Brothers in Arms D-Day Hands-On

These days, it seems like all the big World War II franchises are coming to the PSP. EA recently released a new Medal of Honor for Sony's handheld, and Activision is prepping a portable Call of Duty for a 2007 release. And just this week, Ubisoft will deliver Brothers in Arms D-Day, a PSP-exclusive version of Gearbox's acclaimed WWII action game that employs a deeper level of strategy than the other guys. We had the opportunity to check out a more-or-less final version of D-Day to see how it has shaped up.

D-Day may be exclusive to the PSP, but not all of its content is exclusive. The game's developer, Ubisoft Shanghai, has gone back to the first two Brothers in Arms games--Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood--and cherry-picked the best 14 maps from both of those games to make up one single-player campaign for the PSP version. The two games featured different main characters--Baker from the first and Hartsock from the second. So in D-Day, you will naturally play as both of them throughout the course of the game.

We got to try out the game's first mission, which doesn't dish out an enormous challenge in the interest of adapting you to the game's redesigned control scheme. Then, we tried a mission from later in the game titled "The Crack of Dawn," which did give us a run for our money. The basic Brothers in Arms gameplay certainly seems to be in place here because the designers didn't want to remove any of the tactical depth seen in the console games. This means that in addition to the running and gunning, which is similar to other games in the genre, you'll be able to jump to a tactical overhead view to see the important elements on the battlefield. Once you're back to ground level, you can direct your troops' actions to most efficiently attack the enemy.

The first-person action controls seem to have mapped reasonably well to the PSP, and the game's loose lock-on system makes looking up and down less of a priority. You've still got the onscreen visual cues that Brothers in Arms fans should be used to, so you'll know by the hovering icons over enemies' heads whether they're in an aggressive attack stance or being properly suppressed by you and your allies. The team has made one minor addition to the gameplay based on player feedback: destructible cover. You'll now have to be careful of what you're hiding behind and make sure it's not made of a breakable material, such as wood, that your enemies will be able to shoot right through to get to you.

Ubisoft Shanghai has also retooled the checkpoints in the levels, given that this is a portable game. You'll hit checkpoints every few minutes now, so you'll be able to save your progress and power off your PSP on reasonably short notice if necessary. In addition to the single-player campaign, you'll be able to play the game cooperatively with a second player. A four-player skirmish mode with six maps will also be available on the multiplayer side. However, we had only one copy of the game, so we'll just have to trust Ubisoft on those features for now.

Look for a full review of Brothers in Arms D-Day soon and check out some new gameplay movies on the game's media page in the meantime.