Realistic ‘Hell’s Highway’ feels like an interactive film

It's World War II, and the blue evening sky of Holland is punctured by the blood-red of hot, hot bombs. On the front line, a pair of U.S. soldiers share a cigarette while waiting for potential death, puffing away in a youth marked by pimples and bare beard stubble. Nearby, at the bottom of a stairwell rests the corpse of a little girl, shot dead by Nazis, who will also die.

This is "Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway," and these scenes are why we gamers keep talking about how the best video games are more striking than most movies. "Hell's Highway" looks, sounds and feels like an interactive film, featuring long scenes of characters trading harsh dialogue, while the camera's point of view seesaws from deep focus to short focus cinematography.

I would argue "Hell's Highway" and other marquee titles of late are so dark, and so lengthy, they are even akin to novellas. The game manipulates time and narrative with themes, twists, flashbacks and flash forwards.

In this World War II sequel, the third in the "Brothers" series, you step into the shoes of Sgt. Matt Baker. He watches friends die then kills at your command. He suffers intense emotional breakdowns, gabs incoherently and falls to hallucinations.

Other games certainly have delved into the heavy mental states of main characters (certainly "Max Payne," for one), but they rarely are as rich in character and camera perspective. There are beautifully "shot" scenes here, where you watch Matt, a volunteer from Missouri, and other American soldiers deal with the stresses all around them in September 1944, during the Allies' defeat at Operation Market Garden.

When you shoot Nazis in the head, a slow-motion scene visualizes your victim's scalp splitting into a bloody, vile mess. This is not a glorification of violence. It is a realistic, gruesome task of killing a person on a battlefield.

Designers of "Hell's Highway" spent an immense amount of time tracing historically accurate terrain, story lines and weaponry in an adventure that stretches 12 to 20 hours.

The game play is realistic, too, sometimes maddeningly so, as it is almost a war simulator. You must sneak around corners of house edges, church pews, trucks and building walls to shoot Nazis who also are hiding behind corners far off in the distance.

Too often, this difficult repetition is a problem. I own a 55-inch TV, which makes it easier to see my guns' cross hairs over Nazi heads. But it still takes me up to an hour to use those slow and rough guns of WWII to struggle through one sublevel without getting killed 10 times. (Online modes are less demanding, oddly, and don't boast as-impressive battlefields, but they are workable.)

At times, dialogue is too romantic ("There were heroes born"), which undercuts the serious nature of the overall mental yuck of death.

But "Hell's Highway" is more proof of the significance in gaming. It is published by Ubisoft, which constantly is flirting with genius, and it was designed by Gearbox of "Half-Life" fame. If Ubisoft, Gearbox and the other major game companies follow this path of novelistic-cinematic games, we have a promising era of groundbreaking gaming ahead.

("Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway" by Ubisoft retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun and deep offline, although the online multiplayer is run-of-the-mill. Looks phenomenal. Extremely challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Three and one-half stars out of four.

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 702-383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.