brothers-in-arms posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Gearbox expects more Brothers in Arms, not planning on Wii Borderlands port

by Alexander Sliwinski { Oct 23rd 2009 at 5:30PM }

Gearbox Software Vice President Brian Martel reveals that gamers can expect another Brothers in Arms installment and that a Wii version of Borderlands isn't likely. Speaking with local TV station CBS 11, Martel notes that more Brothers in Arms is in "the future for sure" for the developer. A surprising admission, since BiA: Hell's Highway's retail performance was cited by sources as a cause for layoffs at the developer last year. Apparently the series warrants another go.

Martel also mentions that there are some ways Borderlands could work on the Wii and its control scheme, but it doesn't sound like the company is interested in porting the main game. He mentions that Gearbox may take the character Claptrap and possibly make him into a "sort of a side-scroller character." Gearbox will likely be protective of the IP that appears to be the surprise hit of the season.

[Via ThatVideoGameBlog]

Gearbox trademarks 'Modern War Hero,' instrument compatibility unconfirmed

by James Ransom-Wiley { Jun 24th 2009 at 1:15PM }

Oooh! We get it now. Gearbox wants Infinity Ward to quit making war games so it can get a piece. After the last Brother in Arms made a hasty retreat for the bargain bin, Gearbox looks like it could be deploying a new strategy: the Trojan horse.

A slew of new trademarks suggests the studio might try to sneak future games off of store shelves and into consumers' homes by disguising them as a cross between Activision's growing "Hero" brand and its Call of Duty games. Among the trademarked: "War Hero," "World War II Hero," "Brother In Arms War Hero," and -- saving the best for last -- "Modern War Hero." We can hear the conversation at GameStop already:

Madden Guy #1: Modern War Hero? Hey, bro, this the new Call of Duty?
Madden Guy #2: Yeah, broheim. Definitely.
Madden Guy #1: Sweeeeeet! New Madden ain't out yet -- I'm all over this.
Madden Guy #2: True. I'm not gonna lie, it sounds like you can play with your Guitar Hero guitar.
Madden Guy #1: Dude. Niiiiiice.

Gearbox CEO wants Bungie & Infinity Ward to move beyond established brands

by Xav de Matos { Jun 22nd 2009 at 6:15PM }

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford wants Bungie and Infinity Ward to leave behind the Halo and Call of Duty/Modern Warfare brands and create something new. While he prefaced his comments by showering both devs with celestial praise, Pitchford said he is eagerly anticipating new intellectual properties from each team.

"I keep waiting to hear what Bungie is going to do that's not Halo," Pitchford told VideoGamer at E3. "Same with Infinity Ward. It's like, dude I'm totally psyched to get my Call of Duty fix every year, but you guys are amazing! What else have you got? Can you give me something I haven't seen before?"

Pitchford does admit it's difficult to walk away from established brands when the risk of creating a new IP is so high, but says innovators need to be rewarded so that teams "making big bets can take that risk."

Gearbox Software itself is no stranger to established brands. After porting Halo: Combat Evolved to PC in 2003, Gearbox developed the Brothers in Arms series, which has seen 10 titles released across 11 platforms since its debut in 2005. Gearbox is currently developing the new IP Borderlands, which is set to hit the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC this fall.

[Photo Credit]

Deal of the Night: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway at $40

by Majed Athab { Oct 20th 2008 at 8:30PM }

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is a relatively new title. It was just released almost exactly one month ago. It's a first-person shooter, which means it's a dime a dozen; there are already a lot of them to go around. To help make it stand out of the crowd and appear more visible, Amazon has the title discounted by 33 percent with a $20 savings. If you're looking for a new World War II shooter and are on a budget, $40 for Hell's Highway doesn't sound too bad.

[Thanks Juan P.!]

Dem-o-rama: Brothers in Arms, Madagascar 2

by Justin McElroy { Oct 14th 2008 at 1:15PM }

Right, so we know the inclusion of the demo for Madagascar 2 hardly makes this a dem-o-rama, but we figured as long as we were letting you know that a demo for Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is now available on Xbox Live, we'd go ahead and mention Madagascar 2. Just ... you know ... in case.

... Oh, OK, fine. We just wanted an excuse to make that photoshop. There, are you happy now? You guys are monsters, we tell you! Monsters!

Read -- Demo: Madagascar 2
Read -- Demo: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Hell's Highway demo burns up the XBLM

by Dustin Burg { Oct 13th 2008 at 11:00AM }

Newly available on the Xbox Live Marketplace is a Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway demo that (unlike the game's title sort of suggests) doesn't involve Satan or let you pave roads. The demo requires roughly 1.32GB of hard drive storage and should give you a taste of the look, feel and amount of violence the retail version of Hell's Highway has in store. Go ahead and give the demo a try because, really, what's the worst that could happen? A few gigs of your hard drive lost, a few hours of your life wasted and the corruption of your gaming soul?

Metareview -- Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

by Justin McElroy { Sep 24th 2008 at 10:57PM }

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been quite a long road but, if the reviews are any indication, it's been a worthwhile one. The critiques aren't without complaint by any means, but they're are all consistently solid, always a good sign in our metareviewing experience.

Official Xbox Magazine (90/100): "Raw, frenzied action and deep thoughts about the nature of leadership don't seem like natural bedfellows, but in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, they join forces to deliver both gripping drama and riveting gameplay. Like the heroes it portrays, the game itself is an imperfect experience, but its better qualities are so compelling that surrender won't be an option."
VideoGamer (80/100): "Bar the jarring Action Camera, there's not a lot wrong with Hell's Highway. Rather, there's a lot good with it. It's an intelligent game made by adults for adults. It'll have a hard time going up against Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War this Christmas, of course. But, like Sergeant Baker himself, it's going to put up a damn good fight."
Game Informer (78/100): "Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is a competent tactical shooter blessed with a dedication to narrative rarely seen in shooters. If Gearbox can build off this success with more inventive gameplay, the series has a chance of overcoming the boredom that curses so many WWII titles."

Shipping this week: Hell's LEGO hunting edition

by Richard Mitchell { Sep 22nd 2008 at 11:30AM }

We've got five (count 'em, five) new Xbox 360 games this week. Probably the biggest of the bunch is Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, which finally arrives after numerous delays. Aside from Brothers in Arms we have LEGO Batman, which we imagine will be an awful lot like LEGO Indiana Jones which was an awful lot like LEGO Star Wars. We question whether or not the somewhat addictive charm will hold out this time. To round out the week, we've got off-road racing, hacking and slashing, and ... um ... hunting. Consider the fall gaming flood postponed.

Baja: Edge of Control
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Warriors Orochi 2
Cablela's Dangerous Hunts 2009
LEGO Batman

Retail and download releases for the week of September 22nd

by David Hinkle { Sep 22nd 2008 at 9:00AM }

Click image for more screens

Well folks, just as stated, we've got a new Mega Man game to play this week. What's even better is that along with the sure-to-be-awesome Mega Man 9, we've also got some solid retail releases. And there's a surprise or two with this week's Virtual Console releases, as well. Head on past the break for the info. This week is going to be chock full of gaming goodness.

Gallery: Mega Man 9

Continued →

Worldwide PS3 releases for the week of September 21st

by Jem Alexander { Sep 21st 2008 at 5:25PM }

It's almost like magic. The first day of Autumn hits tomorrow and the game industry intends to start the season as it means to go on. In short, by throwing game after game directly at your face until your wallet sits empty and your hands are blistered from constant gaming. Ouch. Here's the full release list:

US Games

EU Games

Asian Games

Release dates are constantly subject to change, so contact your local retailer if you're uncertain. Feel free to go on an import spree if you feel like it, but keep in mind that DLC for any game generally has to be bought from the PSN store of the same region.

Gearbox: learning PS3 tech reason behind Brothers in Arms delay

by Andrew Yoon { Sep 17th 2008 at 3:30PM }

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been in development for a really long time. But what was the main reason behind the lengthy development? Gearbox's Jeramy Cooke told MTV Multiplayer that focusing on the PS3 is what made development so difficult. Rather than simply outsourcing the game to a different studio as they've done in the past, they wanted to work on the game in-house. "In previous Brothers in Arms, we had farmed out the PlayStation versions to other developers who were PlayStation experts," he said. "So we had to build up all that expertise in-house to understand that platform."

Hopefully, working on the game internally will help the game avoid the "port plague" which has hurt many multiplatform PS3 games. By having Gearbox work on the game internally, it should play more to the PS3's strengths. "There's just major hardware differences; you don't know if your Xbox guy has a hard drive but your PlayStation guy does, and you've got 8 cores on this machine and 4 and a half on this machine."

Brothers In Arms Hell's Highway armed and ready, deploying Sept. 23

by James Ransom-Wiley { Sep 15th 2008 at 5:30PM }

No one ever said paving Hell's Highway would be easy, but Gearbox has wicked the final bead of sweat from its brow, relieved to announce that the next Brothers In Arms is complete and will ship on September 23rd. Today's definitive confirmation brings to an end a number of construction setbacks -- officially totaling umpteen -- that delayed the project for two years. That's right, remember when Hell's Highway was on your holiday 2006 list?

While development was on par with real-world highway building, Hell's Highway is, unfortunately for its creators, not an actual roadway surface, but a World War II shooter -- a genre that has seriously diminished in relevance over the past 24 months (not that highways aren't also struggling -- gas is how much per gallon now?). The best thing about Brothers in Arms imminent release might be reassurance that we're one step closer to playing Gearbox's Aliens game.

Gallery: Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway

Hell's Highway pushed back to September

by Ross Miller { Jul 29th 2008 at 1:15PM }

The paved, petulant path past purgatory has been politely pushed to September. Speaking to Shacknews, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway will miss its August 26 release date.

A precise date is as-of-yet undecided, but Pitchford noted that "late September is the anniversary of Operation Market Garden, so I think it would be really poetic if the game launched on the anniversary." Market Garden serves as a basis for Hell's Highway and occured September 17 to 25, 1944. Online retailers Gamestop and Amazon are listing the game's release for September 23.

Joystiq E3 hands-on: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

by Justin McElroy { Jul 21st 2008 at 2:30PM }

You can't envy companies releasing a first-person shooter these days. We've have a glut of quality in that department recently, with several-months-old FPSs still clogging the top slots of Xbox Live activity.

So we were curious to see if Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway could cut through the clutter and prove itself worthy of a spot among the powerhouses. The answer? A resounding "I don't know."

Gallery: Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway

Continued →

Activision producer: Gearbox making 'a crappy war game' [update: Treyarch responds]

by Justin McElroy { Jun 30th 2008 at 6:00PM }

Update: We've clarified that, while Treyarch is owned by Activision, Heller is in fact an Activision – and not a Treyarch – employee. To that end, Treyarch's Community Manager posted a classy message on the Xbox.com forums distancing their team from the Activision rep's comment and stating, "We have nothing but respect for the guys and gals at Gearbox." Nicely handled, Treyarch!

Original: We normally don't like it when developers start taking potshots at each other, it's really not the sort of -- oh, who are we kidding? We love it when developers take potshots, it's one of our absolute favorite things, and this video interview from Eurogamer has a doozy courtesy of ~~Treyarch~~ Activision senior producer Noah Heller.

When asked about Gearbox's forthcoming Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Heller said they didn't consider it during development of Call of Duty: World at War, dismissing Hell as "a crappy war game." Continuing the burnination, Heller added that Gearbox "isn't even the same league" as Treyarch's effort. You might think we're misrepresenting the quote by taking it out of context, but it's somehow even more MEGAowch when watched in context (at about 1:00 in).

[Thanks, Jordan]