Brothers In Arms: Art of War (Mobile Java Game)

Another great war field adventure game in line to MOH and COD. The game is well directed and very well brought into the small screens. For hardcore gamers and who have tried MOH and COD versions, this game can add some fun and thrill. Best part of the game, I would say, is the gameplay which is directed in the way that, throughout the game play not a single situation will give a “Let me stop here, I know whats going to happen” feel. And I never felt tired of playing this game until I finished the last stage and saw the credits screen.

Now let me get more into the game. We have got few extra touch in the gameplay than the usual, drive a tank, fight with different guns and explosives, Gameloft has put more pain on this game and has brought us more fun with the initial parachute mission and the cannon fire missions. Thought the parachute mission was not much fun and didn’t last long, it was little exciting to see it in continuation with the video that was shown before the game started, similar to that of MOH. The video was not as good as the one from MOH4, but still Gameloft brought up more in action. At times when you have to drive the tank, you are put in critical situation to learn about the tank yourself, as there is no special help for tank control and cannon fire in the menu.

The Cannon mission: I am not sure if I missed the dialogs, but it was quite difficult for me to find if the boats were friendly or not. But for no reason you often get Game Over screen in this mission. Shooting the aircrafts were real fun and need some training. The fight on the train was looking good and was good thrill for gamers.
Developer’s View: From a developer point of view, the game looked challenging and proved to have put huge pain to bring it on small screens. When you look into the graphics and the final jar file size (127KB) it was surprising me. And on a Nokia N70, I know how much pain the developer would have put to bringing up such a game. Every mission has completely different situation and environment. For any J2ME developer it would put a question of how does the screen work. Do they have a big background image and keep a corresponding map for every stage? and do they have sprites for the background? How is it possible to bring this much animation for the character? But they have somehow kept everything loaded before every mission starts.

Critics:

1) Not much dialogs, not enough walkthrough or what to do story in every mission.

2) The menu screen graphics was not well planned it seems. Though the splash screen or the image which was in the background for the menu was wonderful, the font style was not working good with a transparent layer. The Game name was mixing with the menu items, and the catching colour for “PLAY MORE GAMES” always confuses with the selected menu.

3) Was looking for something at the end of the game, but just credit screen is bit annoying.