Electronic Arts
Medal of Honor (2010) for Xbox 360
Rating:
4 Stars
With rebooting and re-releasing proving to be all the rage these days, Electronic Arts decided they would try the same with the insanely popular “Medal of Honor” series. Despite technically being the 13th game in the series, 2010’s release of “Medal of Honor” uses the exact same name as the original game released back in 1999. That’s where the similarities stop, as everything from the logo and developer to the characters and story has received a complete overhaul.
In 1999, the single player campaign for “Medal of Honor” was set during World War II and was developed by a studio known as “DreamWorks Interactive”. Now under the new name “Danger Close Games”, the studio has decided to modernize the game with a campaign set in Afghanistan during the year 2002. The developers wanted their game to stand out from the rest of the pack by bringing the most authentic experience possible. To facilitate this, “EA” brought in several consultants from the United States military and also based the game partially on real-life operations.
To allow “Danger Close Games” to focus on the authentic storyline, “EA” called upon another one of their studios to develop the multiplayer portion of the game. “DICE”, famous for their work on the “Battlefield” series, was in charge of everything multiplayer for better or worse. It also appears as if they had some creative influence on the single-player campaign, because many key features that are synonymous with the “Battlefield” series shine through heavily in the single-player mode.
There is a lot of history and prestige backing “Medal of Honor”, but does this all add up to a great game?
The Fun Stuff:
The first thing you’ll notice after jumping into the campaign for “Medal of Honor” is how amazing the guns are. It’s not that they’re fantasy weapons or are way over-powered, it’s that they feel so much more real than other games. In most shooters, the guns look real enough, but firing them just isn’t that satisfactory. When you start unloading bullets in “Medal of Honor”, you’ll feel the most satisfying ‘punch’ behind your weapons, which no other game to date has matched. Everything about the way they fire feels perfect: The recoil displayed on the screen, the rumble feedback from the controller in your hands, and, best of all, the incredible sound effects that rip through your speakers and make you nervously glance over your shoulder for attackers.
Perfect sound effects aren’t good enough though, because without proper balance, they’d be left undiscovered and unnoticed. Luckily, the sound-mixing in “Medal of Honor” is unmatched as well. Explosions, dialog, music, and other ambient sounds all blend together perfectly to make you feel like you’re standing right in the middle of the chaos. When a grenade explodes next to your character, the screen becomes hazy and disorienting while sounds are muted almost entirely by a high-pitched ring.
If characters walk away, sound fades out naturally. If they walk into corridors, sounds echo and bounce around. Perhaps the most peculiar attention to detail in the sound comes from characters communicating via their com units. If you listen carefully, you’ll notice you can hear both the sound of their voice crackling over their headset as well as their normal voice being projected from the character model directly in front of you. It’s this absurd – yet welcomed – authenticity that helps bring these battle scenarios to life right in front of your eyes.
Fortunately, sound wasn’t the only thing “EA” was referencing in their promise to deliver the most authentic war experience to date. In-game cut scenes feel like they’re pulled straight from a documentary. The only downside is the ones in first person mode don’t ever show any signs of a weapon in your hand, so you feel more like a camera man filming the documentary than the soldier you transition into at the end of the cut scene. None-the-less, the cinematics are exhilarating and aid the realism.
Then there’s the artificial intelligence in “Medal of Honor”. Like everything else, the AI also has a significant element of realism, both with squad mates and enemies. Having allies in shooters can be frustrating thanks to poor AI’s. Cover will be blown, shots will be blocked, and missions are constantly failed thanks to the idiotic tendencies of these computer controlled teammates.
This, however, is not the case in “Medal of Honor”. Not only do your squad mates move and post up intelligently, they’ll lob a grenade with great accuracy. The most satisfying role they play throughout your trials and tribulations is in killing enemies. That’s right; they will actually kill bad guys for you! These extra characters are treated like real soldiers with real abilities instead of being used solely as pawns in a story who couldn’t shoot water if they were on the bottom of the deep end in a pool.
Not only do they fire on the bad guys, but they actually draw fire from them too. One of the most frustrating aspects of playing through the rival series “Call of Duty” is the way enemies treat you. They shoot you and only you, and also have a god-like ability to locate you before you even enter their territories. Enemy AI in “Medal of Honor” has been stripped of that ability to help amplify the realism. You won't be fired on immediately after walking around a corner, and you can actually flank enemies and sneak up on them while your computer-controlled squad mates are drawing their fire like previously mentioned.
Another exciting characteristic of the enemy AI is the way they react to bullets. Even those with Kevlar armor don’t just absorb shots like a magic bullet sponge. Instead, if you hit them in the chest with a rifle, they’ll get knocked over backwards like they took a punch from Muhammad Ali. Likewise, those who take shots to the arm or leg will cry out in pain and reach for the damaged body part. They may even stumble over or just drop the grenade they were about to toss. If you land a headshot, it will always be an instant kill, and you’ll know it thanks to a little icon that pops up at the bottom of your screen.
There are many other small details that make “Medal of Honor” feel realistic as well. À la “Battlefield”, the environments in the game are destructible to a certain degree. Another nice touch is the ability to grab ammunition from your squad mates if you run low. Make sure you listen to their callouts in battle though, because if they say they’ve run out of ammo, they mean it, and you won’t be able to resupply from them so you’ll need to conserve your ammunition the best you can. With patience, this can be done thanks to an overly-generous aim-assist in single player when you scope in. To balance this out though, it has to be after a complete scope-out followed by a minor delay; so you can’t just pump the trigger and abuse it like in many other shooters.
The Frustrating Stuff:
“Medal of Honor” attempts to keep things exciting by frequently changing up what you’re doing. Throughout the campaign, you’ll jump between four characters:
- Rabbit: A U.S. Navy SEAL
- Specialist Dante Adams: A U.S. Army Ranger Specialist
- Deuce: A Delta Force sniper specialist
- Captain Brad “Hawk” Hawkins: An Apache Gunship gunner
This frequent change is detrimental to the story in “Medal of Honor”. Although it creates lots of variety, this variety makes it difficult to have emotional ties to any of the characters in the game, hindered further by the extremely short lifespan of the campaign, which clocks in at roughly 6 hours even on the hardest difficulty. Despite the near constant action in the game, it can sometimes be a challenge for “Medal of Honor” to keep your attention.
In an attempt to make up for the short campaign, “Danger Close Games” offered an additional game mode known as “Tier 1 Mode”. Sadly, this will likely only be utilized by those who want lots of replayability from the single player portion and those who have a love for “Hardcore” game modes. “Tier 1 Mode” is essentially a level by level time-trial for the single player campaign with an all-or-nothing attitude. The problem is there's no way to hurry through any pre-canned animations that characters have nor is there an option for allowing yourself to continue on from a checkpoint when dying while accepting the time spent retracing your tracks as a penalty for dying. Instead, if you die, you have to start the mission all the way over with a new timer.
While this may be welcomed by those who want the more difficult experience, it’s also a deterrent to those who aren’t seasoned veterans of shooters and may have struggled with campaign. There’s also no additional reward gained outside of one achievement for completing all levels under par and the chance to top the leaderboards.
Multiplayer is a solid experience, assuming you like the “Battlefield” multiplayer, although there are a few minor details that left a little to be desired. The most notable from a gameplay perspective is the inability to go prone online. It exists in the single-player campaign but somehow is absent once you head online. Another concern rises for ‘completionists’ who are seeking to 100% this game. There are quite a few achievements tied to multiplayer, and although they’re nothing necessarily too difficult to complete, many are nearly unattainable at this point simply because the multiplayer servers are almost entirely deserted.
Bottom Line:
“Medal of Honor” is definitely short and sweet, but the realism is unrivaled by any military shooter to date. The replayability is short-lived due to the nearly non-existent online community, but don’t let this overshadow the exciting single-player experience the game offers. If multiplayer is all you’re looking for, you’re best off purchasing “Battlefield 3” as you’ll find a nearly identical game but with a much more active and dedicated community. Those who like a well put-together single-player first person shooter experience shouldn’t deprive themselves just because of the length. Thanks to a “Platinum Hits” re-release, “Medal of Honor” is now available at a much more appropriate and affordable price given the current status of the game. More so, if you have no interest in the multiplayer, feel free to pick up a used copy for even cheaper as there’s no need to pay the premium to get an online pass.
Medal of Honor (2010) was developed by Danger Close Games and DICE, and was published by Electronic Arts. It was released in North America on Oct. 10, 2010 with an “M” rating from the ESRBand an MSRP of $59.99. This review was based on a copy of the game purchased after the release date.
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