The Top Shelf: The Second Round 029: Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
by mento
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrow...
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrowing our laser focus to one game per week (at least). Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!
Extra Note: We've entered Shelftember! In this much-vaunted month, we will be processing one of the second round entries every day. I'll be spending one hour apiece with each game - inspired by DanielKempster's backlog-clearing series "An Hour With..." - and determining its fate from there.
Looks like The Top Shelf is heading back to World War II. Pacifically, we're fighting the Japanese armed forces in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, the second Medal of Honor game for PS2 and seventh in the series overall. I covered the first PS2 game, Frontline, a few months ago for this feature and I'm heartened to see so many improvements to the game's engine in that time. For one, I'm no longer stuck with the abomination that is compulsory camera controls. Don't get me wrong, the people who want to pretend FPS protagonists are airplanes are free to do so with my blessing, but I'd rather have the option to switch over or - at the very least - have it so "up" goes up by default. Call it an interest in intuitive controls.
Anyway, the game starts with the Pearl Harbor raid, forcing the player into a couple of guided turret sequences as they attempt to gun down as many Japanese Zeroes as possible as warships explode around them. I'm getting the sense that every Medal of Honor starts with a showstopper, between the immense destructive spectacle of the Japanese raid on Hawaii's ill-fated port to the Omaha Beach landings in Frontline. From there, the player is sent on various missions, usually solo, taking down Japanese troops with their trusty M1 Garand rifle or Thompson machine gun and anything else they find off the beaten path. The aiming is as bad as ever: the game doesn't compensate with auto-aim like many other PS2 FPSes I've played of late, and trying to line up shots in the iron sights mode only to find that the stick isn't precise enough and you keep alternating between an inch off either side of the target can be a little irksome. Also, the way a lot of enemy soldiers just spawn and run to cover whenever you get behind a turret gun is absurdly comical; did I summon them just to mow them down? Were they hiding behind all the barrels and doors I passed moments ago waiting to be glorified clay pigeons in a shooting gallery? The horrors of war do strange things to a soldier's morale and psychology, but I eventually learned to stop exploiting this strange compulsion of theirs for the sake of their families.
Which, humor aside, is sort of why I detest war games and really any shooter based on a genuine conflict. I may be gunning down generic faceless grunts, but they all represent - if only symbolically - real people who happened to be on the wrong side of a war that their generals and leaders instigated on their behalf. My sympathy for the Japanese and German troopers can only go so far, given the war atrocities both those sides performed, but all the same it makes me deeply uncomfortable to partake in the massive bodycounts of the first and second World Wars. I actually found I preferred takes like Valiant Hearts: The Great War, where there was less focus on killing - most of the enemies ran away once you threw explosives into their gun nests, and the times when a protagonist was forced to kill had a degree of weight behind it - and more about simply surviving that horrific ordeal relatively unscathed. Gunning down whole units for the sake of blockbuster entertainment feels a little... callous, in comparison.
But whatever, I know the differences between real life and a video game, and I'm not going to go off on a tirade about the emotional effects of violence in first-person shooters in the middle of a semi-lighthearted journey of PS2 discoveries. Rising Sun is a brighter, more colorful game with improved controls, but I might suggest that not enough has been done in the single year plus change EA generously decided to give its LA studio between Medal of Honor entries. The UI is still rough and perfunctory, the aiming - as stated - hasn't improved a jot, enemies still kind of stand around in the middle of open areas waiting to be shot, and the character models leave a lot to be desired, even for 2003 (a year, by the way, that saw Dark Cloud 2, Beyond Good & Evil and Final Fantasy X-2: games that still look incredible). It's EA's annual shooter series, and like their sports games there's little reason to go back any further than the most recent entry.
Result: Eliminated.