GameSpot editors' review
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Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 12/20/2006
- Released on: 12/05/2006
- Originally published on GameSpot: Brothers in Arms: D-Day (PSP) Review
Remember that time last March when you and your squad fought the Nazis in France in Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30? How about seven months later, when you pretty much did the same thing in Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood? Do you want to do it over again, but this time with controls ill-suited for the task? If you answered "yes" to these questions, then Brothers in Arms D-Day for the PlayStation Portable is for you. Everyone else will want to avoid D-Day because of its rehashed gameplay and poor controls, which make the game feel like just another console-to-PSP hack job where the makers of the game were just trying to make a quick buck.
If you've played the Brothers in Arms games before, D-Day will feel very familiar because it's essentially content from previous games remixed into a "new" game. You control Matt Baker and Joe Hartsock as they lead their squad, your "brothers in arms," through the French countryside. What was once an interesting and sometimes touching story on consoles is a mess here. If you've never played any of the other games before you're not likely to care about any of your squadmates, and it's hard to figure out just who is who.
D-Day's missions are culled from the previous two Brothers in Arms games, and while there are some changes here and there, anyone who has played the games before will have little trouble getting through them. Like in Call of Duty, you don't have a health bar, but you can die if you don't seek shelter to recover after getting shot. The levels aren't particularly long, and the game uses a checkpoint system, so you don't have to play an entire level over if you die...unless you turn the system off, and then you're forced to start from the beginning of the chapter. A skirmish mode is available for both single and co-op play (ad hoc only). There's really not much to it--you kill as many guys as you can, or try to survive as long as possible. If you're really looking for a challenge you can try to complete all 12 of the skirmish missions with just one life.
It's tough enough to get a first-person shooter to control reasonably well on the PSP, but Brothers in Arms has the additional challenge of being a squad-based first-person shooter, so in addition to controlling your soldier, you've got other people to lead. There are two control schemes available, but neither one is ideal. Since the face buttons are used in the default scheme to give orders, raise your weapon, and toss grenades (which are completely worthless), there's no easy way to look around. The advanced controls allow you to easily look left and right by pressing the square and circle buttons, which is nice but creates other button-mapping problems. The controls really get convoluted when you start ordering other soldiers to take a position or give cover fire. You'll need to hold a button down, move the target, and then release the button to issue the order. Canceling said order involves yet another button press. This may seem manageable, and it is when you're not getting shot at, but when you're under fire, it's tough to issue orders.
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