The reboot for the Medal of Honor series is finally here. But the big question, especially with direct competitor Call of Duty: Black Ops just around the corner, is: how does the game stack up?
As it turns out…
The story:MoH has a great story. Especially for a military FPS. As you travel through the game’s ‘based on real’ events in Afghanistan, you’ll come to appreciate your teammates — and better, you’ll want to keep them safe (sometimes because they act really stupid). Hell, you might even stop thinking of them as NPCs after a while (perhaps because humans also have a tendancy to act stupid).
The visuals: Medal of Honor is a beautiful game — which is an odd thing to write, since you spend all your time killing people, but there it is. The attention to detail is astounding. Danger Close did a remarkable job. Puffs of dirt and dust leap up as bullets hit the ground, the sky above manages to seem full and artistic while the ground you run through has a washed out, weather-worn look, and … I could go on.
The realism that gamers are presented with here is enough to drop jaws.
On the downside, textures have a nasty habit of popping up late.
The gameplay:Medal of Honor is not Call of Duty. This seems like a stupid thing to say, but I feel like it must be said, for one simple reason: Medal of Honor wants you to think a little more. It isn’t slower so much as it’s less testosterone-y. The firefights here are not ones that Rambo would win (the Taliban really wants you dead, as if that wasn’t obvious enough). Team work is the only way to get through these front lines.
Dying isn’t the only reason not to charge ahead. Much of the game’s solo campaign relies on scripted events which rely on the aforementioned teammates. If you decide to simply book it as fast as you can, welp, you’re likely to break a section of the game.
The campaign is a hell of a thrill ride, but it’s also short. You can probably crank through it in about five hours. On the other side of that, you unlock Tier 1, which is the ‘hardcore’ mode.
The multiplayer: The multiplayer portion of the game was actually developed by Battlefield vets DICE — and the result is that gamers essentially have two different games riding under the same title, one single-player. One multi.
It feels like something in between Call of Duty and Battlefield, and it doesn’t stand up quite as well as the single player. Oh, and for newbies, it’s a meat grinder.
There aren’t very many maps, only 8 in all (across five different game modes), and they’re sort of bland. On the plus side, each one supports 24 players, which is awesome, and the destructable terrain is doubly awesome.
As you rack up points for either completing objectives or killing bad guys, you’ll be presented with certain options, like firing off a mortar strike or UAV. This is apart from your overall leveling progress of course, and makes multiplayer matches all the more interesting.
Final thoughts:Medal of Honor is a very good game. Reboots are always moderately terrifying, but EA has come out with a winner. The problem here for EA and its developers is that this iteration of MoH isn’t strong enough to take on Call of Duty. They needed a real Tyson-style knockout, and while it’s close, it isn’t quite there.
Final Grade: B+
Medal of Honor is rated M for Mature and is available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
