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"More of the same Brothers in Arms, for better or worse."

Everyone in the videogame industry knows just how commonplace World War II shooters have become. With a constant flow of increasingly mediocre new titles inundating store shelves, a backlash against this veritable cottage industry was perhaps a forgone conclusion. It was into this atmosphere that Gearbox's Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was released in early 2005. Road to Hill 30 put itself on the map by radically altering the gameplay style of what had been the typical WWII shooter: where most games set during the second Great War were derivative, straightforward games, Brothers in Arms instead forced players to command a squad or squads of soldiers to tactically battle against Axis forces. This new mix won raves from all corners, as Gearbox managed to deliver an intuitive and fun system for handling the game's innovative features,

Not content to rest on their laurels after launching a lucrative new franchise, game developer Gearbox rapidly busied themselves with production on a sequel. Released only seven months after its predecessor's debut, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood portrays a second chapter in the story of the paratroop unit first brought to life in Road to Hill 30. Likely due to the extremely quick turnaround time, Earned in Blood doesn't manage to add much to the original title's formula; it does, however, still capture the essence of what made that first game so much fun.

Visuals:

Road to Hill 30 was one of the best-looking games on the XBox when it was released, thanks to an impressive focus on painting the details of the visual experience accurately. Earned in Blood re-uses most of those first-rate graphical assets extensively, which unfortunately will give returning fans the sensation of ‘been there, done that.'

It's not that the game doesn't look superb. All of the environments look appropriately gritty and war-torn, and they react very well to combat activity, thanks to excellent particle effects and animation. Characters models look similarly spectacular, displaying a subtle level of graphical detail while simultaneously managing to depict the heft and force with which all of the soldiers carry themselves in their animations. The few complaints from the previous game – glassy looks in the eyes of the characters, slight stutters in the frame rate when new enemies are spawned into a level – are still present, but they were minor problems in the first place.

The only major problem with Earned in Blood's visuals is the fact that they look almost exactly the same as those of its predecessor. There's little, if any, difference between the two games, aside from the level layouts – even the game's menus look exactly the same. It's nothing that will detract from your experience with the game, but it will leave fans of the previous title with a distinct feeling of deja vu.

Earned in Blood is a great-looking game, largely due to its tremendous aesthetic similarity to Road to Hill 30.

Score: 8/10

Sound:

As was the case with the visuals, the majority of Earned in Blood's sound production is recycled from Road to Hill 30; luckily, though, war pretty much always sounds the same, and so the audio is just as compelling here as it was before.

The most remarkable aspect of the audio remains just how chaotic firefights come across as. You'll hear bullets whizzing around and hitting environmental objects, both sides screaming between themselves and at each other, and all manner of other noises, all rendered wonderfully in Dolby Digital surround sound. Your teammates have a tendency to repeat themselves a bit too often during combat (even more so than in the previous title, even), but that's a minor complaint in the face of an overall solid effort.

Earned in Blood's presentation aims to echo that of classic war-movie, and it manages to perfectly capture that feel, thanks to excellent voiceover performances along the way. Your squad, and in particular the soldier you control, Red Hartsock, all sound perfectly genuine in their line readings, and the banter that plays out amongst them during and between missions sounds entirely organic. Voiceovers for your German counterparts are all done in their native language, and they all seem as well-emoted as your teammates' lines. Wrapping up the package is a subtly fitting musical score that kicks in only during loading and at the menus.

Each and every facet of the acoustic presentation in Earned in Blood lives up to the standard set in Road to Hill 30, and it all does a wonderful job of augmenting the other areas of the game's design.

Score: 9/10

Gameplay:

As with Road to Hill 30, Earned in Blood puts a greater emphasis on tactical maneuvering and decision-making than on classic shooter-style running and gunning. Every component of the gameplay from the first game is completely in tact for this sequel, and the mix again comes together slickly to create an enjoyable experience.

Thankfully, the game's interface hasn't changed one bit, and it remains as intuitive as it was the first time around. The left trigger still serves as your context-sensitive method of issuing orders on the fly, and it's as effortless to use here as it was before. Of course, you're still able to raise your own rifle to try to pick off some Nazis yourself, but the game's design does a nice job of discouraging would-be commandos, thanks to its more realistic take on your character's abilities.

The majority of combat takes place hedgerow-to-hedgerow or street-to-street, as you battle through a handful of different locations in France. Most of the time you'll be charged with simply clearing out enemy resistance, which you'll accomplish through the use of basic fix-and-flank tactics on foot. There are also intermittent sequences that have you either guiding a friendly tank or combating an opposing one, which can be both thrilling and frustrating to encounter. There's little variation in the game's objectives, but that's not so much a design flaw as it is a reflection on the reality of post-D-Day combat in WWII.

The only really noticeable change between the two games is in just how well your opponents handle your squad's efforts. The Germans in Road to Hill 30 weren't terribly good at putting up a defense, usually eschewing any form of tactics in favor of staying put and taking potshots at your squad. This time around, however, you'll notice quite a bit more movement out of their side, from more intelligent retreats to a few flanking maneuvers against your squad. You'll still spot an occasional dumb move on their part, but on the whole their A.I. seems to have been tightened up very well.

That smarter Nazi A.I. serves to shine a brighter light on the brains behind your own teammates – and that glare is not always positive. Contrary to the progress your adversaries have made, friendly A.I. seems to have regressed just a bit. Now, the boost to your foes' smarts has clearly made them better able to kill off your team – but only because your team often makes foolish mistakes to expose themselves to rapid death. For every time one of your ‘brothers-in-arms' die as a result of a bad order you gave, three of these numbskulls will get themselves perished because they decided to run directly into enemy fire when you directed them to cover. Their suicidally moronic behavior doesn't occur so often as to ruin the game, but in any situation like this you're more likely to remember the few negative experiences much more vividly than the majority of positive ones.

Losing your buddies will make completing the majority of the missions nearly impossible. In fact, Earned in Blood is a more challenging game than its ancestor to begin with, so you're more than likely to spend extra time in each level covering the same ground more than once to get it right. Fortunately, enemy encounters play out fairly dynamically, and there's always enough variety in the terrain around you as you progress to keep things fresh. It's worth noting, though, that every once in a while you'll meet some sort of obstruction that forces you into a set action, such as an enemy impervious to all attacks until you've approached them closely enough; these encounters are obviously a bit contrived, but they happen very infrequently – almost as though the developers just wanted to pad the game's length by just a bit. The game isn't very long anyway, and it actually feels shorter than Road to Hill 30, clocking in around seven to nine hours total, including restarts.

Earned in Blood serves as an excellent redux of the gameplay experience that made Road to Hill 30 so good – but it does almost nothing new to differentiate itself.

Score: 7/10

Features/Modes:

As was the case with Road to Hill 30, Earned in Blood features a full-fledged multiplayer mode, for play via split-screen or system link offline, or online over XBox Live. It's also Live Aware, giving you access to your friends list as you're playing the offline content.

In perhaps the greatest addition to the Brothers in Arms formula, the storyline campaign is now playable cooperatively, via a brand-new Skirmish mode. Skirmish features three other cooperative multiplayer options as well: timed assault (wipe out all opposition on the map in a set period of time), defense (fight off waves of enemies), and tour of duty (complete five consecutive storyline-esque missions with only three squad mates and no saves). All four of these choices are playable both offline and online, and though none of them can be called revolutionary, they do give gamers who enjoy the BIA formula more opportunity to play around with it.

As far as the campaign goes, the game returns four difficulty settings, from easy to authentic. Once again you're able to unlock some behind-the-scenes goodies and historical information by completing the game on each setting, but none of this stuff is very compelling.

The addition of a very nicely fleshed-out cooperative suite of gameplay modes compliments the already-proven values of the single-player and multiplayer games, making Earned in Blood a title that can easily swallow quite a bit of your free time.

Score: 10/10

Online Play:

Earned in Blood features the return of the strong competitive multiplayer experience from Road to Hill 30. For those who have never played the game competitively, it works similarly to the campaign, tasking you with achieving some objective (typically demolition of a set target) while encountering resistance from human, rather than CPU-controlled, foes.

The game now presents a stable of twenty maps, all of which are well-designed. The real fun in this game mode is stalking around, trying to get the drop on the other team by getting around to their flanks. If you can find a good partner to work with (and there is a fairly sizeable community built around the game), you can really have a blast here, as there's not much else on the market that proffers this type of gameplay experience.

Skirmish mode is also playable online, and it too can be enjoyable, provided you can get someone responsible on the opposite end. These game types seem to be targeted towards players who are looking for a challenge similar to the single-player game, though, so they're not for everyone.

Online play in Earned in Blood provides a very distinct and sturdily-created platform for putting the gameplay tenets of the single-player experience to use either competitively or cooperatively.

Score: 9/10

Total Score:

When Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was released, it garnered widespread respect for its originality in the face of such a played-out setting. Contrary to the pioneering spirit of its forerunner, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood does little more than clone everything enjoyable about its precursor; in fact, so little has changed between the two titles that the two can seem practically indistinguishable at times. With lesser games, such a design philosophy would be a clear death sentence. Luckily, that original concept behind the Brothers in Arms series still has a lot of tread left on the tires, and so Earned in Blood – while certainly not scoring any points for creativity – is a game that still manages to be genuinely fun.

Any gamer who played and enjoyed Road to Hill 30 should absolutely go out and find a copy of Earned in Blood to play. Anyone who hasn't played that first game, though, should give it a try before diving into this release – and anyone who didn't like Road to Hill 30 won't find anything to pacify themselves here, either.

Score: 7/10 (not an average)

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Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/07