Introduction

First-person shooters have traditionally been a one-person, “Rambo”-like affair. Like Sylvester Stallone’s character, you’re one person taking on seemingly the entire world. While this makes for a lot of action, it isn’t very realistic, and tends to lead to fairly repetitive gameplay as you wander from one area to the next blowing up bad guys.

Call of Duty was one of the first first-person shooters to buck this trend. While your character certainly played a pivotal role in the game, you were fundamentally part of a team trying to accomplish a mission. Whether it was freeing POWs, destroying artillery positions, or capturing a certain objective (the beach in Stalingrad being one of the most moving examples), you directly or indirectly worked with NPCs (non-player characters) to ultimately defeat the Germans in World War Two.

Behind enemy lines

Your men will take cover when they can as they move from point to point

While Operation Flashpoint and other titles came before Call of Duty with teamplay elements, none had done so as fluidly as Inifinity Ward’s shooter. It was this teamplay element that played such a large role in Call of Duty’s success in 2003.

Soldiers depart what is left of their glider

Little R&R between fighting

But Call of Duty’s teamplay system was rather mundane. In many missions, NPCs often lacked initiative, following you around as you engaged the enemy, moving from position to position. In other words, your NPC teammates rarely engaged the Germans on their own, your character basically brought the fight to the enemy, while your teammates provided valuable backup. Fundamentally you were still the Rambo character found in older games, only now you had a dozen or so friends coming along with you. While this is certainly an improvement, this is hardly the way battles are fought in the real world.

Close air support WW2 style

German unit shooting from across the street

Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30, takes the teamplay elements found in Call of Duty to an entirely new level, as you’re in complete command of your troops. The game essentially merges the action and gameplay found in a first-person shooter, with the strategy elements found in a real-time strategy game such as Warcraft. However, rather than commanding an entire army, air force, or navy, as you would in a traditional RTS, Brothers In Arms focuses on squad-level tactics and warfare, similar to what you’ve seen in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”, or the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”. In fact, each of the game’s 20 missions begins and ends just like an episode from Band of Brothers.

Paratroppers dropping in as a C-47 goes down

Assault team moving in

The game is based on the real-life missions of the same unit as in Band of Brothers, the famed Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. Whereas Band of Brothers was based on the exploits of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Easy Company, you’ll play the role of the 502nd, Fox Company. The 502nd proved themselves in battle, fighting in battles ranging from the D-Day invasion to the Battle of the Bulge, and have two Congressional Medal of Honor (our nation’s highest military award) recipients among them, which were the only ones awarded to the 101st.