14 DAY TRIAL // 
The night is as pitch black as it can be without you being actually blind. You feel the brick wall before your hands, dark and cold to the touch. There are some clear bullet holes in it, through which you let your fingers run without thinking of anything in particular. As you sit crouched behind the wall, you plan your following few moves. As your company draws fire, you'll move to the left and scout for that damn sniper that's been taking shots at your squad for the last couple of minutes. Then, you'll duck behind the next corner, hoping you'll see a clear muzzle flash that lets you know where to fire. The guy behind you pats you quickly on the back and you know it's time to move.
Breathing quickly, you realize there's a bullet lodged somewhere in your left foot. The pain goes away and, in a few moments, you are again good to go. You've got the sniper, you know his whereabouts. And, after another deep breath, you break cover again, shoot half of your clip towards the damn Kraut and then look around to see where the squad is heading next. You've just landed in Normandy and it's gonna be a while till you settle down again. The campaign is just beginning.
That's how developer Gameloft and publisher Ubisoft would like players to recount, especially to other players, the first half hour spent with Brothers in Arms for DS, the 2007 addition to the Bothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 series of videogames. They probably wanted to make a game that played out like a movie, like the Brothers in Arms television series, or like Saving Private Ryan. There are some respects in which they have succeeded. They pushed the Nintendo DS further in the graphics and sound categories than I have seen it pushed, and they have created a few moments when you're really feeling like you are in that movie about WWII you saw on TV. Unfortunately for the game, these moments are rare and far apart in the game.
Story
War is hell. And when videogames need to set the bar on war, they always turn to World War II as the setting of choice. There are at least three major consoles and PC series that have made World War II a well known and much fought over battlefield. Call of Duty and Medal of Honor have always concentrated their gameplay on you as the individual fighter that's always in the thick of it and must make the most of his skills to survive in an environment where allies and enemies constantly battle it out.
Brothers in Arms has taken a largely different approach. You're still the individual warrior wanting to survive. But you're also the guy that has command over at least two squads of men. There's a strategic layer added to the madness of infantry combat. The player must not only run and gun down others in order to achieve his objectives, he also has to think of the primary tactic employed by infantry: flanking. Brothers in Arms makes you pin the enemy with one group of soldiers, while going around their position with another to take them out. It gives you the feel of behaving tactically and, at the same time, makes the World War II shooter genre cool again.
This game, as the entire series for the PC and other game consoles, chronicles that way the 502 Regiment of the famous 101 Airborne Division performs in different theaters of war. The DS version features three campaigns. The first one is set in Normandy after the 101 is dropped behind enemy lines in preparation for Operation Overlord. The second takes place in Tunisia, features a lot sand and maybe also the best mission of the game, where you take part in a desert raid behind enemy lines clearly inspired by the exploits of the SAS (although you're not SAS as the 101 Airborne is an American outfit). Lastly, you get to fight in the Ardennes, during winter, as the Nazis mount their last offensive of the war. While pretty standard World War II settings, the campaigns themselves are pretty quite varied and offer a lot in the way of places to be and people to... well, shoot.
When Brothers in Arms was announced for the Nintendo DS platform, I really believed developers Gameloft could have a winner on their hands. The fact that the game had a dual parentage, both FPS and tactical shooter, and that the FPS element had taken the forefront on the PC version meant that the Nintendo DS would be the perfect platform on which the tactical gameplay could be brought to the forefront. This was all the more so given the fact that the DS is more suited to games that emphasize gameplay, rather than to games that emphasize graphics and sound.
Unfortunately, Gameloft decided to take away the tactical element of the Brothers in Arms series and to create a clear-cut arcade inspired WW II shooter for the Nintendo DS. And they've done a pretty good job of it but well within the limits of the DS itself.
Gameplay is very familiar to anyone that has played a console or PC FPS. Identify enemies, shoot enemies, collect weapons and ammo, complete assigned objectives, move on. There's not even an attempt at non-linearity. You simply do what you're told and then take on another objective that leads to yet another objective, until you complete the mission. The game challenge itself is minimal to non-existent. But the way the game uses the Nintendo hardware makes playing it hard and essentially not fun.
First, there's the control scheme. You use the arrows to move around and the left shoulder button on the DS to shoot. Trust me, it will take your hand about 10 minutes to start sending you "lack of comfort" signals. The stylus is used to swap weapons, reload, select grenades and aim. The right side of the DS is not used at all. The aiming action takes place on the lower screen, while the game itself runs on the top screen. That's the basic setup. And it ain't working. The stylus and the touchscreen make it very hard for someone accustomed to a mouse to aim. Head shots are real heroic feats of extreme DS skill. Movement is somewhat weird and coordination is hard to achieve. I tended to bump into obstacles and take my sweet time to go around them while getting pumped full of hot lead by Nazis. Not a good way to win a war... or to beat a videogame.
Once you get the hang of the controls, the game becomes a competent shooter, although I kept comparing it with a PC shooter and the DS version didn't hold up to well. There's some inherent joy in killing Nazis and taking out tanks, and some of the moments when you advance in front of machine gun fire are kinda epic. Just don't rely on your buddies to take out enemies, because most of the times they act like they never left basic infantry training. I actually cheered when one of them took cover and started taking pot shots at the enemy.
Graphics and sounds
The Nintendo DS doesn't pack a lot of graphical punch, so it's impressive that Gameloft succeeded in creating a rather large and detailed world for Brothers in Arms. The main issue is that the limited screen space and the sometimes long distances involved make it hard to accurately shoot at the enemies. I ended up mainly spraying areas with fire in the hope of taking Nazi soldiers down. It worked but it limited the WWII "save your ammo" feel. And there were moments when I wished there would be a clear line of demarcation between my allies and my enemies. On a small screen, it's hard to tell them apart. Sorry for that bazooka shot, Sam, it was never aimed at you.
The sounds are good, taking into account the puny speaker system of the Nintendo DS. The gunfire can sound very repetitive and annoying at times, so I played most of the Tunisia campaign while listening to the Brothers in Arms soundtrack on my PC. It felt more... appropriate.
Multiplayer
There's no Wi-Fi multiplayer, only multi card play for up to 4 players. You can teach your buddies a lesson on WWII in either deathmatch or team deathmatch modes, but the control, camera and movement issues from single player can make it frustrating to try multiplayer. If all the players involved have some experience with the game and can handle the control setup well, there's a real chance of having fun, especially in two versus two deathmatches.
Conclusion
There are basically two ways to look at Brothers in Arms for the Nintendo DS.
The good way is to see it as a breakthrough title that pushes the limits of what the DS can do. Gameloft deserves to be praised for cramming a real shooter with a significant amount of content and most of the options you'll find on a console or PC onto a DS cartridge. It opens up the road for other DS shooters and takes the handheld out of the age of simple kids' games and into real gamer territory.
The other way of looking at Brother in Arms for the DS is to think of it as trying to port a game that shouldn't exist on the DS because of its inherent limitations. Controls are weird, shooting is hard, the graphics are good, but just not good enough. If you've played a World War II game on the PC or on a current gen console, then use the DS for Zelda or for Braintraining, games that take full advantage of the stylus and of the DS itself to bring about new gameplay and new content.
