First off, apologies for not having posted the Thor review, the torrent I ran for five days turned out to require a special media player, and seeing as how I already have about four different media playing programs, I'm thinking thats not gonna happen. But I recently purchased Medal Of Honor, the newest one obviously, for PS3 and I picked it up cheap, not that the price means I won't critique the shit out of it.
I understand that Medal Of Honor is a heavily lauded franchise, I do, but Its a niche game. MoH has always been a historical orientated game, focusing more on past battle than modern combat. With the arrivals of other, possibly better franchises (Battlefield, Call Of Duty, etc) Medal Of Honor was in need of a comeback, a game that would knock the socks off the competition and win back the hearts of their straying fanbase. Well this isn't that game.
First off this game has the basis of a very good game, its interesting. The whole idea is that off a new type of soldier, Tier 1, these guys are supposed to be living, breathing, precision instruments of war. Thats badass. You get to step into the shoes of... well truthfully its not that interesting, I mean every character you play as, in damn near every game is lauded as the best of the best, but these guys are supposed to be real. These guys are pounding dust over in Afghanistan, blazing the trail for our boys to win the war. Over the course of the game you'll be in control of a member of two four man groups of these Tier 1 operators, Rabbit and Deuce. Not the most awe inspiring names for supersoldiers but I'm sure there has been worse. These groups are chock full of bearded army specialists, and you'll need to be just as good. Supposedly these so called operators actually helped EA design the game, so everything they do, you do, and some of the missions are actually (loosely I'm sure) based on real missions. Thats a one up for me, I love the fact that they had real life experts helping with mission design.
So gameplay, the graphics are standard, I mean, they aren't going to win any awards but you're not going to find yourself waiting for the textures to load, and you won't be dropping frames everytime you shoot off a particularly large rocket. The weapons are cool but they appear out of perspective, by that I mean when you pick up an AK-47 that should weigh about 9.5lbs with an empty magazine, its seems smaller than real life, the recoil is reduced and you'll never find a weapon dropped by an enemy that has anything more than iron sights. Besides that you have preset weapons for every mission, no customization and if you pick up a weapon off an enemy you cannot ask your teammates for ammo, as they have different guns than you. But with the ability to ask your teammates for ammo you rarely have to resort to picking up the sub standard weapons that you're being shot with.
The version I picked up comes with a PS3 exclusive port of Medal Of Honor Frontline, which I have never played, so as soon as I clean up some space on my HDD I'm sure it will be a bonus. Speaking of extras the game is extremely limited, offering only credits and cinematics for replay even when you finish the single player campaign. The campaign, being all that I have experienced so far, is short. I wasn't even sure that the game was actually over even when the credits were rolling. Speaking of credits this is one of maybe two times I have not skipped them, seeing as how Linkin Park's "Catalyst" was playing. Overall the campiagn was a nice balance of extremely long range sniping, ambushes, city fights, aerial combat, and shotgun gallery caves. That being said everytime the mission changed it seemed I was a different character, and I quickly lost track of my progress. Every new mission also seemed to bring about a new frustration, the learning curve for this game was insane, I mean I didn't know I had a pistol until the last mission. In some places there was a weapon required for the situation that the game forgot to mention and after seven tries and a three day hiatus I finally figured out that L2 was hellfire missile. When sniping it reminds you that you have to keep range and wind patterns in mind to hit your target, then only punishes you by making you over compensate for the insane wavering scope and miss half your shots.
When I first play a game I play on the easiest difficulty, I'm a firm believer of having fun and learning the game before I get to brag that I played it on Chuck Norris mode. Even though I played on easy I found my ass in my hands more often than I would want, all for stupid reasons though. I really wonder what happened to the health bar, this red screen has destroyed the functionality of many recent games, but in this case there is barely even a red screen. Frequently I found myself charging into a cave only to find out that I was in the danger zone and died before taking two steps. In some situations I lost site of the objective and wandered past the operational objective and the game just decided to fuck me for leaving my teammates behind.
While we're on the topic of optics and the HUD, lets talk about identifiers. Your teammates have a symbol above their heads, based on your current squad and how many times they can resupply you. That would all be peachy if it stayed there, your HUD is a toggle for some reason, and I found myself lost or in horrible friendly fire situations more than I would had my teammates had a sign on their backs saying "shoot me". Once you figure out you can toggle the HUD the games smooths out a bit and becomes more playable but don't expect standard FPS action, this is a combat simulator, which means you're going to get killed, a lot. You can't just run in guns blazing and expect the enemies to bow down to your huge muscles, this game is unforgiving like that. The other half would be forgetting, MoH likes to forget to tell you things, oh like where your spotter wandered off to. Half the game I was walking around with scratchy night vision, having fallen out of a helicopter, searching for my squad. Linear doesn't even describe the missions, if you so much as get too far ahead you'll get shit on, and even if our magical army rangers can regenerate and shrug off 7.62mm rounds you'll have a bitch of a time walking up a three foot incline.
I haven't had a chance to try the multiplayer yet, and there is still another game mode that I understand is a wave based survival mode. Like all COD wannabes I'm sure the campaign was so damn short to accommodate a giant multiplayer section. I remember the days when multiplayer meant breaking out another controller and having a friend actually in the room with you, if you want us to spend more time on your game make the campaign worth playing.
In conclusion I expected more from DICE and EA, like really guys why couldn't you put a little of that Battlefield know how into your projects, but hey it came with a shiny plastic case!
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