I was a massive fan of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, the first title in the WWII tactical First Person Shooter series from Gearworks Studios and Ubisoft. It took a genre that had become a sea of clones in an exciting new direction by ignoring all the war movies dramatisations and going back to the source. The development team at Gearworks Studios researched every aspect of the portion of WWII they intended to recreate with the same methodical patience of a war historian or documentary maker. They visited actual battlefields that would appear in the game, interviewed veterans, read countless books and even hired a retired US Army Colonel to be the games military adviser.

The result was a WWII FPS with an unrivalled level of realism, not just in the locations but in every aspect of the game. Brothers in Arms made gamers realise that 'one-man-armies' do not exist and that in order to survive, you and your squad need to band together and fight as one cohesive unit. Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood is the sequel to Road to Hill 30 or more accurately is a stand-alone expansion in the same Ubisoft tradition as Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike or Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow. And being an add-on, it has the extra bonus of being a budget priced title.

Earned in Blood transfers player control from SGT Matt Baker (the playable character in Road to Hill 30) to SGT Joe 'Red' Hartsock (who was promoted to Sergeant at the conclusion of the previous game). Unlike the internal SGT Baker monologues of the first game, the story unfolds in Earned in Blood through SGT Hartsock recounting events to a superior officer. I found this approach to be quite boring and unengaging. Some short flashbacks are inserted into the cut scenes and indeed each mission is supposed to act as a playable flashback in itself, but a lot of the time SGT Hartsock criticises the actions of SGT Baker which for veterans of the first game may almost feel like personal attacks. It is hard to understand exactly why, but the story telling of Earned in Blood just isn't a patch on Road to Hill 30.

The missions actually begin prior to where the first game finished, in fact you even get to play the climactic Hill 30 battle again but from a different perspective. Missions are usually three or four part affairs with autosave checkpoints in between. The inability to save your progress at any time may deter some gamers, but the game isn't completely unfair. If you have lost any of your squad members and just can't get past a certain checkpoint, the game gives you the option to revive your lost soldiers. These extra bodies and weapons may be all you needed to get past a certain taxing section of a battle. In fact, a lot of the time whilst playing Earned in Blood you may think the mission objectives are impossible but then you discover a concealed route you missed earlier and it all comes together.

To assist the player with path finding and avenues of attack, the game offers a 'Situational Awareness View'. This essentially simulates the soldiers assumed learnt skills, battlefield knowledge and access to maps etc. The game pauses and the view switches to a black and white overhead camera giving the player a birds-eye-view of the battlefield. Using this view, players can pinpoint enemy positions and identify locations to perform flanking manoeuvres. Hardcore gamers can get by without using this view but it is a very handy tool in the heat of battle.

The sound design in Earned in Blood is simply superb. The first time I fired a BAR it actually made me jump! Ricochets, bullets hitting flesh, screams, swearing and explosions that blur your vision and cause your ears to ring are all delivered in glorious surround sound. Earned in Blood has some of the best sound design you will ever find in a game and really shows off the glory of 5.1 surround sound.

The command system is the same fast, simple and effective system used in Road to Hill 30 but because of this, has the same limitations. You can't order soldiers to man fixed guns or to follow specific paths. When you want a section to follow a complex path to an objective it is often easiest to order them to follow and lead them through yourself. On a number of occasions, my squad was cut to pieces because they chose to run into open ground rather than follow a concealed route. The enemy AI seems to have been made more aggressive as it is a lot more common to find yourself on the wrong end of a flanking manoeuvre or to find Germans charging at you from behind a barrage of stick grenades.

The most disappointing aspect of Earned in Blood is sporadic lapses in realism. I lost count how many times I had to "find the German Panzershreck crate" and fire three or four anti-armour rockets at a German tank to destroy it. That and the fact that a bail of hay gave the same protection from enemy fire than a stone wall for example. It's a "gamey" compromise, and while necessary, may detract from the realism for true simulator fans

The single-player campaign of Earned in Blood is also a little on the short side. Just when the game begins to get really good, it comes to an abrupt ending. I guess this is not that big a deal if you have access to Xbox Live as the game is a little better equipped in the multi-player department than Road to Hill 30. As in the original Brother in Arms, the multiplayer missions (20 in total) are all objective based and play a lot like the single-player missions. Played by up to four people in either split-screen, system-link or on Xbox Live, players take control of a squad each and fight against each other as two teams, immediately adding an element of human unpredictability to the mix.

Additionally, players can go it alone or team up against the AI in the three new Skirmish modes playing as either the Americans or Germans. Different modes include a time-based mode that awards extra time for kills, a defensive mode that offers plenty of visceral mindless action as you mow down wave after wave of enemies and a hardcore Tour of Duty mode that forces you to complete consecutive missions with the one squad.

The AI controlled characters in the original game's multi-player missions could be a little unforgiving with their lightning fast reflexes and frustratingly accurate shooting. Thankfully, Earned in Blood allows you to modify the AI settings to suit your skill level and tune down the accuracy of the AI if it proves to be too much to handle.