Brothers in Arms.

Last night I finished Brothers In Arms: Hell Highway. As well as teaching me about how Germany managed to halt the Allied advance for so long (they put thin pieces of tin over staircases and glued doors so they couldn’t be opened. Genius) and containing a level that lived up to the games name (holy shit did that have some atmosphere) it taught me something about myself.



See, 90% of Brothers in Arms was squad combat. More than that, it was squad combat done really damn good. The way the camera zoomed out was very Full Spectrum Warrior, and it wandered that line between shooter and command-based game like its stablemates couldn’t do (seriously, Ubisoft must have a trademark on that genre or something). The tactics the game tries to teach you work, and they make it fun to yell "Krauts in the open! Fire for effect!" like you're actually in WWII, and not some loser yelling at TV at 2.AM

Sure, the story made no fucking sense, but that was because I didn’t feel like going back to play games that were four years old. Instead I just substituted the characters for their Band of Brothers counterparts. The main dude became Winters, the redheaded dude was Nixon (although he got shot!) and the world was happy. They were a part of the greatest generation. The Germans were dead. I had the Band of Brothers game I always wanted.

Things were okay. Right? Right?

No, because videogames –unlike ever other genre of entertainment- force you to consume something that you didn’t pay for.
What am I referring to? The tank missions. The tank missions featuring that stupid Brit.
Okay, so in truth they weren’t that bad. On their own they’d probably be kind of enjoyable. But they weren’t something that I paid $80 dollars for. They were exactly what they were meant to be- enjoyable diversions (and that's my problem).


Yeah, you can say it’s to give me a break from the monotony, but you know what? The game shouldn’t need to be monotonous, and if I feel like I need a break I know where the fucking off switch off.
See developer, you’re not only shortchanging me, but you’re compromising your artistic vision.
Darkness on the Edge of Town doesn’t feature a disco song to break up Springsteen’s take on life for youth in the city. There Will be Blood doesn’t contain a monologue about how zany the oil industry is, because that would be stupid (and totally contrary to what it was trying to accomplish).


So, I guess my question is, why do videogames feel the need to give us things that we didn’t pay for?

I mean, it's obvious that Brothers in Arms is trying to be a gritty look at comradeship and the effects war has on people, so why aren't they communicating that through every aspect of their game?

I don’t mean to be too critical of Gearbox software, mainly because it’s not really its fault. It did most things right, had some great levels, some interesting gimmicks (although I kind of expected the dead kid to flash up on the screen, it was still cool when they actually did it) and gameplay that knocks anything else in the genre out of the park.
It anything, it’s problem endemic in videogames. It reeks of an industry that’s too scared keep a vision cohesive.