An air of satisfaction filled my empty brain on Sunday morning as I completed BIA:HH’s last mission. Alas, it was not because I had successfully overcome insurmountable challenges in the game and not because I had played one my most anticipated games of 2008. No. It was because It gave me the freedom to move on to better things.

BIA: HH is not a bad game, it is just mediocre. There are some moments which lift the game above that to remind you what made the first 2 versions so great but these are few and far between. I don’t want to do a review of the game as I agree with most of the reviews I have read (bar Gamespot’s) so you can check those out.

Instead, I would like to talk about a few things that I would like to see in the series’ next game (as emphasized by the game’s ending cut scenes) which might help the developers bring the series back on the right track. It might be presumptuous of me to think that I can possibly have any valuable input seeing that I am not a professional developer but just a gamer. But consider it my input to a series that I love.

1. Skip the solo missions

These were possibly the worst missions in the game as they exposed the it’s weaknesses. BIA is not a COD fps. It cannot compete and nor should it want to. It’s the thinking man’s FPS and it’s about tactics. My greatest sense of achievement was maneuvering my men successfully in the battlefield and not when i managed head-shots. If Gearbox feels the need to have these missions, especially in indoor gunfights, then they should give you command of a couple of squad-mates. The only difference is that you should be given the option to control them on an individual level instead of the usual squad level. This will allow tight spaced combat and also increase the "bonding" between you and the men.

2. Germans’ cover

Stop making the enemies behaving stupidly. Having Germans hiding behind cover only for their limbs to be fully exposed is ridiculous. This is made more evident when you are shooting them and they are still not moving to shield themselves completely. Soldiers would never act this way on the battlefield. Granting the player opportunities to shoot enemies is one thing and making him feel stupid while he is doing it is another.

3. Cover system

Change the cover system from the third person view to first person or just don't have one. It will make the game more difficult but at the same time increase immersion and realism. The first two games didn’t have this cover system and were better games for it. Stick to the first person view throughout the game.

4. Tactics

You should be able to designate where you want your squads to go in 2 ways:

(i) Same as always during battles with your left trigger.

(ii) The only time the game should go into a top down view of men gathered around a map. Then you can give instructions to the men which are located near you by pointing on the map where you want them to go, or via radio if the squad is not near you. I found it tedious to have to travel from one squad to the next to get a better angle of where to send them.

5. Enemy behaviour should be more proactive

One of the things that is noticeable with BIA is that during a particular battle you usually, like 90% (arbitrary statistic) of the time, you are not worried about what the Germans are doing while you are thinking of how to flank them. They are just sitting there, firing away. Their only movement might be to fall back to a new position at a certain stage to avoid being flanked. and that's it. I would expect that in real battles the enemies are indeed entrenched in their positions. At the same time however, especially if you sustain losses, they would counterattack to take back the initiative. I would like to see that happening more often. The battles must feel real, not some only some set piece or puzzle that you just need to decipher.

This is not an exhaustive list of the issues. There are more of course, especially with regards to destructible cover, but all the above involve tweaking the game-play section of the game. The game's story and presentation also did not live up to my expectations but i believe it's in the game-play that Gearbox should focus on. It was after all what attracted me and i suspect most other fans to the series in the first place.