App Insiders

Like a beautiful new car that handles with all the charm and precision of an intoxicated goat.

Developed for the iDevices by veteran mobile games developer Gameloft, Brothers In Arms: Hour of Heroes is an audacious and original attempt at bringing the third-person action genre to the platform. It is a game that can be enjoyable, but is sadly weighed down by its all too numerous flaws and disappointments. Those only with the ability to tolerate minor graphical glitches, occasional drops in frame-rate and frustrating control schemes need read on.

Set during the climactic tail-end of the Second World War, Brothers In Arms allows players to fight for the Allied Forces across 3 campaigns (13 missions total), from the beaches of Normandy, to the deserts of northern Africa, to the snow-swept fields of the French border province of Ardennas. In doing so they’ll be required to take part in fierce fire-fights, engage in vehicular combat and utilize explosive satchel charges to sabotage enemy outposts, gun emplacements and headquarters, among other things.

Bringin' on the noobtoob

All of this action is excellently delivered to players through a well developed and stable graphical engine that features first-rate textures and well-produced building and character models. Certain sections of the environment, including parts of some buildings and various defenses, are also destructible, which is an impressive addition to the already exceptional presentation. However, while the game isn’t liable to crash, in the heat of battle it is occasionally subject to drops in frame-rate, and I did notice a few other very minor graphical glitches, such as the way that enemies can sometimes appear to be floating, on account of the fact that they can be spotted from further distances than the elevated ground that they stand upon.

As far as sound goes, it’s all fairly standard WWII goodness. All the sound effects in the game are solid and the music is well done. There’s also a significant amount of voice work that can be heard over the battlefield, your comrades shouting short phrases (“German Panzers at 3 o’clock” etc.) and your German opponents crying out in their native tongue in a similar fashion (most of the time roughly along the lines of “Something, something, Americana!”).

There's certainly plenty going on onscreen.

To those you acquainted with past renditions of the BIA series on the PC or consoles, so far this should all be sounding fairly familiar. However, that’s more or less where the similarities end. There’s no commanding of squad-mates as you might have hoped, and the previously open-ended tactical gameplay has been replaced by a much more restrictive and linear style of play, similar to that of the earlier games in the Call of Duty series.

Another major difference between the experience offered by this game, as opposed to those offered by previous BIA games, lies in the storyline. The difference being that, in Hour of Heroes, there really isn’t any storyline to speak of. You more or less flick through the various battlefields getting told, mostly through text, by your superior officers, each bearing their own generic American-sounding surnames, things like: “We’ve got to clear the Germans out of the area up ahead!” I mean, I wasn’t expecting Saving Private Ryan, but something a little more imaginative in the dialogue would have been nice.

However, an action game such as this isn’t made successful by its graphics, sound or storyline. What it ultimately comes down to is gameplay, and disappointingly that’s exactly where this game’s major flaws lie. What may have been an entertaining distraction became a frustrating chore because of 3 poorly implemented control schemes. The default and best of which has you moving with an on-screen ‘touch-stick’ in the bottom left corner, firing with a small button on the opposing side of that, and aiming by dragging your right thumb across the remainder of the screen. These schemes can then be customized further by doing such things as altering aiming sensitivity and extending the use of the motion sensor, but even after some tinkering and with a few hours under my belt, controlling the game still remained awkward and unnatural.

The default control scheme.

Apart from the three weapons available to you on foot (a sub-machinegun, sniper rifle and bazooka), you can also mount stationary machineguns and are granted access to two vehicles (a tank and jeep) at various points throughout the campaigns. These certainly liven the game up, and I found the controls much more suited to combat using tanks. I also found mowing down small groups of enemies in the jeep a worthy use of my talents. However, it must be said that these shorts bursts of occasional fun by no means save the package as a whole.

My jeep, affectionately referred to as "Jemima"

The Last Word

Brother In Arms: Hour of Heroes is such a well made game in so many ways, from graphics, to sound, to all-round polish, that it disappoints me to be unable to recommend it to any prospective buyers. The title’s lackluster control schemes, while not rendering the game completely broken, makes for an unenjoyable and, at times, frustrating experience. This all may seem rather harsh, but believe me, I’m yet to even mention how they make you throw grenades, more or less forcing you to wave your iDevice up and down in front of you using the accelerometer to aim the damn things. For most discerning gamers, this probably isn’t worth a purchase.

For those interested in seeing Brothers In Arms in action, we have a gameplay video available on our youtube channel here.

(You’ll notice in this post that the screenshots don’t feature the regular “AI” watermark, this is because this was originally written by myself for another site, but never got published)