Hands on with Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes for iPhone

Gameloft is really pushing the boat out for iPhone this Christmas. We previewed the impressive-looking Hero of Sparta yesterday, and now we can take the wrappers off Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes.

It's a full-on military action game, with 3D environments and movement, and a choice of three different control mechanisms to make best use of the iPhone's touchscreen.

"We wanted to make it like the movie Saving Private Ryan, in that you're a basic soldier among hundreds of others," says product manager Francois Vimond. "You're in the crowd, with soldiers shooting around you and planes flying overhead. It's not like you're the centre of the universe and everything is focused on you."

The game has 13 missions spread across three World War II campaigns in Normandy, Tunisia and the Ardennes.

The core gameplay will be familiar to Call of Duty fans – you run around, take cover (automatically) behind walls and objects, and have to blow merry hell out of the enemy forces. Weapons include the usual mix of rifles and bigger tank-busting guns.

We've had a play, and the controls are impressive. The most intuitive involves a virtual analogue stick at the bottom left of the screen to move your soldier, while dragging your finger elsewhere on the screen shifts your view, and tapping a button at the bottom right shoots.

Oh, and you can tilt the iPhone when aiming grenades, which is a nifty use of the accelerometer. There are two alternative control systems though, which involve a second analogue stick at the bottom right to shift your view – which console gamers may find more intuitive.

It's easy to imagine this genre of game being fiddly and frustrating on iPhone, but Vimond says Gameloft has been strenuously trying to avoid that.

"Everything is made to not be a pain in the neck," he says. "So you have the auto-cover, and the soldier jumps over obstacles automatically. And it won't take you forever to get into the action. The quality is almost as good as PSP games, but iPhone is still a mobile handset, so it has to be accessible. People want to get to the action fast and not get bored."

The visuals are very impressive. From our playtest, the buildings and scenery feel properly solid – "You can see the bricks and ivy!" says Vimond – and it all feels smooth when you're running around, too.

The sound is also worth commenting on – with soldiers shouting and bullets cracking, it's one of the better examples of sound design we've seen on iPhone.

Oh, and besides yomping about on foot, there are missions where you get to drive a 4x4 jeep and a Sherman tank. We played both, and were less keen on the jeep mission on account of the slightly fiddly steering (translation: we spent much of our time driving into walls and swearing).

However, trundling about in a tank is great fun. Whether on foot or in a vehicle, you constantly have a little icon blinking to show you the direction to your next objective, ensuring you never end up lost.

Call of Duty buffs will probably snort at iPhone's chances of doing this genre justice, but from our hands-on, we think Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes may make them eat their words.

Meanwhile, Gameloft has been doing good work on making the game accessible to more casual gamers, too, so it could appeal beyond people who play this kind of game on console.

Hour of Heroes is expected to be available on the App Store in the next couple of weeks. Stand by for a full review when it goes live.