shift from first- to third-person perspective when you take cover. This not only keeps you safe, but it also gives you a better camera with which to issue subsequent commands . One with missing though is the ability to command troops via a overhead map, a feature the first Brothers in arms had. The games strength in it’s combat and the way you handle your squad really is exceptional and by far overshadows the gripes I may have with the game. You will see framerate drops, tons of texture pop-in and some just plain ugly scenery. Hell’s Highway’s is totally inconsistent in graphical quality. One minute you are walking though a beautifully rendered environment “wowing”: at every turn at just how nice everything looks, enjoying subtle details such as bullets that smoke and shell casings trail through the air the subtle movement and swaying of the grass in the wind, then suddenly you’ll find yourself shocked by some horrid looking building or character, wondering how it ever made the final cut. It’s sad really because maybe one or two more graphics passes could have picked up these little “annoyances” and made the experience on a whole more solid. As for the multi player, well there’s not really much to tell, Brothers in arms is a story driven franchise like half life for instance but not on the same level. Story driven first person shooters gen-
014
Console October Beta Issue
erally don’t have huge multi player experiences (Call of duty excluded) such as the likes of Bioshock or the darkness. So its no surprise all we find in the multi player menu is a single mode. The eternally boring capture-the-flagesque mode, and it’s totally forgettable. It’s also in my opinion unforgivable as it removes the player’s ability to command A.I. Squads, the very crux of the Brothers in Arms experience. Had this been included they could have made a very average multi player match into something a lot more interesting, with seperate squads forming alliances and such. Sure, a squad commander can issue orders to other players, but who the hell’s going to follow some random player’s orders? All in all Hell’s Highway’s single-player battles are great, they are addictive and gave me a great sense of accomplishment upon completion. I will be playing through them again, trying different tactics and routes. The ending does hint at a sequel I just hope they put some care into the player caring. Meanwhile you couldn’t do yourself any harm by buying this game especially if you are into squad based shooters as Brothers in arms: Hell’s highway is the best I’ve played this year.
WIN Answer this simple question and you could stand a chance to win a copy of Brothers in Arms - Hell’s Highway on Xbox 360 and an awesome faceplate for your console Q: What did the army call Hell’s Highway? E-mail your answer to Consolemag@gmail.com with the subject “brothers” before the end of October 2008
Review
Fracture
The ED is tough with his reviews but he does have a soft spot for games that really do try. In this day and age it’s becoming really hard to find any game that doesn’t borrow something from another game. It’s not that’s there’s no originality out there, I believe it’s more a case of developers giving players more of what they liked or what they thought they liked. So I guess I can’t blame Fracture for looking like every other space shooter, but at the same time it really doesn’t try to hide it either. What fracture does have is a gimmick, a gimmick that is also not really it’s own, but it has put a new twist on it. For those of you who may have let this game slip by and don’t know much about it, is all about deforming and re-forming the terrain using weapons and grenades. While that gimmick works well, and does serve well as a initial hook, Fracture never does enough to make you want to continue. It never says, don’t put that control018
Console October Beta Issue
Brody was unmoved by the fireworks display. ler down, there are never those moments when you think to yourself, “OK one more level then I’m done” or “I’ll just get to the next boss”. Why is this? Firstly 3rd person adventure games and shooters really need a strong central character for the
player to control, one that the player can identify with in some way, if that character is a bald space marines you’ve already got a problem, as I said this game is derivative but lately there are more bald space marines than there are cutesy platform
Hitting enemies far away from you can be difficult.
Review characters. These days we are tripping over space shooters that have this stereo type as its center piece. And fracture offers nothing to differentiate Jet Brody, fractures lead protagonist, from any other generic bald man out to save the planet. Jet is completely devoid of personality and appeal and is perhaps the single most derivative character in the modern age of gaming. Maybe its not fault but I’m sure, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that all space shooters have the same lead character artist and he only has one sketch he just keeps passing around. If the story didn’t take itself so seriously , Brody could have been the best parody of a space shooter lead character we’ve seen this year. Not that it’s a game breaker by any means, Gears of War's Marcus Fenix, Mass Effect's Sheppard, or Too Human's Baldur all suffered from the same lack of inspiration in fact I’m pretty
sure they are all related. The voice overs unfortunately don’t do anything to make brody even slightly more believable or endearing to the player. You need to understand how truly, shamefully, unapologetically derived Fracture's entire aesthetic is. And that honestly you will only find it fresh if you’ve missed every space shooter for the last 5 years. But it’s not all doom and gloom I actually did have fun with the game. The weapons in fracture are the real stars, so let’s look at it as if brody is just there so something can pull the trigger. The Entrencher gun is by far my favorite, allowing you to raise and lower the rocky terrain that carpets most levels, providing a mechanic that's both unique and useful for level design. The limits placed on the deformation rarely feel artificial
or restrictive. You can't build a to scale replica of Mount Everest or create a tube way to china but in terms of the gameplay it never feels like the game has restricted you from doing what you want too. However the game never really pushes you to do anything amazing, It's a neat trick the first time you lower the ground to clear a doorway or raise a mound of dirt to easily climb to the second floor of a building... but once you realize that all you’ve done for the last 3 hours is exactly what the game has pretty much told you to do, it loses its appeal. This game is very dependant on how creative you as the player are going to be and because the game seems to believe you are an idiot and never really stops hinting and nudging you along the way, You could very easily slip into monotony. And in turn find the puzzles rather boring. As for the combat well I’d like to say
Reviewed On PS3
The spike grenade is very useful in combat. Console October Beta Issue
019
\Backslash
F
Illustrator: Craig Martin
Check us out online @ www.consolemag.wordpress.com or mail us @ consolemag@gmail.com For weekly updates of upcoming Magazine content, give us your opinions and views on our mag. We’ll see you in the next issue thanks for reading!