INTRO:
It is rare that first-person shooters ever give much attention to the events of World War 2 (WWII) beyond the carnage that has been wrought during this era. The Brother in Arms franchise does not shy away from doing yet the same, but it also presents the very human side of the soldiers that fought on the side of the Allies and made very significant use of cover; more importantly, these soldiers are representations of very real veterans (though most are now deceased), and they were not made out to be gung-ho heroes.
These were some of the differences that made Road to Hill 30 so refreshingly different from other WWII shooters during its time.
Yet, Earned in Blood appears to do the same things all over again, albeit from the perspective of a character other than Matthew Baker. It does not appear to offer anything refreshingly new over its predecessor, making it appear more as an additional homage to the real-world veterans than a convincingly improved sequel.
PREMISE:
In the previous game, Joe "Red" Hartsock was subordinate to Sergeant Matthew Baker, until he was promoted to Staff Sergeant of 2nd Squad. This game would be about his exploits as the leader of his own team, as well as reflections on how far he had come from his days as a rebellious youth. Also, interestingly, it gives a different perspective on Matthew Baker, specifically a somewhat unflattering one.
GAMEPLAY – HEALTH:
Like many other WWII shooters at the time, the player has a health counter that depletes as he takes damage. There is no discernible debilitation of the player character as he happens to take damage progressively, but of course he dies when his health depletes, which is then followed by a reload to the latest checkpoint that the player has reached.
The same health system is applied to A.I.-controlled (or human-controlled, in the case of multiplayer) team-mates that accompany the player character.
This is hardly a believable presentation of the very mortal soldiers of World of War II. However, to somewhat ratchet up the challenge artificially, the game designers have decided that there is no way to replenish the health of any character until they reach the next checkpoint, upon which incapacitated soldiers come back to life, unless they have been preordained to perhish.
Every character in the player's team has a health counter represented as a percentage. Their portraits also act as visual indicators: as they take damage, their portraits look more and more bloodied, though this change is not represented on their actual in-game models.
AMMUNITION:
Like the previous game, the player character is still the only one who with limited ammunition for his guns. A.I.-controlled characters have unlimited ammunition, which apparently is intended to make up for their general lack of initiative on taking the offensive.
The player can help himself/herself to their unlimited ammunition by having the player character move up to an A.I.-controlled team-mate and asking for ammunition. This is not instantaneous, as the team-mate would search around for a pocket with a magazine and hand it over to the player character. This would seem to be a nice visual touch to players who appreciate more believable game mechanisms, though perhaps the wait can be frustrating if the player is the sort that wants to return to shooting as soon as possible.
However, understandably enough, A.I.-controlled team-mates only appear to be able to provide ammunition for guns that are associated with the nation that they originated from. As further explanation, if they are using USA-made guns, they can only provide ammunition for USA-made guns.
There is the convenience of their providing ammunition for guns other than the one that they are specifically using. For example, a team-mate that is using the Grease Gun can provide magazines for the BAR.
These are hardly believable game designs, but they are certainly convenient enough to support the rest of the gameplay, which is where the Brothers in Arms franchise differ from so many other WWII shooters.
GAMEPLAY – TEAMS & COVER:
In the single-player mode, every character other than the player character belongs to teams, which are sub-units within the squad. They attempt to move in unison, and for the most part, their A.I. is effective at pathfinding and team cohesion. Incidentally, most of the environments in the game's levels are designed to accommodate teams of soldiers, especially the pieces of cover.
In single-player, i.e. when taking on the role of Hartsock (whom the game simply labels "Red"), the player can order teams to move about, usually from cover to cover. Although the player can still order the teams to generally follow Hartsock about, this is usually not recommended for many scenarios.
Each individual team member can be incapacitated, thus reducing the number of soldiers in his team. This is undesirable, as it understandably reduces the effectiveness of the team. As mentioned earlier, there is no way to revive them until the player reaches the next checkpoint.
Teams also have icons above their heads, indicating their general role and choice of armaments. However, at higher difficulties, these icons are removed. This can ratchet up the difficulty higher than a player would expect, as it is very difficult to know what weapons that enemies have when they run across the battlefield, especially if they are carrying small arms.
A.I.-controlled teams, including the player's own, are generally very smart at autonomously finding cover and positioning themselves on the right side of their cover, if it is a log or some other piece of cover that juts out of the ground.
The types of teams that are available to the player will be described later.
SHOOTING AT ENEMIES BEHIND COVER:
This game being a shooter, one would expect that all a player needs to do to defeat enemies is to point and shoot at them. However, this rule is somewhat suspended when shooting at enemies behind cover with anything other than a sniper rifle.
If enemies are cowering behind cover, they are next to impossible to injure when shot at from the front. It appears as if the hitboxes of the cover has been greatly expanded and shots appear to go nowhere near them, even when they are subjected to a hail of lead. The player, or his/her squad, may get lucky sometimes when the enemy soldiers stand out of cover to return fire, but if they are not, then they are impossible to gun down from the front.
The only way to shoot enemies that are behind cover from the front is to use a sniper rifle, which ignore the rules for cover. It can hit any enemy that happens to have part of his model jutting out of cover. However, sniper rifles are difficult to come by, and magazines for them are not available either from supply caches or team-mates.
Another alternative is to hurl grenades over the enemy's cover, but getting close enough to do so is very difficult. Moreover, the player still has to throw grenades with the right arc – if the grenade does not land behind their cover, it is wasted.
GAMEPLAY – SUPPRESSING & FLANKING:
All of the abovementioned restrictions on shooting are meant to make the other game mechanisms workable. These other mechanisms happen to be the main highlight of the gameplay in the Brothers in Arms games. When faced with enemies behind cover, the player should consider suppressing and then flanking them so that they do not benefit from their cover.
Every team, including the player's own, has a suppression meter above it, which is represented as a pie icon. As a team takes fire, even if said fire does not injure them in any way, this suppression meter fills up, representing the amount of pressure that is mounting on them.
Eventually, the team under fire will have enough and chooses to duck behind cover temporarily, rarely returning any fire (and even if they do, it is almost ineffectual); in the case of the player's own teams, they refuse to obey commands to fire on the enemy. The time remaining before a suppressed team regains its nerve is shown via a different version of the icon, which depletes instead of filling up; the suppression can be maintained by continuously firing on them.
The aforementioned icons are only present in average or low difficulty levels. At higher difficulty settings, they are disabled, thus requiring the player to observe the enemy and his/her own soldiers for any indication that they have been suppressed.
In the story campaign, a suppressed enemy team has their A.I. scripts for relocation disabled, thus rooting them to the spot, unless there are pre-determined scripts that force them to retreat (which the player will encounter a lot). These teams are vulnerable to flanking, for which there are usually more than a few opportunities in any given level. The player can order his/her own teams to move around to do the flanking work, or he/she can have the player character doing the work himself.
In the single-player story mode, many of the German teams will relocate as soon as they have been flanked, giving a small window of opportunity to shoot them down as they sprint from cover to cover.
This is where the player may notice the discrepancies in the shooting skills of A.I- controlled teams. When they are shooting at enemies behind cover, they rarely if not never even manage to injure anyone. However, as soon as they get to shoot an enemy team that has been flanked, they become peculiarly dead-eye shots, more often than not wiping out the enemy team before they can run away.
Nevertheless, the system of suppressing and flanking works in Earned in Blood, which makes for a good reminder of how refreshingly different the Brothers in Arms franchise is from so many other WWII shooters.
WEAPONS:
Players that have played many WWII shooters would be quite familiar with the offering of weaponry in this game. Grease guns, Thompson SMGs, BARs and such make up the American arsenal, while MP40s, Mauser bolt-action rifles and Luger handguns form the German selection, among other less portable weapons such as the MG32 machineguns. There is nothing new to be seen when it comes to small arms, understandably enough for a game with the well-worn WWII setting.
The player character can fire from the hip to discourage return fire, but to have any good chance of actually hitting the enemy, he has to aim, which reduces his movement speed; for best results, the player has to have his/her player character stay still and crouch, which is not safe to do when he is out in the open.
Then there are Panzerfaust sticks, which are conveniently located among inexhaustible German supply caches. There are a few of these in the story mode, but where there are these, the player can abuse them to fire plenty of Panzerfaust rockets until the rest of the team sounds the all-clear. Moreover, these caches conveniently appear where there would be armoured opposition, which is quite the trope in the shooter genre.
What would be of particular interest to players that have played many WWII shooters is that artillery and machinegun emplacements in Earned in Blood are not heavily scripted set-pieces as they tend to be in other titles.
Where other games use them to create in-game cutscenes or best one-off set-pieces, these are actively severe and frequent threats to the player's progress. Also, unlike the soldiers in so many other WWII shooters at the time that stop manning their emplacements when they have been flanked, the enemy teams in Earned in Blood will return to manning the emplacements if the player did not neutralize them with explosive charges after they have been cleared. In fact, if the original team on the emplacement has been eliminated, another team can scoot over and re-man it.
It is unfortunate however, that in the story mode, the American teams cannot man the emplacements. The player can man the MG32 machineguns, but the A.I.-controlled team-mates will not. As for the 88mm cannons, the player can only blow them up to deny their use to the enemy.
Grenades are surprisingly scarce, though this limitation was perhaps deliberate as they circumvent the mechanisms of cover and flanking, assuming that the player can arc grenades correctly. More importantly, they are needed for an anti-armour maneuver that the player character can pull off, which removes the need to use Panzerfausts on enemy armour.
TYPES OF TEAMS:
To successfully defeat the enemy, the player will have to make use of the teams under his/her command. As mentioned earlier, the roles of teams are generally determined by the weaponry that they are using.
For example, Fire Teams are usually armed with weapons that have high rates of fire, but take a long time to enter and exit aiming mode and to reload; this makes them useful for suppressing enemy teams from behind cover of their own. Assault Teams, on the other hand, are armed with weapons that are quicker to bring to bear and reload, making them better than Fire Teams at attacking enemies in close quarters.
In a few missions, the player can command a tank. It is impervious to small arms, making it very effective against enemies behind cover that the tank can circle around. Any tank – including that of the enemy – has a commander that periodically pops out to survey the surroundings. He is vulnerable to being shot at during this time, and if he is taken out, the tank has almost no means of knowing whether opposing infantrymen have managed to sneak up to it or not.
Anyway, the type of tank that the player may get to command may differ from mission to mission. In some missions, the tank may be one of the M3 Light Tanks, which is easily destroyed by any anti-armour weaponry. In the others, it may be the better-protected (first-generation) M4 Sherman, or the M10 Wolverine, which has an open-top that renders the crew more vulnerable to small arms than the crew in the other tanks.
Some of the tanks have pintle-mounted machineguns that can be manned by the player character, if the player chooses, but only the Wolverine provides adequate cover from small arms fire.
LEVEL DESIGNS:
Suppressing, flanking and then shooting enemies would have been quite boring if the player has to do them over and over. Indeed, in Earned in Blood, the player does have to do them over and over, from mission to mission. However, the designs for the levels help make these activities a lot less dull than they would be. On the other hand, the player may notice more than a few design tropes, especially if he/she has played the previous game.
There are plenty of open fields with pieces of cover that are curiously scattered all over them, while convenient borders of dense wreckage, rubble or indestructible hedges form the boundaries of levels in manners that would seem typical in the eyes of experienced players. For such levels, any entertainment to be had from them is from having the player's teams move about when tactically convenient.
Sometimes, there are refreshing variations such as dips in the terrain, trenches and furrows in the earth which provide more cover or flanking opportunities, but the player will be reminded about how cheesy these enclosed levels when he/she catches sight of the artificial-looking borders.
Some other levels are a lot more interesting, such as one that has an enemy-operated 88mm gun emplacement that is situated at a crossroads with a river blocking off many paths of advance, or an 88mm gun emplacement on top of a slope that the player is forced to climb. In fact, many of the game's tense scenarios involve these artillery pieces.
However, these scenarios also highlight some convenient game designs that erode the player's sense of belief. In particular, most cover pieces are indestructible, even when fired upon with heavy weapons.
A few levels have spacious avenues or otherwise open enough terrain that accommodates the presence of enemy vehicles. Some of these vehicles are actually pre-scripted objects, such as a German half-track that spawns into the level by zooming down a road, and then stopping to become little more than yet another heavy machinegun emplacement. Other vehicles play a more active role at providing a challenge, such as the Panzer IVs and StuG III's that the player will face more than once and will learn to fear.
STORY DESIGNS:
Much of the game's story is based on the records of the late historian Colonel S.L.A. Marshall, specifically his interviews with the paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions, as well as whatever other collaborating documents that Gearbox has managed to obtain during their research and perhaps consultation with veterans that still live and remember these times.
The extent of the embellishment that Gearbox's own writers have included into the story is not certain, but it would be difficult to refute that the drama in the story in Earned in Blood is very gripping, at least where the cutscenes are concerned.
Body language and slight gestures convey most of the emotions in the cutscenes, making scenes where characters talk to one another quite interesting to look at, but the most significant contribution to the drama comes from the lines that the characters deliver, many of which are brief but poignant, as well as very, very far from portraying soldiers as mere gung-ho grunts.
On the other hand, the actual gameplay may not reflect the brevity of the cutscenes so well. The player will be watching the same teams of soldiers killing plenty of enemy soldiers, in fact many times their number. This is where a sceptical player may have doubts about the supposed authenticity that the game boasts to have.
After all, the game does not appear to include after-action reports on how many German soldiers that the American protagonists have defeated during battle. In fact, the extent of the game's authenticity can be said to go no further than the cutscenes of the game.
Having deceased team members replaced by other team members also does not appear to alter gameplay by much; each and every soldier acts in about the same manner according to the role of his team, with next-to-no personalized behaviour to differentiate them from one another. This homogeneity makes them difficult to appreciate outside of the game's cutscenes.
GRAPHICS:
There would not be many new sights that await the player that has played many WWII shooters. Ruined, smoking cities and charred, crater-filled country-sides are among the familiar locales.
If there is value to be had from the visual designs for the environments in Earned in Blood, it is that the developers have tried to recreate the locales with research on real-world locations, as showed in behind-the-scenes videos that have been included with the game. Of course, they have to sacrifice some authenticity to make the locales more conducive to gameplay, so the claims of faithfulness to the real-world places in the era of WWII are best taken with a pinch of salt.
If there is anything remarkable about the models of weapons and inanimate objects in this game, it is that they at least have textures that show the effect of the rigors of war on them. Many guns look weathered, and there are very few pristine-looking things in the game.
The most impressive aspect of the graphics would be the designs of the character models. Although each soldier in the story campaign does wear a uniform with the same motifs and functional designs as those of his comrades' uniforms, he has his own personalization, and this is more than just their name badges. For example, some soldiers roll up their sleeves, fold them back or simply let them hang, if they fit.
Interestingly enough, the designers have not resorted to applying the same model size to every character. There are subtle variations in model sizes, such as Hartsock being taller than most people. On the other hand, outside of cutscenes, animation scripts have been applied homogenously, though this is understandable because, as illustration, a soldier that knows how to use a gun would have been trained to use it in the same way as another who knows how to use the same gun.
The most interesting parts of character models are their faces and heads. Each of the characters that are based on a real-life person has facial features and hairdos that are different from those of another person, with the well-combed red-headed Hartsock being a particular example. Of course, hairdos tend to be hidden beneath helmets, but even helmets benefit from some personalization, such as notes that certain soldiers tape to their helmets.
However, facial animations could have benefited from more variation. Although there are attempts to include animations that express their emotions, as mentioned earlier, there are few facial animations for anything other than lip-synching and blinking.
As for the German soldiers, who do not play much of a role than being enemies in the story campaign, the game uses randomizing scripts to make sure that each one does not look like a copy of another when they are spawned into a level in the story campaign. This can be seen when the player inspects their corpses up-close.
The rest of the graphics is composed of particle effects for gunfire and explosions, as well as the kicking up of dust and earth from these. They do look comparable to those seen in other WWII shooters at the time, so Earned in Blood was not a slouch in the pizzazz department.
There are some notable particle effects and graphical transitions, such as a certain character being completely vaporized by a tank shell, but these are reserved for the heavily scripted cutscenes. For in-game occurrences, stock animations are used instead, e.g. a slain soldier appears to just keel over regardless of whether he has been shot or harmed by explosives.
VOICE-OVERS:
The voice-overs are perhaps the most memorable aspect of the game's sound designs, if only because they are the most varied and provide the bulk of the appeal of the cutscenes.
Hartsock, being the protagonist, is the main narrator of the game's events. He is a reserved character, as befitting the archetype of the American soldier that has long since lost any enthusiasm for war and is only fighting to get friends home and alive from their tours of duty. In battle though, Hartsock does not have much to say beyond the orders that the player has him hollering out to the squad – there will not be any cheers or sighs of relief from him when fights end.
His squad-mates, on the other hand, holler a lot during battle. Thankfully, for players who despise gung-ho representations of World War II's soldiers, most of what they are shouting have something to do with informing the player of the progress of a battle. They will shout aloud the positions of enemy teams, their suppression levels and whether they are slipping away to better cover. They will also yell at the player character if the player has gotten him into a compromised position, e.g. if he is out in the open.
If they have suffered any casualties, they will also yell out loud the names of the incapacitated soldiers. This is the only time when the names of these soldiers matter, as they are otherwise insignificant to the gameplay. However, they will not mention which particular team is taking the casualties, so it is up to the player to attempt to memorize their names so that they can be associated with their teams.
Most importantly, they will yell aloud when enemies have come into the area, even if the latter are difficult to spot as they slink into cover. They also yell aloud when an area has been cleared, which reduces the hassle of having to look for remaining enemies.
Like Hartsock, they rarely if not never utter anything that can be considered as satisfaction at having defeated enemies, much less any noticeable sadism. This is a refreshing change from the usual bloodthirsty or cheesily spirited presentations of World War II soldiers, but it also detracts from any satisfaction that the player may have from overcoming another challenge.
To players who are not versed in Deutsch, it may be difficult to know whether the voice-overs for the German soldiers are authentic or not. Interestingly enough, there are no subtitles for the German voice-overs. This is understandable, as the American soldiers are not expected to understand what they are saying, though players who do know German may have an unintended advantage.
SOUND EFFECTS:
As to be expected, most of the sound effects in the game are composed of gunfire and explosions. Players that have played plenty of World War II shooters, including the previous game, would not find much of anything refreshing to listen to, though they are satisfactorily convincing.
It is worth noting here though the explosions and gun-fire are not so loud as to overpower the shouts of soldiers. In fact, even in heated battles, the participants can still be somewhat heard over the din, which is perhaps convenient to the player that wants to remain informed of what is happening around him/her.
MUSIC:
Although the soundtracks are far more refreshing than the usual militaristic tracks, e.g. the oft-used Flight of the Valkyries and such other tracks with so much trumpet, cymbal and timpani, Earned in Blood's melancholic orchestral tracks would be all too familiar to people who have experienced World War II films that present the soldiers as very human. In fact, many of the soundtracks are quite sombre.
They are nevertheless appropriate for the themes of the Brothers in Arms franchise, especially the tracks that are used to promote the game and for its main menu. They especially gel well with the theme of once eager soldiers that have long since matured and lost their eagerness for the taking of lives.
MULTIPLAYER & MISCELLANEOUS GAME MODES:
Earned in Blood continues the Brothers in Arms franchise's rare (but not unique) brand of multiplayer that has players leading A.I.-governed teams instead of just controlling individual player characters.
Although it is fundamentally the same as its predecessor when it comes to gameplay, the multiplayer aspect of Earned in Blood has some value over that of its predecessor in the form of game modes that its predecessor does not have. Of course, one can well argue that these should have been in the first game in the first place.
A co-op mode has been introduced to allow multiple players to team up for the missions in the story campaign. This is a much appreciated mode.
Players can also play one-off scenarios that have them on the defense, attempting to survive wave after wave of enemy soldiers. There is also a mode to eliminate all enemies in an area within a limited period of time. There were only a few maps for these modes at launch, though they are adequate for the gameplay of these modes.
Then, there are the objective-based matches between opposing squads, which return from previous game. There are more maps to play with in Earned in Blood, though these could have been in the previous game and not in an expansion pack with a price tag.
Gluttons for punishment can attempt the Tour of Duty mode, which requires the player to complete five consecutive missions without failing once, and with only one team instead of the usual two.
MISCELLANEOUS COMPLAINTS:
Unfortunately, this game came out during the time when some publishers were enamoured with the infamously unreliable StarForce DRM for the physical retail versions of game products. Ubisoft, which was not known for making consumer-friendly decisions then (and possibly now still), had used this DRM for Earned in Blood, thus making it a hassle to play if the game disc is not completely brand new.
CONCLUSION:
Overall, one can say that Earned in Blood is little more than a stand-alone expansion that puts the spotlight on a character other than Baker, the protagonist of the previous game.
People who want more adaptations of the late Colonel S.L.A. Marshall's documentation of the post-D-Day operations would not mind, but there is little more genuine value from the story campaign. Earned in Blood's multiplayer is more varied than that in the previous game, so players who want to experience the Brothers in Arm franchise's brand of gameplay with other people would like this improvement.
Players who want a more convincing sequel with new features is better off with Hell's Highway instead, though Earned in Blood is arguably a better game to start with if the player is new to Brothers in Arms.