Brothers in Arms DS Review

BY Taimoor Hafeez | POSTED: 14 July 2007

WW II on the DS. This is what everyone’s been waiting for. No really!



Every time I see a new WW II based game it never ceases to amaze me how much publishers want to milk the heck out of this genre; and people still gobble it up! I don’t think I have seen a single year since Saving Private Ryan came out that I haven’t seen a WW II game released. So of course it would only make sense that the very unique and compelling series of Brothers in Arms is brought onto the fastest and one of the most successful handhelds of all time, the DS. Say hello to the very imaginatively titled Brothers in Arms: DS.

One can clearly see how well BIA will fit comfortably onto the DS, what with the touch screen controlled shooting and all. The formula was already proven successful by Metroid Prime: Hunters. A feat, which incidentally is again on Metroid’s shoulders to prove unbelievers that FPS games really are born-to-be on the Wii.  However BIA, like any good old FPS has to look reasonably good; except that it’s actually an over the shoulder Third Person Shooter. Nonetheless, good looking it is. The first time you see the game in motion on that tiny 3” screen you’ll be wondering just how is all that possible? Well, just like it was possible with every other FPS on the PS1 and N64. And soon you will notice how far we have come from those blocky shapes to the now (almost) photo-realistic graphics.

But these are rather secondary aspects of the game, so let’s move on from cosmetics to actual gameplay. The first thing you will notice is that the aiming feels clunky. And the auto-aiming doesn’t make for a smooth transition either. So any comparisons with Hunters are pretty much thrown out the window at this point. Still, it’s not terribly bad. Throwing grenades sees you sliding the stylus as the screen indicator drags the spot to where the grenade will land. So some thought had been put into the controls, too bad it all feels disjointed.

Moving onto the actual missions there is nothing much to be said. Apart from the standard shooting, you get to drive around in jeeps as well as tanks. An extremely cumbersome experience in itself, driving tanks can be one of the greatest sources of frustration as you’re trying to slide the stylus quickly across the bottom screen in hope of seeing your enemies until you get shot from God knows where and its Game Over. And speaking of Game Over, the missions are really small (unless you’re stuck at some point). I mean imagine in Call of Duty you’re dropped into the middle of a war zone where you have shoot enemies and run from cover to cover to reach some old church or building. Where as in such a game you would now be proceeding towards the second objective, in BIA:DS it Mission Over. Err – Yay? I suppose it just stresses the fact that this is indeed a handheld game and so missions are playable in short ten-ish minute bursts. Don’t fret, as their there are 3 different campaigns with each campaign having a dozen odd missions.

The audio is pretty solid for a DS game. Of course we have come to expect good stereo surround from our tiny DS speakers; with explosions and bullets being fired in the distant background to give you that continuous feeling of being in the war along with great sounding weapons. The experience is further enriched when using headphones.

Multiplayer seems like an afterthought. You can only have 4 players, each with their own cartridge in order to play Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch. Still with 4 players the experience is rather dull. A word of caution: these multiplayer sessions will hardly last for long anyways due to the awkward position of holding the DS to play the game. One hand will be holding the DS with your index finger on the shoulder button to shoot, whilst the other will be busy with the stylus.

In the end BIA:DS seems more like it was forced onto the DS because of it’s success (and the consequent cash-ins) rather than a thought out and fully worked from the ground up game for a good handheld WW II experience. If you’re a WW II fanatic and are still not satisfied with the experience on your TV and absolutely must play WW II on the go; then BIA:DS is the game for you. For others, there are better WW II experiences to be had elsewhere.