Medal Of Honor Review

12 Oct 2010 at 02:01:38 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Paul: So how's Medal of Honor?
Tim: Really, really good. Really good. I was expecting something average, at best, but this is fantastic.

I give that snippet of conversation – a conversation that took place shortly after finishing Medal of Honor - because it's important to note how enthusiastic I was when I first finished it. Believe me, I'm going to complain a lot in the words to follow, but I want you to remember that first opinion.

I wasn't expecting much from Medal of Honor. The cynic in me noted that it was a World War II shooter that was making the move to what you might call a more Modern era of Warfare, and pondered where EA could've gotten that idea from. The critic had been vaguely unimpressed by what I'd already seen. The fan feared that it wouldn't live up to the metaphorical slap in the face delivered to the FPS genre by Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The cynic (a different one; there are about seven or eight in me) pointed out that Medal of Honor had been all but killed as a brand through the steadily-decreasing quality of subsequent releases.

I was wrong. Medal of Honor is a solid reboot of the franchise with plenty for players to enjoy. It's also not without some rather glaring problems.

But hey, let's deal with the good stuff first! Medal of Honor stays true to its roots: it focuses on impressive setpieces, with any form of story taking a backseat. You won't be uncovering any conspiracies, and you won't be single-handedly ending the war. The ongoing Afghan conflict is used as a setting and from what I can tell the game doesn't move far from the truth of the region, save for entertainment's sake. As expected, really: Medal of Honor has generally eschewed Hitler in a robot suit in favour of semi-historical operations which remain within the realm of the plausible.

You'll primarily be taking control of two characters – Tier 1 Operators with the codenames “Deuce” and “Rabbit,” working on different ends of the covert operation scale – with Rangers and a few others making playable guest appearances. This all gels well; the two days spanning the majority of the game have you hop between these characters as the situations warrant, with references to past sorties linking everything.

On these missions, you will invariably shoot a lot of people – mostly a mix of Taliban fighters and Chechen rebels – with a variety of high-powered weapons. The single player mode uses Unreal Engine 3 rather than the Frostbite engine employed by Bad Company 2 and while bullet penetration and some scenery destruction are in evidence, the latter is mostly reserved for the marvellous setpieces. Bits and pieces like Modern Warfare's AC-130 gunning are casually one-upped here, with developer EALA letting us laser-designate a variety of weapons fired from an aerial support vehicle, hop into the cockpit of an Apache attack helicopter, and engage in some long-range sniping. And good grief, they're all excellent.

The regular combat's no slouch, either. There's a slide move, executed by hitting duck while sprinting, and charging from one piece of cover to another before skidding and slamming into it adds a tangible sense of weight to both your character and the environment (and gives a handy way to stay reasonably safe while moving around the battlefield.) Peek and lean returns from earlier Medal of Honor games, letting you stay crouched and poke your head out of cover to open fire - although employing it while shooting requires both analogue sticks, both triggers, and one bumper button, making it a tad too cumbersome to use.

The shooting is enlivened by particularly visceral headshots, complete with a hideous splattering sound and a little headshot marker to congratulate you, and some solid banter between your largely faceless collegues. The game makes full use of military lingo, which will render some conversations hilariously incomprehensible to those who don't immediately know what an ETAC is, how to put on your NODs, and how long you should leave a TADS in the oven before it's in danger of burning. Even if you don't quite get the gist, your character does. If you're ordered to use a SOFLAM (Special Operations Forces Laser Marker, for the curious) then simply move to the next waypoint and your trooper will automatically pull it out.

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