Brothers in Arms Double Time

Brothers in Arms takes a slightly different approach to the WW2 shooter genre than Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, instead of being a one-man killing machine single-handedly fighting the Nazi hordes, you’re part of a squad and actually have to make use of tactics and teamwork to survive.

This special release for the Wii is actually two games in one, it includes both Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. One immediate problem, however, is that these two games take place in war-torn France and involve the same characters, so they’re often indistinguishable. You’re essentially playing one very long game.

Both titles were released on other formats several years ago and the Wii isn’t known for its cutting-edge visuals so it’s no surprise that the graphics are of a pretty poor quality. Oddly, though, the performance is shocking. The game shudders and halts as the poor Wii struggles to cope with these relatively basic graphics. It also doesn’t help that the cut-scenes explaining the story are made using the in-game visuals, so they’re also pretty shoddy.

The controls are a little more successful. Aiming with the Wii remote feels a little light at first, but soon becomes second nature. It has some clever use of the motion-sensing – you can call your teammates to follow by waving the Wii remote in the air like a hand signal. Grenade throwing isn’t quite as effective as waving the remote around is often disorientating, but you can use a button press instead.

There’s a lot of content in Double Time, you’ve got two games to play through and it’ll take a good many hours to complete both. That’s a big plus in its favour. But the poor graphics and weak enemy intelligence mar the experience, and it is all very samey after a while. This game would have been popular five years ago, but is now looking very old fashioned in more ways than one.

Verdict: 51%

Many hours of gaming in this good value package, but it’s blighted with technical issues and there’s very little variety in either the graphics or the gameplay.