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Falls short of great.

Published October 9, 2008
4 out of 5 starsScore: 80/100

I'm happy to say that the first Medal of Honor game on the 360 didn't disappoint, however, it didn't really thrill either. In other words, the game was good but not great. The story is obviously based in WWII, but you are in the Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. This is something new to the franchise. Usually in MoH you are in the Marines. This change, however made the game unique and brought something new to a over-saturated franchise. You start each mission jumping (or being pushed) out of plane and then try to land in the “safe zones” marked with green smoke. At these “safe zones” you will have boxes for health, ammo, and sometimes explosives. These boxes are used to refill your equipment, but you can only use them once. This makes the game a bit easier to play due to being able to go back and refill real quick. The only problem is the respawning of enemies restarts when you go back somewhere and then come back to that spot or if you die and jump out of the plane again.


The story is pretty short but the game lasts a little while longer if you play through to get unlockables such as secret skill drop points you can find that will increase your drop skill. You do not have to land on these spots, you just have to walk to them and you'll get the skill points. There are also gun upgrades you get when you get a certain amount of “experience points” with that gun. The more you kill, the more points you get. The upgrades are usually bigger magazine sizes, steadier aiming, and more grenade capacity. These upgrades add to the replay value of the game, as well. The overall gameplay is pretty good but the enemy respawns get very annoying when trying to beat the game. The game will not only keep respawning until you get to a certain point, but they refresh every time you have to go through that spot again. The controls are pretty tight, but I was hoping they'd be more similar to the controls of Call of Duty 4 because they were hard to learn and there's no way of changing them. This is not saying the controls are bad but some of them seemed oddly placed.


The graphics are really good. I actually did not have any problems with the graphics being glitchy. I played the game in both SDTV and HDTV and they both looked good. The sound is really good but after a little while the voices of your teammates get annoying because they repeat the same thing over and over again. I didn't try the multiplayer at all so I can't tell you much about it but it didn't look appealing to me and the controls of the game turned me off from trying it but I'm not going to score it cause I didn't try it. So my final score for this game is a 8. 5 out of 10.

The Stats:
Story – 9/10
Gameplay – 9/10
Controls – 8/10
Sound – 8/10
Multiplayer – N/A (didn't try it online)

Verdict:
8.5/10

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