Director François Truffaut once remarked that it's impossible to make an anti-war movie, because movies make war look exciting. Truffaut might have changed his tune had he lived to see the ultra-realistic D-Day invasion in Saving Private Ryan, but Private Ryan-inspired World War II games like the Medal Of Honor series or the immersive new Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 wholly vindicate his original opinion. Though controller technology hasn't quite advanced to the point where you can feel hot metal entering your chest—instead, there's a creepy low-level vibration, like a pager short on battery power—the experiences of the average God-fearing grunt have been recreated in scrupulous geographical and historical detail. With its steady, intuitive controls and a camera under the helmet, Brothers In Arms combines the action of a first-person shooter with the verisimilitude of a flight simulator, yet the you-are-there effect never feels queasy or exploitative. Inspired by the exploits of the famed 101st Airborne Division, the game feels like the real thing—or at least the real thing as filtered through Halo and a bunch of stock WWII dramas.
You play Sgt. Matt Baker, the soft-spoken squad leader of a paratrooper unit dropped into Normandy on the eve of the D-Day invasion. After a botched drop leaves you and your men deep behind enemy lines, you fight your way back through the beautiful French countryside, picking off an intensifying range of enemy encampments along the way. But you're not just looking out for Number One: You're also responsible for the eight devoted American stereotypes who barely know to inhale and exhale without orders from you. As the game progresses, you have to be skilled in directing them to the right positions, so they can help suppress German fire during an assault maneuver, or sneak up on the flanks for a better shot. Even with their help, it seems like you're taking out more than your fair share of Panzergrenadiers and Fallschirmjäger, but the babysitting ends once the missions become more tactically challenging. One of the great features of Brothers In Arms is that the learning curve on leadership slopes gradually; immersion ensures that even pacifists will get to know their old-school military strategy.
Beyond the gameplay: If war doesn't make animals out of men, it certainly makes a few poets. The cut-scenes are long on Baker's philosophical musings about dancing on death's door, but it's surprising how much the bond between you and your men grows over the long haul. Early in the game, you wouldn't think twice about sending three soldiers sprinting toward an MG-42 machine-gun nest, but once they're dropped by a hail of gunfire, you're seized by an overwhelming sense of loneliness and guilt.
Worth playing for: God, country, the pregnant wife back home.
Frustration sets in when: Apart from Baker, who's as much a sharpshooter as you can make him, the other squad members are only useful in broad tactical maneuvers. When it comes to the more delicate work of pegging an enemy conscript from 100 yards, they couldn't hit the broad side of a grange. (That's French for "barn.")
Final judgment: As the Weather Underground slogan goes, "Bring the war home." (Admittedly, Brothers In Arms is probably not what the Weathermen had in mind.)