Medal of Honor - Review
Call of Duty may have stolen its plot from a Michael Bay script, but Medal of Honor has stolen Michael Bay's band! Well, even though the game ends on a Linkin Park song, it still manages to be a solid experience overall. This is good news considering that the Medal of Honor franchise has been dwindling in quality since the fantastic Frontline. Now, here we are with a modern day reboot for the series that started the era of World War II first-person shooters.
First of all, the audio/visual package is superb, as it is with most of the previous Medal of Honor games. There are some muddy textures and the framerate is not perfect, but overall the look of the game is very nice. The lighting is especially fantastic on many levels and the animations are well done. On the audio front you'll find outstanding music, powerful sound effects, and great voice acting. The dialogue could have been better, but it's not bad either.
The same could be said for the game's story. It's not a terrible story in any way, but the plot elements are kept to a minimum. The characters are not fleshed out as much as I would have liked, but I still found myself wondering what would become of them anyway. What the story lacks in depth it makes up for in cohesiveness. Your perspective will go from outnumbered soldiers on the ground, to the helicopter pilots that come to the rescue, and back to the ground as the sniper who saves the pilots. It all meshes together very well, and the pacing is excellent.
The element of great pacing also transitions to the gameplay perfectly. With each different perspective, the gameplay shifts dramatically. You'll go from mountaintop gunfights to night time stealth operations on an ATV. None of these sections feel tacked on either, and the shooting itself is very rewarding thanks to some major gameplay features. The biggest of these features is a new lean mechanic. At any time you can hold a trigger button down and you will have complete control of where your character is leaning. This is not only useful for peeking out of cover, but also for quickly getting back into cover. The controls are a bit awkward at first but once you get used to them this mechanic becomes extremely useful, and it's something I'd like to see in more FPS. Another addition is the ability to slide into cover. If you are sprinting and you happen to be ambushed you can quickly press the crouch button and your character will slide in the direction you are facing. This too is a welcome feature once you get used to the distance your character slides.
Aside from these mechanics Medal of Honor is a well made, but standard first-person shooter at its core. Nothing is broken and it all works how you would expect. The levels are linear but nicely deigned, there is a nice variety in weapons, and the AI is pretty standard fare. As long as you stay in cover and move up slowly you'll have little chance of dying. If you want a harder challenge I would suggest bumping the difficulty up or trying out the Tier 1 mode. In this mode there are no checkpoints, the difficulty is at its highest, and you are competing against others online to get the best scores for each mission. It's a welcome addiction for anyone wanting to test themselves against their friends or even the world. While there wasn't a single mission I didn't enjoy in Medal of Honor, the campaign mode is very short. It can be beaten rather easily between 4 and 5 hours on your first play through. While I wanted more there was still a lot of variety in the missions and I'm looking forward to playing though it again on a higher difficulty.
Of course, most people won't be buying this game for the single player. Once they heard DICE was making the online component for Medal of Honor, well, that should get anyone excited. I'm happy to report that you won't be disappointed; Probably... mostly... DICE is known for their battlefield games and that lineage shows in Medal of Honor. They also sped the gameplay up to compete with the Call of Duty franchise, and I personally like the results. You won't find unbalanced perks here, nor will you find large vehicle-based maps. Instead you get a straight forward, balanced, class-based shooter. It's got the more balanced gameplay of Battlefield and the faster pace of the Call of Duty series.
While some may find it too basic, I prefer this method simply because it relies heavily on your own skill. Grenades, grenade launchers, and rocket launcher all work, but are not overpowered enough to become annoying, leaning towards a more gun heavy online offering. The maps are pretty well designed, the class system is great, and there are many familiar modes to mess around with. I will say that the overall design feels much more similar to the Bad Company games than the Modern Warfare series, which is understandable given the developer. There are of course some issues with the online, but most are personal preferences. Some of the maps are too small for my taste and I wish there were more control options, but if you enjoyed Bad Company or Modern Warfare, I'd suggest giving this one a try.
So with a short but sweet campaign, a basic but well thought out online mode, and a very nice tribute to the U.S. military to top it all off, Medal of Honor is a great package. It may not appeal to all the Call of Duty fans or all the Battlefield fans, but the porridge is just right for many.
Visuals: 8.6
Audio: 9.5
Story: 7.5
Gameplay: 8.8
Entertainment Value: 8.5
Overall: 8.7
