Slashdot Mirror
Gearbox, UbiSoft Confirms Brothers In Arms
An anonymous reader writers: "On Blue's News, there's the official announcement of Gearbox's Brothers in Arms, a tactical WWII shooter with first-person action but the ability to 'command elements, which are your fellow squad members', to be published by UbiSoft, initially for Xbox and PC later this year (though 'PS2 and Gamecube [versions] will follow in 2005'). This was the Gearbox title rumored under a different name earlier this week. But better yet, UGO has the first in-depth preview with screenshots of the game. Looks sharp, sounds like it plays sharp, but we'll see - WWII games are a dime a dozen, but they seem to be getting better in quality recently."
But Im afraid Ill onyl subscribe to *another* of their games after Halo gets patched *properly*. ATM they dont have a good track record at all. Sorry GBX for the negative view (as I know you blame M$ and Bunge for the lack of patches), but you know that actions speak louder than words.
At first I thought the title said "Brotherhood of Arms". I was like "NO WAY! TEAM FORTRESS 2?!?"
...then my supermodel wife asked me if I was going to pick up my Ferarri today so we could take it to the UN summit where I was to be honoured for ending world famine and finding a cure for cancer. And I realized what an idiot I was because in my fantasy world, TF2 came out 6 years ago! DUH!
(Sorry. I haven't taken my medication today.)
"the ability to 'command elements, which are your fellow squad members'"
is one of the clunkiest things I've ever read. I expect in the original context, the game was described as a shooter with command elements.
I have been soured on Ubisoft games, and the company's name has come to be synonymous with frustration, for me. The checkpoint-style saving makes even the funnest games frustrating, and replay value drops to zero for me. This game look beautiful, but I'll wait and see whether I want anything to do with it, when the saving/loading scheme is unveiled.
I think it's a scummy marketing trick to try and manipulate heartstrings in the title of a war game. Making games about real wars is borderline tasteless to begin with... provoking people to buy it by using an emotionalist title just comes off as slimy to me. They might as well have named it "When My Buddies Died" or "Sonless Mothers".
I guess they wanted their game to stand out from the other dozens of war games, to draw attention to it. Maybe next time Gearbox could do this by creating a game that's so impressive it draws attention to itself despite the tired subject matter.
The game is also developed for the X-box wich because of its HD shouldn't have a technical reason for not being able to save anywhere. Gearbox is also an experienced PC developer and at least the games I played of them had a proper save system.
So I am hopefull. The graphics look absolutly wonderfull. If this can be had on relativly up-to-date hardware then it may be one of the best looking FPS ever.
Talking about FPS, what happend to Half-Life 2? Still down with the Duke Nukem fever?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Didn't they do the Halo port?
Now Infiniti Ward, that's a developer you want to hear is working with UbiSoft.
-- taking over the world, we are.
This is nearing silly. If the gaming industry hasn't created the perfect WWII game by now, I'm not sure they ever will. Maybe they're aiming for quantity: you make 12 WWII games and one of them has to be the perfect WWII experience.
I think it's obvious that Band of Brothers (the HBO miniseries based on Ambrose's book) served as inspiration for Call to Duty and perhaps also for this title. There's a scene, about midway through the series, in which Captain Winters runs over a hill and is confronted by a young German solider, barely old enough to fill the uniform. Winters shoots, the shot echoes, and the young man collapses in the field. The scene haunts Winters throughout the entirity of the series, and he sees that soldier's face everywhere.
In these games, you see the soldier's face everywhere but that's only because it's a generic skin, not because of any emotional attachment created by the game. So what is the gaming equivalent of that? Would it be feasible for the player to be in a "slow moment" in the game, say transversing between two friendly checkpoints, and for a similar scene to be flashed back or replayed? I think games like Call to Duty demonstrate that developers obviously have the technicalities of a modern war game, so why aren't we seeing these games breach emotionally and attempt to connect to the player that way instead of merely logistically?
Doesn't it allow to save anywhere on the pc? As said never played it. Sorry but from the reviews (player reviews not paid for official reviews) I decided that it was not my kind of game.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
BUT WAIT A MINUTE!
This is different because it has what EVERY OTHER WW2 GAME HAS!
Wind up the hype machine, time to portray this turkey as something new!
Fingers crossed!