Medal of Honor Review
The task given to Danger Close Games was clear: use the somewhat dormant name “Medal of Honor” and make a game that can compete with Call of Duty/Modern Warfare. That’s it. That seems to be the only motivation behind this enormous Medal of Honor reboot. Some could argue that its an unnecessary game since EA already has Battlefield: Bad Company, and whatever the Respawn team is working on. Never the less Medal of Honor is back and it plays curiously exactly like its inspiration, Modern Warfare.
Set in the recent past (2002) Medal of Honor addresses terrorism directly. The enemies are the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The game design is supposed to cling to realistic scenarios following the attacks on September 11, 2001. All events are grounded in reality, so there aren’t any over the top sequences a la Modern Warfare. The tech the characters use is up to date and the setting and tone seems to match the time period well. Very little needs to be said about the story since its a cookie cutter military narrative.
The good news is that it feels right. It feels like a modern military shooter based in a foreign terror filled nation. Things get intense, plans get foiled and people are dying left and right. That’s the good part. Where Medal of Honor fails, is the tech behind the game and the fact that so much more could have been done with the premise.
Medal of Honor has been heralded as a tribute to the American military and the men who have fought for this country. However, the events of the game barely scratch the surface of the sacrifices made by our service men. The obvious sacrifice that is focused on is death. Men in the military are often killed in action, we know this. I don’t mean to down play death, but to really understand what these men go through steps should be taken to humanize them. The character you play as the most is codenamed Rabbit (8-Mile anyone? Actually, 8-Mile came out in 2002, weird).
Who is Rabbit? Who knows? Other than a special warfare naval officer, nothing is established. Does Rabbit have kids, or a wife? No emotional attachment is given to the characters, so the grand tribute seems to be incomplete. I don’t know if this was done intentionally to avoid political backlash, but it feels like a hole in the experience that if it had been filled, the technical issues could have been overlooked.
As for technical issues, the campaign mode of Medal of Honor is riddled with visual tech problems. Textures pop in and out frequently, and destructible environments jump on and off the screen during action sequences. The frame rate drops severely throughout the game and the AI NPCs are exceptionally dumb. I have played numerous games built using the Unreal engine and this one has more technical issues than all of the others combined. I simultaneously blame EA and the development team for the problems. Cause, these bugs could have been ironed out, with more dev time and play testing, but EA needed to release this before Black Ops launches. However, Danger Close should have anticipated that and finished the game on time.
Luckily, Call of Duty players are a mixed bag. On one hand you have the ultra competitive player that will sink 80 days a year into Modern Warfare, but on the other you have the casual audience that simply likes the intensity of military shooters…I.E. my dad. The later will love Medal of Honor. Its comfortable, well balanced, and plays well. The Normal difficulty setting is a bit too easy, but that fits the casual market perfectly. The controls are identical to what’s in COD and the snap to targeting auto aim has never been more helpful.
I don’t want to call Medal of Honor a second rate Modern Warfare game because it’s a valiant effort that is worth playing. The problems will be obvious, but you won’t be disappointed. Also, if you pick up the Limited Edition on PS3, it includes a Battlefield 3 Beta invite, some bonus multiplayer weapons and an HD remake of Medal of Honor: Frontline the well received PS2, XBOX and Gamecube game originally released in 2002 (man this game is all about some 2002). Right now this is the only way to get a copy of the HD Frontline, but I’m sure it will hit PSN soon enough.
Hopefully Medal of Honor does well enough to warrant a sequel because this game could have been great, had a few things been tweaked. Much like Killzone, Uncharted, and Assassin’s Creed things are often better the second time around.
As many of you know, multiplayer is not my forte, but it should be noted that DICE (Battlefield) did the multiplayer development and what I played of it I didn’t hate. That says a lot about a game. This is an online pass game; so if you don’t pick it up new and you want to play online, you’ll have to purchase a $10 online pass from EA. If you like Call of Duty and you can’t wait for Black Ops, Medal of Honor is a good way to bide you time, but don’t expect it to dethrone the king.
Verdict – Goodish
