#296: Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
More Brothers, more Arms
This review was originally posted to Twitter on July 17, 2020.
Initial release: October 6, 2005
Platform: PC, XBox, PlayStation 2
Developer: Gearbox Software
Did you like Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30? Did you think it could stand to be harder? Did you really like the character of Joe “Red” Hartsock? Did you wanna play as him? Well, have I got the game for you, and it’s called Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood.
The term “mission pack sequel” has never been more apt than with this game. Released six months after the original, Earned in Blood offers extremely little new material. The graphics haven’t been tightened up much. The gameplay is nearly identical. Only the story is new, right away striking a somewhat different tone from the original. While it’s still the emotional knife in the heart as the original game, Red has his shit together better than Baker, and in fact seems to put himself somewhat in opposition to Baker in terms of leadership. The game begins with the framing device of Red talking to Colonel S. L. A. Marshall (a real-life Allied commander who served as an official combat historian interviewing front-line soldiers shortly after their combat experiences.) The early part of the game is a loose retelling of the original game’s plot from Red’s perspective, culminating in his participation in the battle on Hill 30; what’s interesting here is how he argues that Baker isn’t the real hero of that battle, but Leggett, the radioman. The story weaves together his friendship with a soldier from the 82nd who rescued him from a German the night of the invasion, and his desire to be a better leader than Baker. It’s less gutwrenching, more detached than the first game, but it’s still a good companion story.
Other than that, the game is almost identical to the first game in terms of gameplay. The squad tactics are returned, the situational awareness screen is back. The difficulty has been cranked up a notch (or several, depending on the game difficulty you’re playing at.) One unpleasant change is the squad AI, which is rather worse than in the first game, your buddies often doing nonsensical things like taking cover on the wrong side of the wall. Combine this with a more unforgiving enemy AI and it’s a recipe for frustration. The level design sometimes isn’t really all that, either. If you thought “Push into Carentan” was a nightmare, wait until you play “The All-Americans, Part 1” — I’m not ashamed to admit that I ragequit on this chapter and watched it and the final level on Youtube. The first half of “The All-Americans, Part 1” isn’t too bad, but the 2nd half is just ludicrous, with a brutally unfair situation where the panzerfausts you need to destroy a tank with are guarded by said tank which refuses to be lured away. The lack of checkpointing really makes itself felt here as well.
That being said, there’s a lot of little details to this game that mostly make up for it. Your buddies are even more lifelike than they were before; aside from being able to requisition ammo from them (finally!) you can also talk to them, revealing more of their personalities. There’s a scene late in the game where Red is injured, losing part of his finger from a stray bullet. In the next mission, if you talk to your buddies, they’ll all express concern — “are you sure you’re okay to fight, Red?” It’s a small detail, but it warms my heart.
Allen and Garnett, the best characters from the first game, return for the bits of the story that overlaps with Baker’s, and it’s bittersweet as they’re just as funny and likeable in this game as they are in that. We’re thankfully spared witnessing their deaths again, too.
Brothers in Arms as a franchise is perhaps the most human of the World War II FPS genre, on top of generally being an interesting twist on the standard gameplay; while Earned in Blood isn’t a revelation for the series, it’s still a solid title that offers more of what made the original game so special, all else aside.
