levels are completely new, filling in the spaces between Hill 30's levels. Earned in Blood offers an assortment of new weapons, the FG-42 being the coolest one in my opinion. There are even new vehicles which are fun to see. Textures in the game have been improved significantly over the first game, but other than that minor change, Earned in Blood looks the same as Hill 30. There is no doubt in my mind that if you enjoyed the first game, this second chapter is very worth your money and time. To new comers of the series, just be cautioned, this game is very brutal at times and the harsh language never lets up. All in all, this is the most realistic WWII experience money can buy. Thanks for reading.

i have never been so pleasantly obliterated

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I started playing WWII FPS's back in the original Medal Of Honor days on PS1. I swear i've played most every one since, and though the various titles aren't bad, they were basically just running & gunning with a historical theme that didn't matter much to the game itself. Now this game comes along and completely alters how WWII shooters are made. How?

1) It's no longer you plowing through the entire German army singlehandedly, with only the amount of bullets standing in your way between total annihilation or death. Your squad is with you, and they are VERY important

2) Forget shooting at everything that moves, now you have to use some proper (and minimal) tactics. Have your fire team commence shooting on a position so that the enemy target is suppressed. Then you sneak around the side to flank them while they're busy trying not to get shot by your fire team. Sound easy? Ha! Which leads me to my 3rd point:

3) Holy crap, this game is DIFFICULT! This isn't Medal Of Honor anymore, where the enemies might as well have been cardboard cutouts. These fascists have brains, and a sense of teamwork, and a ruthless ability to exploit any weakness your team tactics display. Seriously, i'm a vet at these games, and i get pummeled regularly. It will take you multiple times to beat any given chapter.

4) Really great story and realistic ambience. It's fascinating that the MoH series really set the bar for these sorts of games, but the series that have eclipsed it (Call Of Duty, Brothers In Arms) have actually improved on what was already a really lush graphical environment replete with orchestral music & deadly serious sound effects. But this game recreates every detail with loving care, and really immerses you in the world.

I was wary that this was going to be just another WWII FPS, but after spending time with it (a LOT of time) this is simply the finest, most challenging, and as a result most rewarding WWII shooter i've ever had the enjoyment to play. Very few games are worth their cover price these days, this is at the front of the list. Be prepared to surrender your life to this one, it is THAT good.

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