Operation Market Garden is coming back in a big way.

The next chapter in Gearbox Software's Brothers in Arms series is aptly titled Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. Regarded as one of the Allied forces massive failures during World War II, Market Garden is an aspect of the war which often gets overlooked due to more popular memories, like the invasion of Normandy or the final push into Berlin. A massive airborne military operation in the Netherlands and Germany, Market Garden was deemed a failure for reasons that will be made clear in the game's narrative.

Coming out in late August for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Hell's Highway takes a fresh approach to the World War II shooter. Brothers in Arms publisher Ubisoft presented a demo of Hell's Highway during E3 2008 recently to show the game'snew features. The guns, vehicles, and scenery we all have come to enjoy will be there, but Gearbox has changed the gameplay enough to try to make the genre viable again. With the games suppression meter, players will not face a constant stream of dim-witted artificial intelligence-controlled Nazis who are about as useful as the rocks they hide behind. Instead, the suppression meter allows the player to control the flow of enemies (and their bullets) by utilizing several different squads to suppress various enemy positions, which allows for aggressive pushing or tactical flanking.

The player also gets control of up to three A.I. squads, with most missions calling only for two of them. The Assault squad, the Bazooka squad, and the Machine Gunner squad all have various strengths and weaknesses, and can be deployed in a variety of ways, including suppressive fire, straight-up point attack, or flanking duty. Plus, judging from the demo, these AI controlled squads and their respective enemies aren't completely incompetent like in some titles.

Combine this with a 3rd person cover system, usable tanks, destructible environments, the Unreal III engine, and up to 10 vs. 10 in online multiplayer (which uses the same commander and squad system as the single player), and you're looking at what should be a quality single player and multiplayer experience. Also, all three games will have a slew of downloadable content. Look for Hell's Highway in August.

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