- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Developer: Danger Close / DICE
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: First-Person-Shooter
- Pros: Solid shooting; nice presentation; multiplayer
- Cons: Short, easy campaign; no story; glitches; nothing original
With modern warfare all the rage, EA decided it was finally time for the Medal of Honor series to leave World War II behind, and the new game takes place instead during the present day conflict in Afghanistan. The game is meant to be a more realistic take on the Afghan War, so there isn't really any sort of story. You are just there to shoot Taliban and Al Qaeda because your government told you to. You don't need any other reason. And even though you switch between a few characters, none of them really have a personality. Honestly, the Afghan guides and translators that fight alongside you on some missions are more interesting than the U.S. soldiers you play as.
The campaign is only about 5 hours long. To make up for this, you can replay levels in Tier 1 Mode. Tier 1 is a competitive single-player mode where the difficulty is ratcheted up to be more realistic, and you compete against online leaderboards for best level times and most skill-based kills.
In an interesting move, the single-player and online multiplayer modes were developed by two separate teams. Danger Close worked on the campaign while DICE (of Battlefield series fame) did the multiplayer. The result is two rather different feeling games. More on the multi later.
Gameplay
EA
There are issues, though. The levels are essentially linear "canyons" where you move forward, enemies pop up out of cover ahead of you, and you blast away until all of the enemies are gone and you can move forward. The A.I. is really bad, though, so they predictably poke their heads out, let you head shot them, and then you move on. I do have a little issue with the hit detection. I'm not always credited with a head shot even though I know I got one looking through a scope (and the enemy doesn't die, either). But you can blind fire and spray bullets from a distance, and the little "head shot" icon pops up on the bottom of the screen constantly. Seems odd.
The game is also unreasonably tightly scripted. I know all of these sort of games are tightly scripted, which is fine when it works, but Medal of Honor's set pieces don't always activate the way they should. If you move forward too quickly, enemies might not spawn. Doors don't always open when they should, trapping you in buildings. The A.I. doesn't always move the way it should, or at all, which breaks set pieces. I ran into some of these problems on the very first level and new ones kept popping up pretty regularly.
Medal of Honor's campaign is just weak. No story. Bland, predictable gameplay. Glitches. Bad times.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is a little better and easily the better half of the Medal of Honor package. It offer 24-player multiplayer with all of the modes (team deathmatch, sector control, objective-based games, etc.) we have come to expect. It also includes multiple classes and an XP system that lets you rank up and earn new weapons and abilities. It is more fast paced and less focused on support roles, which puts the action and shooting front and center, which is nice, but beyond that it doesn't do anything new or different than other popular modern era shooters. That is really the one major issue with the multiplayer - it plays it too safe and doesn't bring anything new. It is fun, but you have done it all before on better maps and with better perks.
Graphics
Visually, Medal of Honor is a nice looking game overall. The daytime levels have some great lighting effects, and the smoke and dust effects are nice as well. It all really does look like a dusty craphole, which is pretty authentic. Nighttime levels don't look quite as good and are sort of gray and bland. It must also be noted the framerate struggles throughout much of the campaign, but never to unplayable levels.
EA
The sound is easily the high point of the presentation. The music is usually more subtle than most war games, which is a plus. It does end with an out of place Linkin Park song during the credits, though, which isn't good. The voice acting is mostly gruff, "realistic" military speak, predictably delivered. The stand out part of the sound is the gunfire effects. They sound loud, and echo-y, and each gun has a distinct sound.
Bottom Line
In the end, Medal of Honor is a rather conflicting game. Sort of like the "Simpsons Did It" episode of "South Park", Medal of Honor is a essentially a gallery of ideas other games did first. That isn't necessarily a bad thing (as that episode of "South Park" tells us), but when you're copying something you should try to at least do it as well as the original. That is the ultimate problem with MoH, it feels like Modern Warfare and Bad Company 2, only not as good. The campaign is a mess of slow pacing, bad A.I., and often broken scripting. The multiplayer is better (it isn't broken, at least), but doesn't do anything new to set it apart from the competition. Medal of Honor isn't bad, but it isn't remarkable or memorable, either. Skip it if you tend to only play single-player. Rent it if you are interested in multiplayer.
