Medal of Honor Review

While attempting to steal some of that Call of Duty gaming time may seem as daft as strapping great sparkly fireworks to your chest, if anyone has the courage to have a pop at that behemoth, it's those plucky chaps at EA. Developed by two separate teams – one for the single-player campaign, and another for the online portion of play – there was always a nagging feeling that Medal of Honor may just be a game of two halves. And alas, that is indeed the unfortunate state of affairs we’ve been presented with.
 

Looks exciting, but it's about as fun as getting that dust in your eyes

After the media carnival surrounding the antagonists in Medal of Honor, the single player section of the game is so much more mundane. The game places you directly in control of a variety of American military heroes, ranging from the lowly grunt, to the kind of special operative that are usually the stars in these brand of games. In groups of two or four – and one incredibly brief stealthy solo section – the development team have gone to great lengths to make sure that you're constantly on the edge of your seat. The key phrase echoing around the development team halls during development seems to have been ‘more set pieces.’

Despite being coined as a Call of Duty beating FPS, Medal of Honor has done its level best to try and avoid the kind of traditional shooter action that Activision’s series has always put together so well. Despite the premise, there’s very little opportunity to utilize those skills you’ve honed over the years. The variety on offer does surpass anything we've yet seen from such a brand of shooter, with stealthy sniping, swift room clearing, and even helicopter commanding cropping up at designated points throughout the fairly short single-player story. Unfortunately this mix of styles culminates in a title that doesn't necessarily know what it does best.

The worst is undoubtedly the brief quad bike section. While a reasonable idea – the prospect of being forced to travel to your target area is certainly intriguing, and one that’s usually alien to these brand of bombastic titles – it simply isn’t up to scratch. The quad bikes themselves handle akin to a mid-nineties racer, and with your route essentially one long corridor, it feels like an opportunity to try something new completely missed. EA would have been much better off jettisoning that one at the idea stage and making sure there was more of that gun play we all know and love.



Even prior to that section a mere hour or so in, you’d be hard pressed to extract much in the way of fun from proceedings. With enemy locations so heavily signposted, and with the game taking over control of your character so often, you barely feel like you’re managed to fire off a few shots for minutes at a time. It’s so by the numbers and seemingly created in order to fit in every type of set piece they could think of, that you don’t seem to get to grips with just what the game can offer as a good old FPS title. And even when you get the chance, if you don’t score a headshot, your enemies will happily soak up half a clip of ammo before tumbling to the floor.

Thankfully things do start to ramp up after the first third. The action transforms into something you truly feel a part of, and dialogue is kept to a bit of background noise as you utilize your itchy trigger finger. Some of the later set pieces, particularly one involving a ridiculous number of enemies flooding towards your rapidly depleting shelter, are absolutely outstanding, and the helicopter section allows you the opportunity to truly let rip and blast everything you can see to smithereens.
 

We'll admit, that's a beautifully tiled floor...

Yet there are still so many obvious signs that this is a game that has blatantly been rushed out to beat Call of Duty: Black Ops. One very early context sensitive action refused to initiate thanks to one of our compatriots running on the spot, stuck behind a stationary jeep. The only way to progress was to shoot him point blank in the face. Which, incidentally didn’t cause a bloody mess of brain matter and skull to flood the area, but just nudged him far enough to his left to allow him to pass this stationary object.

Visually too things just don’t seem to feel, well, finished. While things are certainly solid enough, there’s a lack of the kind of graphical oomph that you’d expect to see from an EA title. Textures can seem to load in too slow, and some seem to be missing altogether. And the sheer length of time it takes to progress through the initial options screen, particularly if changing from single to multi-player is absolutely horrific.

It’s a good job then that the multiplayer options present are vast enough to keep everyone hooked, albeit briefly. The much loved DICE took charge of the online action, and it truly shows as there’s a lot of fun to be had. Call of Duty lovers may find the slightly slower paced feel a little alien at first, but the leveling up rewards do a good job at handing over a constant feel of achievement that can get you thoroughly hooked.

Level design is solid, if not stand out fantastic, with most far too small for the kind of more strategic action seemingly planned for Medal of Honor. Getting caught out in the open almost always ends in a swift death, so a tactical mind is required if you expect to kill rather than be killed. But it can be far too easy to settle back and wait for everyone to hop into the incredibly obvious action points in the centre of the map and merrily blast away. It seems to be caught between the kind of strategic action DICE are famed for, and the outright fun of the later Call of Duty titles.
 

"Hey"

Medal of Honor tries to cram in every trick it can conjure up, but ultimately fails to include the kind of staying power needed to take over from Call of Duty. The four hour single-player story simply isn’t enough, and the online option doesn’t have that staying power to dissuade shooter fans from looking elsewhere. An unfortunate miss for EA.