Standard Edition: Limited Edition: Price: £39.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes Dolby Digital 5.1: Yes Xbox Live-enabled: Yes Downloadable content: Yes In my gaming life, I haven't played as many war games as I'd like to have done, but Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 is a fantastic effort and well worth the time spent on it. In recent years, I've been impressed by the AI in Medal of Honour: Allied Assault on the PC, but not so much with Medal of Honour: Frontline, which had its good points but became far too linear in places. However, until the sci-fi bit I had a damn sight more fun with Return To Castle Wolfenstein. With so many games out there, the last time I remember dodging bullets was with tactical titles such as The Sum of All Fears and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, both of which were very enjoyable but longevity is always in question.

The game is set from D-Day, June 6th, 1944, onwards, but starting with everything one week on from that momentous juncture. However, I thought I'd done really crap at first when my character, Sgt. Matt Baker, who gets to control a squad of up to four men, was killed in action not long after starting, and I thought it was time to reload. But no... that must be the man's fate as we then went back to D-Day and everyone had to put their best foot forward. Following the brief tutorial that tells you the basics of moving and flanking, you'll begin the game proper, traversing across historically accurate and detailed battlefields of Normandy, using real US military tactics from World War II and, largely, relatively easy to use controls. And yes, you will visit one primary location but no, you don't get to visit the beach from the direction you'd expect. Oh well, I've done that in the aforementioned 'Frontline'.

The first thing you'll spot is that this title has fantastic graphics except for the lack of sharpness of detail as you get up close to anything that doesn't bear great importance to your mission, such as walls as you crouch behind them. However, there are some great little touches such as lush grass swaying in the breeze, and as I approached a dead cow, from which birds were feasting, they all flew away the closer I got. With even a reasonable Dolby Digital 5.1 sound system, there are heart-stopping explosions all around to be heard and ones that, literally, make you jump as you head through your mission. Such is the excellent attention paid to sonic placement here, if you spin round while someone else is talking, you can hear the voice go round your speakers in turn. In fact, the same goes for all directional sounds from speech to gunfire, the latter being incredible to witness aurally as you can hear bullets flying past your face. The gameplay is superb as you're made to feel a real part of the action as you engage the Nazis and fend off their advances, either with careful planning or a fair amount of luck. However, I found it a bit weird getting used to a combination of crouching and zooming in with the rifle at first.

The best aspects of the game come in manoeuvering your men so that they provide cover while you flank round and kill the enemy, or get them to flank instead. Once they're in position, use the situational awareness view to find a way to get round. I love the way the sound goes all quiet as you go into this mode then rushes back as you exit from the mode, sounding like someone coming back to life! While your men are in position, there's a clever method used to keep you aware of which baddies are cowering in fear of getting shot, and those which are about to unleash hell - suppression-indicator circles appear above the heads of any individual ones, plus one (with a symbol above it) when they're in a group. Covering fire from your squad will make the circle go increasingly grey, but then make sure you're ready to blast away as they turn from grey to a deep red, in a style not too dissimilar to the Countdown clock. The controls also allow you to force your men to follow you, or storm in and take the enemy out without you getting so much as a flesh wound. Don't worry if some of your men cark it, though. They're allowed to die along the way in a mission, since they'll regenerate in time for the next one. One of the downsides to the game, though, is in the loading times. They're not terrible but it's a real pain that the game has to reload in the last checkpoint you just went past, despite being there already(!)

Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 covers 18 chapters, which take you through D-Day and the following week, and you won't get to recouperate until completing each one, although there are checkpoint stops along the way. Do a number of reloads and it'll state, "War isn't fair, but sometimes video games should be. Would you like to heal your team before reloading?" Overall, I'm not sure if I'll go through all 18 chapters as, while it is an entertaining game with far better AI than most previous war games that have gone before, you're taken on a linear path to complete your mission, so in that respect, along with the lack of detail in anything close-up that's not overly important, it's not come massively far since Medal of Honour: Frontline. Finally, as you complete each stage you'll unlock a variety of token extras relating to the time and period. For those who want to go further, you can take your battle experience online with Xbox Live, controlling your guys for the world to see, as opposed to going it alone like most online multiplayer titles.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2005.