As promised in a previous post here is a review of the hot new title Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. I have also included at the bottom a video hosted on YouTube showing the game in action and some of the amBX effects.

To start with this is a game that you don’t really need to use the amBX Application Manager for although it does give you the option to choose between “Disabled” and “Enabled - Untested” after you have launched the game for the first time. You can tell straight away though that BiA is fully amBX-enabled by the lighting, rumble and fan effects generated from the initial loading / developer screens from Ubisoft and Gearbox.

Moving on from this the intro cinematic sequence (or at least one of them that plays from the main menu if you don’t do anything for a while) utilises the full Premium Kit with the explosions setting off the rumble pad and the fans turning on when there might be the suggestions of wind or air movement. This is particularly seen when you launch a new game and have the lead-in cinematic that has planes flying in the air and the fans working in sync to give the impression of speed and altitude.

Although I haven’t completed the game yet all the effects are really smooth and respond perfectly to what you are doing in the game. Sometimes the rumble and fan effects will be subtle if not that close to you, other times they may be earth shattering. Throughout the game (at least so far) the lights definitely add to the immersion with the standard shades of red when you are taking damage and changing colours as the scenery and your viewpoint changes. When you leap over fences and look at the floor (grass) they turn green, as night sets in they go a nice combination of red, purple and blue.

Comparing this to CoD4 the interactions with the kit are a lot more “in-sync” with the game and don’t feel forced or out of place. The cinematics are especially good with several minutes of footage sometimes being complimented with light changes and other effects.

Overall I am having lots and lots of fun playing BiA with my amBX kit, all I have to do now is keep playing it and complete the game!

UPDATE: There were a couple of things I forgot to mention when doing the original post and I thought it would only be fair if I included them (eventually). One of the cool things about commanding your “squads” is that you can tell them where to go and what to shoot at and the thing that helps most with this is the tactical map view. Pressing “X” allows you to bring up the battlefield map to view obstacles, the location of both your troops and the enemy ones you have spotted and then plan routes to flank them accordingly. As this is a high-level overview of the battlefield the fans turn on to simulate over-flying the scene of battle and the lights change colour to simulate looking down at the ground so if you are fighting on open fields they would turn a shade of green.

The other great thing is the slow-motion kills. Sometimes when you manage to get a rather tasty headshot on an enemy soldier the game will go into slow motion and zoom in on that enemy as you watch his head become a crushed watermelon. The fans also turn on for this to simulate the speed and flight of the bullet heading straight for him and the blood simulation is pretty cool (thus the 15 certificate).

Two nice things that have been added to increase the number of interactions the amBX kit provides and certainly adds to the overall experience.