Review

Medal of Honor (2010)

One of the biggest hurdles that developers face nowadays is being able to make their games unique. If their game is slightly similar to a popular title, they are going to have a rough time escaping the inevitable comparisons from gamers and press alike. These comparisons, whether they are fair or not, tend to lower a title’s quality. This happens even with good games. No matter how much we may disagree, Saints Row will always be a GTA clone. The only way to survive is to have enough unique qualities that no matter what the game is compared to, it is able to stand on its own merits. That goes double for the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre. Being that the market had been flooded with high ranking FPS’s over the past few years, Medal of Honor (MOH) had its work cut out for it. Making things worse is the fact that it came out right before the hugely successful, Call of Duty (COD): Black Ops. Despite being worked on by two different developers (Danger Close and Dice), I’m afraid that Medal of Honor is a new recruit in a war full of vets.

To be honest, MOH isn’t a bad game. It’s just that it has to compete with the Halo’s and COD’s out in the world. The campaign, developed by Danger Close, is decent to say the least. You follow different groups of US soldiers as they rage war in Afghanistan. The story is told through he eyes of different soldiers, similar to how Call of Duty is structured. On one mission, you’ll man a helicopter and provide support for ground troops. All of a sudden, you receive a warning that you’ve been targeted by an enemy with an anti-air rocket. Unable to avoid a direct hit, the only thing that saves you is a snipers bullet. The rocket toting enemy was downed by another unit on an adjacent mountain top from your position. From there, the focus shifts over to the sniper’s unit and their trek through enemy encampments. I liked the fact that there was a close relationship with the people you quantum-leaped into. In Call of Duty, the characters tend to be on different planes of existence, only converging towards the end of the game. This makes the story confusing at times. With that being said, Call of Duty’s characters are more memorable. MOH’s characters are just that, characters. They serve their roles as stereotypical soldiers in order to move things along, but there isn’t much character building outside of that. Although, this could be a way to convey a realistic view of our military, it doesn’t help gamers feel any connection to their virtual counterparts. I don’t know Sergeant Sanderson’s (aka Roach from COD) mother’s maiden name, but at least I remember him and his role in the game.

As it stands, MOH’s campaign isn’t bad at all. With each passing mission, the feeling of “been there-done that” does weigh down on your enjoyment though. You have got to love the “battle the unlimited number of enemies for a given time limit” missions. It seems that Danger Close loves these as they are scattered throughout the campaign. On one particular mission I was able to find an enemy spawn point and proceeded to knife them as soon as they materialized, leaving a huge pile of bodies in my wake. Oh and let’s not forget the “sniping with a buddy” missions. They seem to be all the rage in FPS’s nowadays. This wouldn’t be so bad if the soldiers you played as got into some crazy situations. There aren’t any epic moments in MOH and none of the cut scenes can hold a candle to what’s seen in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. One might argue that the scenes are meant to convey a more realistic view of our current war in Afghan. With that being said, there are plenty of unbelievable situations that pop up over the course of the campaign; like surviving multiple helicopter crashes with no broken bones, all in a weeks’ time. Even though I don’t think I will see anything more epic than the White House scene from Modern Warfare 2 anytime soon, MOH could have done better in the terms of cinematography.

The campaign aside, the real meat of most FPS is the multiplayer mode. This component was developed by Dice (Battlefield) and it shows. So much so, that the campaign and multiplayer modes feel like two distinct games with the only thing holding them together being the setting. In the campaign you can run and slide into cover, lean to take shots from behind objects, and go prone (lay flat). In multiplayer, you can only kneel behind things which make it easy for you to get shot. The sound quality is different in the campaign and multiplayer modes as well. In the multiplayer modes, you can hear bullets whistle as they past by your head and all the guns sound like their right outside your window. In the campaign, for the most part everything sounds less threatening.

You’d think gamers would enjoy the competitive offerings from Dice over the campaign as it has been their bread and butter for years. I would disagree. All of the normal game mode staples show up (even a Hard Core mode ala COD). The maps are decent in design, offering multiple sniper positions on larger maps and nice close quarters battling on smaller ones. There are even vehicles sprinkled in for good measure. What kills this mode for me is the whole weapon unlocking system. We’ve seen this before with other titles, but MOH is by far the worst example. I never liked the idea of players having better weapons because of their rank, but normally it isn’t too bad. After all, that’s what matchmaking is for. It places you with players of similar ranking that way no one feels overwhelmed. This isn’t true for MOH as I would randomly end up facing Tier 1 (high ranking) opponents. The fact that I felt severely inadequate when it came to my initial weapon selection didn’t help matters either.

Let me paint a picture for you. You are given 3 classes to start with, each with different weapons. They are the usual FPS staples: Sniper, Rifleman, and Special Ops. Let’s say you pick the Sniper class. The sniper rifle that you start with zooms in a whopping 50 to 100ft.  After you gain enough points and rank up, you’ll be given a real scope that’s able to see across entire maps. Each class’s rank is independent of one another. You’ll have to play as the sniper class in order to level up and get better sniper rifles/scopes, ect. Meaning that you will be out gunned by every higher ranked opponent sniper you come across. While other games let you choose a different/easier class to rank up in (unlocking weapons across the board), you’re stuck with the choice of struggling initially or just playing as a different class altogether. Of course, the classes have secondary weapons and different abilities, but they don’t help when your opponents are killing you every chance they get. Once I unlocked more weapons, I magically jumped up in the ranks, easily finishing matches in second or third place. This tells me that there wasn’t much of a skill gap between me and the higher ranking players, just better weaponry. If you can suffer through the beginning ranks, you’ll find that Dice’s competitive offerings can be enjoyable. Then again, having to suffer for a while before having fun isn’t worth the price of admission.

As it stands, MOH is a good game surrounded by great ones. Nothing is truly broken and there is a lot of engaging content to jump into. However, with such stiff competition I can’t recommend Medal of Honor over other FPSs released recently.