Portable Gaming Revolution

World War II is overdone. Admit it. Where is the stopping point, when will it hit developers that we don’t want another WWII game?

Hopefully after Brothers in Arms: DS comes out.

Shooters on the DS have been VERY hit-or-miss (heavily weighted to ‘miss’) but this months release of Brothers in Arms for the Nintendo DS looks like it might shake things up a bit. Gameloft and Ubi are heading the project and it looks like their aim to please is being taken very seriously. Simplifying the controls to a mere two buttons sounds like something we can really work with. Movement of your soldier, - who is not a war-hero running some super-squad for once… he’s a grunt - consists of d-pad presses in the corresponding directions, and shooting is directed by ‘L’ button taps - there’s also an option for lefties. Cover is a huge part of the game here (Big surprise, these days) and it seems to apply really well. It only makes sense you’d hide from a behemoth tank cruising by, or cower in fear out of harms way, so positioning yourself against a stack of sandbags or a church wall is as simple as moving up to it. Leaning around corners to deal out some fire really lets those Nazi’s know you mean business… from behind a wall. Sissy. Using the touch screen you’ll be able to look around and pull off some actions, like reloading, hopping in vehicles (so you can rest those feet), and chucking grenades. Frag out. Events such as planting bombs will be associated with the touch screen as well, which isn’t very intuitive, but it just seems right. Instead of a combination of button presses, items are selected with all the ease of a single tap, and zooming in for pinpoint accuracy has an appropriate double tap. The controls really sound like a breath of fresh air, and look to be less ‘tacked on’ than most DS titles.

Aside from how the game plays, the game simply looks good. It’s not gorgeous, but with the DS’ hardware, this is exactly what you want. It passes expectations in the texture and model department which makes for some really awesome looking characters and environments. The heated action is intense, and we’re really excited to jump in to it and earn the unlockable medals (Achievements?). Multiple on-screen enemies provide some heavy fire against you and your squad, and when your commander shouts orders (Via real voice over) you’d better follow them. It seems that Brothers in Arms is a very team based game, both in the single player campaign, or in the four player multiplayer. 2v2 Deathmatch, or a straight up free-for-all are the only options thus far for the multiplayer portion of the game, and here’s hoping it supports single cart download play. It’s a shame there’s no Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, since it’d really be awesome to set up some bmashers tournaments when this incredibly solid looking objective based World War II shooter comes out later this year.