Dust off your medals of honor, duty is calling you to take up arms with your brothers once more. Despite the fact that most shooter fans have singlehandedly killed more Nazis in their gaming careers than were actually killed in all of World War II, the genre continues to go on strong. Typically, the Brothers in Arms games have been a hallmark of gritty WWII realism, and this instalment does nothing to tarnish that legacy. In fact, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is arguably the finest title in the franchise to date, despite a few missteps that stop the game from being the definitive WWII shooter.

While most WWII shooters have you running around shooting Nazis like you would pop-up targets, the BiA games have always focused more on actual squad tactics and a sense of realism. HH requires the player to methodically plan each step and firefight. When encountering an enemy, it is necessary to fix them in place with suppressing fire, and then flanking them from their exposed side for the easy kill. The game calls this approach the four F's which stands for fire, fix, flank, and finish. Even after three games, this approach to warfare has remained exhilarating, and HH will certainly test your four F's ability with a wide assortment of different urban and countryside scenarios. Knowing when an enemy team is suppressed is easy thanks to the suppressions meters above their heads. Red means they're not suppressed and grey means they are. This instalment is no different, even thought it takes a slightly different approach than its predecessors did.

In the last two games, you saw all the action entirely through the eyes of Sergeants Matt Baker or Joe "Red" Hartsock. While the game still follows their exploits, there is a much greater third person slant to the gameplay. In this regard, HH has taken a few cues from Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Vegas series. Gameplay now seamlessly shifts from first person when walking about and aiming to a third person viewpoint when dug in behind cover. This change has both benefits and downfalls. When dug in behind cover, this view makes it easier to see your surroundings, and even zooms out further when issuing commands to your squad. While it makes the game a little more user friendly, this system also weakens the claustrophobic tension and intense realism that the strict first person viewpoint offered in the past titles. Also, when dug in behind cover you no longer look down your iron sights to aim. Rather, you simply zoom in with a set of cross hairs while maintaining the third person perspective. This is all well and good, except on the authentic difficulty, which does away with the crosshairs and suppression meters. Only being able to look down the iron sights of your rifle when not behind cover makes you an easy target for the Germans, and renders the authentic difficulty nearly impossible.

Also, the game has gone from a damage-based health system to a regenerating one. Some may like the change, some may not, but one thing's for sure, it makes the game a whole lot easier than it used to be. I personally wished that they kept the health system the way it was before, but your opinion may vary.

Thanks to some vicious enemy AI, the game will prove to be a challenge even on the medium difficulty. Your enemies will be using the same tactics as you such as trying to suppress your squad and flanking you. It also helps that they are all crack shots and even a few seconds out in the open means certain death for you.

Your squad is also quite able, but their AI is not quite as consistent as that of the Germans. They'll usually follow your instructions to the letter, but other times they'll run right into the line of fire instead of taking a safer route, or take cover on the wrong side of it. The biggest annoyance is when you have your squad following you after laying a satchel charge. If you have instructed your squad to stay on you, one or two will inevitably get blown up when the charge goes off, because they're too dumb to realise that standing near an explosive won't result in instant death. Whenever you're laying charges, make sure you've instructed your squad to hold a position a good distance away.