Other reviews by Ashes1396: none as of yet
Medal of Honour (and where it stands in gaming today.)
Platform(s): Xbox 360 (version reviewed), Playstation 3, PC
Single player campaign only
Medal of Honour had a frosty reception to say the least. Up against the behemoths of the genre, with mixed to positive reviews from the press (which led to a stock fall in EA iirc) and following a sour multiplier beta, I wasn't holding high hopes.
The game is essentially familiar to the Modern Warfare formula, except that it uses real names and places. I found the plot convoluted, due to the choppy method used to tell the story between three characters. I remember the name Rabbit, vaguely, which says a lot about the depth of characters here and how memorable they are. Having said this, there were one or two uplifting moments when the story, intertwined with game play, caught me up in its web, and I felt part of this post-modern Iraq/Afghanistan war world, and gave a damn about whether the characters lived or not. The dialogue was more believable and less filthy then KZ2, which worked for the better, and had no cheesy lines ala Gears of War.
The use of real names/places carries over to the weapons and mission sequences; PR will tell you they had real tier one experts, although in this day age, in a modern shooter, who really doesn't? The gunplay is very COD-esque, which is a good thing to me. MOH has the familiar aim-assist, whereby it locks onto the nearest character, when you press LT. The reticule however doesn't change colour when you hover onto an enemy character, making it difficult to differentiate between friend and foe, which may be deliberate, perhaps to emulate life in the field. Lean and peak was hard to negotiate with, so I just left it to be, which was a real shame. The variation in weaponry is acceptable and I liked the way the various snipers were handled. The night-vision was a let down; the colours were more muted than what I would expect. The environments break apart here and there but there is no full on deformation. Weather played no memorable part, (e,g, the snow scene in Resistance 1 as an example of where it did). The vehicle segments are okay, the highlight being the helicopter sequences; driving the land vehicles were still very intuitive, and dare I say better then Halo, for instance.
The campaign is short, the hardest difficulty was -put bluntly- not difficult. I got the feeling, the developers removed all the bottlenecks, and made it fun first, unlike a certain level in COD:4. I wished the credits hadn't rolled, which is a complement and a criticism.
The AI in the game were okay at best, they popped up and took shots. Playing Halo Reach recently, you get to really see AI excel; Killzone 2 last year saw enemy AI flank you routinely in one or two levels, aided by level design. There were no real opportunities for the enemy AI in this game to do either. The enemies aren't MW instant kills, but thankfully not R2 type bullet sponges. Also thankfully the difficulty isn't artificially inflated, nor the campaign artificially lengthened just by sheer numbers in opposition, a tactic I find boring in other games. Even if there is an increase in 'traffic' towards the end. And there are no bosses to speak of neither.
Level design will be apparent to the FPS seasoned gaffer; towns are noticeably built around this. It does however vary nicely between terrains both urban and regional, and both small caves to largish open expanses. It is fundamentally corridor killboxes, but the variation allowed me to forgot this a few times. There were no memorable set pieces, but it was still good mission-to-mission based play. A shame that I don't recall seeing Afghanistani architecture/township, although I'm sure there was. Perhaps, there was no effort to draw our attentions to these things like in Uncharted 2. It's not a very cinematic game when compared to the giants of the industry.
That is not to suggest that the game isn't a visual splendor. It's a very good looking game in its own right. Even if you do notice the odd frame rate drop, and the one or two times, you see objects pop in, and some light texture work in places; on the whole, I enjoyed what I was looking at. Readers should note that I feel, that I should confess that I was playing on my wii, (and shock horror I enjoyed it), just before this, so the visual upgrade in all it's HD glory was quite possibly even greater to my eye.
The sound effects, and indeed all things related to sound, though, were just splendid. The guns packed a real punch, in fact I'd rate it a few notches above other games, and the 5.1 was excellent. Worth noting that character speech had both directional placement and came through the central speakers, which I hope other games pick up on because I could actually hear the dialogue properly. The Score was good enough to very good in places. It was never intrusive, just aided and helped set the mood.
The mix-up with all the above makes for a very enjoyable game experience. Don't get me wrong, you've experienced all this before, but I kept thinking that this was punching above it's weight, in light of how this game reviewed. It is a short game, I knew this going in, so I don't know whether to recommend it as a 'buy', if you are talking about the single player campaign only. Hmm... When it comes down to it, I sincerely just liked playing it. And I also eagerly look forward to their (Danger Close iirc) next game.
So where does Medal of Honor stand in gaming today? It's not leading the pack, dare I declare that no one game really is, but if it were given the budget and the time, it could most certainly get there. This is a very good re-entry for the franchise; a very good first step.
Rating: Seventy feels too low. Ninety too high. Eighty feels like it's going to get lost in the shuffle. It's hard to be objective whilst using emotional reasoning to rate games like this. So just read the review and take your own pick. It surprised me a bit, it may surprise you.
