Review: Medal of Honor

Two significant titles have been competing over the years to take the lead in the war-shooter arena. Both Call of Duty and Medal of Honor have seen themselves in a see-sawing battle which has pitched the titles from World War II, into the Common Era, and almost everything in between. (Except for the Korean War which I think has now been officially decided to have never happened.)

Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor’s recent foray into war-torn Afghanistan represent the two latest salvo’s in this seemingly never ending war. Call of Duty’s war treasure from their latest attack? $650 million.  So how does Medal of Honor’s latest hold out against this barrage? Is it the Call of Duty killer that EA was hoping for? In one word, no. But read on to find out what parts of the game were flanked by Activision’s giant in our review of Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor (xbox 360, ps3)
Developer: Danger Close (single player) DICE (muliplayer)
Publisher: EA
Released: October 12, 2010

Medal of Honor is not a bad game, at least not as bad as people have been making it out to be.  Sure there are problems, many of them surprisingly technical, but there are truly moments (and mechanics) of brilliance at work here.  This is certainly not the work of an upstart developer who is trying to simply get a piece of the shooter pie. However, the problems are also not ones which are indicative of a well seasoned development studio. They are a result of a rush to production, things which obviously could have been fixed and tightened up if the looming shadow of Call of Duty wasn’t bearing down on them like a shirtless drunk uncle with a hard on.

The bugs themselves are indefensible. Teammates not responding to cue’s which would push the mission along, getting stuck standing on a vehicle which then makes the entire world turn upside down (literally), and some messy animations really tar the experience. The game also does a fairly lousy job of letting you know exactly what you should be doing at any one time. Often times I would be left standing around, trying to figure out what I should do or where I should go while my teammates are off screen shouting at me to hurry up.  Part of this, I believe, comes from the developers’ insistence that the game should be as true to life as possible. Because of this the HUD will disappear, taking objective markers with it, unless you hit on the D-Pad. Also, your teammates will only speak to you in sporadic sounding military lingo which to the common man sounds like gibberish.  You will eventually find your way, but the breakup in action and downtime that those “wait…what should I be doing?” moments create do put some pretty big holes in the momentum of the game.

The gameplay itself is standard shooter fair through and through.  Pop-and-drop gunplay that only takes a few reprieves for the occasional sniper, stealth and helicopter gunner action.  Of all of those it is the helicopter sections which are some of the most fun and are actually done much better than in Black Ops. Whereas in Black Ops you are forced to gun and fly your chopper (with some pretty lousy controls), this game allows you to just do the fun part, blow people the fuck up while you woosh through some pretty impressively rendered mountain terrain.

It’s really a shame that most of the gameplay is so mediocre because the settings themselves are fantastic, and could have really led to some incredibly diverse gameplay and mission goals.  The mountainous terrain in particular is rendered so beautifully, and with such a believably organic feel, that they look downright photorealistic in their presentation.  Some of this, however, just further embellishes how unsightly the character models and movements can be.  Watching character models moonwalk along the ground, where the feet are moving faster than the ground below the model is moving, is fairly jarring when there is a beautifully rendered sunset lighting it.  In a game that can look so good at times, the lack of polish in some areas is truly suprising.

As for story, there really isn’t any major one to be found. You find yourself in the shoes of a few different Tier I operatives fighting various missions in Afghanistan but there certainly isn’t any grandiose story arc like the ones found in the recent COD games. Since these missions are supposedly based on real-life Tier 1 operations conducted during the war it makes sense that they would be somewhat banal in comparison, but the problem comes when there is nothing really hard to connect them all. I’m not looking for grand government conspiracies or mind control operations, but just a little bit of a thicker thread to pull it all together would have been worthwhile.  As it is now the story just slogs through missions after mission with no real zenith or conclusion on the horizon other than “Let’s go kill some more bad guys.”  This is actually said in the game, as an objective, at least 4-5 times by your teammates.

In a way, this is the way war is. But real war, and real violence, isn’t fun. That’s why we play video games instead of joining the military.  Because I don’t want to sit in a guard tower for 8 hours and then be killed instantly by a sniper I never even saw.  Sure, the game doesn’t go to this extreme, but that sense of the banal and endless slog of war certainly is apparent, and though I’m partly happy that there is a game which illustrates that a bit, I will also relent that this type of experience isn’t all that fun to play.

I still give credit to what developer Danger Close tried to do here, and with a little more finessing it would have not only been a much more enjoyable experience, but one that truly separated itself from the way these types of war shooters have been approached recently. As it stands now, the single player experience just doesn’t take enough chances in pulling away from traditional gameplay conventions and overburdens itself with technical problems that really should have been addressed before release.

As is tradition, Medal of Honor also boasts a beefy multiplayer component provided by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE). To put it simply, if you’ve played Bad Company 2 then you’ve played the multiplayer component of Medal of Honor.  Although I was surprised to see that the Frostbite engine was hardly used this time around, and buildings are not destructible as they are in BC2. Due to this, the engine does seem to have a bit of a higher resolution, but looking better is hardly a substitute for playing better and BC2 is a better multiplayer experience overall.  There are new additions, such as weapon mods, which do add another layer of depth to player loadouts, and I hope we see in future Battlefield installments.

Something must also be said of the matchmaking system which is just awful.  Over and over again I was put into empty games where I was left to run around the map while “Waiting for 5 more players” leered at me from the top of the screen.  Choosing “quick play” and “any game” was the only method which brought me any luck to get into full games, and even that only worked 3/5 times I tried it.  So if you have a particular love for a match type you’re just going to have to roll the dice and hope you get the one you want.

Unfortunately, Medal of Honor has come up short this time around. Not a horrible game, but nowhere near a great game and really coming in under par considering the roots of the series.  I would say renting it could offer a good weekend experience, but $60 is just too much coin for a game with this many issues.

Score: 55
(50-59%: Mediocre - A mixed bag, both the good and bad are about equal here.)