The
name Medal of Honour has a special place in many people’s hearts with
many fond memories. From the original on the PS1 there have been games
on most consoles. From the beginning the Medal of Honour games were
primarily a console game. Now back after a series of lacklustre games on
the last generation and early 360, Medal of Honour is going head to
head with Call of Duty.
This is a game that was made by two different studios and it is clear when playing the campaign (Danger Close) and Multiplayer (Dice) that there was clearly different directions trying to be taken. Even from the title screens this is apparent with the campaign menu showing Special Forces slowly creeping up on the Taliban while the multiplayer is all kinds of chaos with explosions and bullets flying everywhere. The end result is that the game feels very different between the two modes, the flow of the game changes.
The campaign took me roughly 6-7 hours on easy and was for the most part an enjoyable experience. There is a trial mode where you can race the clock and compete with other people to see who can get the most headshots, highest accuracy ect. While many people have been reporting that they have been experiencing game stoping bugs the only ones that I encountered were a few path finding errors. Despite this the whole affair feels empty. The game makes you jump around between 3 different people, 2 SEAL’s and a ranger. Despite EA’s claims that it is making a game that closely as possible reflects the real experience of war, it never feels like its real. The parts where you play as the SEAL’s is by far the more interesting part with missions setting you up for some spectacular show pieces such as capturing and air control tower to call in artillery fire on an advancing enemy.
The ranger parts on the other hand are generally bland run from one checkpoint to the next shooting the people that get in you way. The dynamics of the battle field don’t change either with you immediately breaking away for your ranger battalion into a group of 4 men. This made it feel like you were not taking part in the larger battle of the rangers, just some skirmishes on the side. I don’t know if this was a technical issue but I was hopping for a huge battle with a whole group of rangers attacking a g mess of Taliban fighters. The campaign ends abruptly trying to pull your heartstrings with a major event but it has no emotion resonance as the characters are so underdeveloped they just feel like robots to hold ammo for you.
The graphics are generally decent however when you get up close to most things they become an ugly low res mess. I also experienced a lot of texture pop in with every gun taking a few seconds to load when I pulled it out. The game has a few cool lighting effects which help to wow the eyeballs. The particle effects are absolutely atrocious and make any explosion look like it’s sending out a wall of mud, and not in a good way.
This is a game that was made by two different studios and it is clear when playing the campaign (Danger Close) and Multiplayer (Dice) that there was clearly different directions trying to be taken. Even from the title screens this is apparent with the campaign menu showing Special Forces slowly creeping up on the Taliban while the multiplayer is all kinds of chaos with explosions and bullets flying everywhere. The end result is that the game feels very different between the two modes, the flow of the game changes.
The campaign took me roughly 6-7 hours on easy and was for the most part an enjoyable experience. There is a trial mode where you can race the clock and compete with other people to see who can get the most headshots, highest accuracy ect. While many people have been reporting that they have been experiencing game stoping bugs the only ones that I encountered were a few path finding errors. Despite this the whole affair feels empty. The game makes you jump around between 3 different people, 2 SEAL’s and a ranger. Despite EA’s claims that it is making a game that closely as possible reflects the real experience of war, it never feels like its real. The parts where you play as the SEAL’s is by far the more interesting part with missions setting you up for some spectacular show pieces such as capturing and air control tower to call in artillery fire on an advancing enemy.
The ranger parts on the other hand are generally bland run from one checkpoint to the next shooting the people that get in you way. The dynamics of the battle field don’t change either with you immediately breaking away for your ranger battalion into a group of 4 men. This made it feel like you were not taking part in the larger battle of the rangers, just some skirmishes on the side. I don’t know if this was a technical issue but I was hopping for a huge battle with a whole group of rangers attacking a g mess of Taliban fighters. The campaign ends abruptly trying to pull your heartstrings with a major event but it has no emotion resonance as the characters are so underdeveloped they just feel like robots to hold ammo for you.
The graphics are generally decent however when you get up close to most things they become an ugly low res mess. I also experienced a lot of texture pop in with every gun taking a few seconds to load when I pulled it out. The game has a few cool lighting effects which help to wow the eyeballs. The particle effects are absolutely atrocious and make any explosion look like it’s sending out a wall of mud, and not in a good way.
There is a lot more brown.
The game handles just like Modern Warfare 2. It has the same almost over sensitivity and is very snappy. The controls feel right and responsive. The enemies take a few to many bullets to go down though. On several occasions I was blasting my way trough a camp when I would start to get shot in the back by a guy that fell to the ground after I shot him but didn’t die. They needed to either make them stay standing up or die after a few less bullets.
The multiplayer is very much in the feel of Dice’s own Battlefield: Bad Company. I am not normally an online player but I enjoyed the hell out of this games online play. It’s absolutely crazy at all times and yet never feels like you can’t get a grasp on the whole situation. There are four different modes; Combat Mission, Team Assault, Sector Control, Objective Raid. These are all team based modes with all but Team assault being objective based. The gameplay feels a lot like Bad Company 2 mixed with Modern Warfare 2,. While it is not better than the two games in there area it presents a good middle ground with the scope of Bad Company and the quick deaths of Modern Warfare 2. The only real proplem that I found with the online is that it never gives a tutorial of what to do and because of this I was unaware of the kill streaks awards until a good 3 hours in.
In conclusion Medal of Honour is a game that is trying to fit into a new style of FPS and is still getting its legs. This results in a game that has it’s flaws but is still an enjoyable experience to play. While newcomers to FPS should head to the better Modern Warfare 2, those that want a new challenge for there fraging skills will enjoy the difference of this game.