Medal of Honor was supposed to be the game that brought the series into the 21st century, literally and figuratively. After the slump the past few games have found themselves in, this would be the one to revitalise the franchise and return it to it’s rightful place atop the war games pile. And it has failed. So badly it may take the entire franchise with it.
Firstly the positive; DICE, developers of the Battlefield: Bad Company series of games, created the multiplayer component as a separate accompaniment to the game. This means multiplayer is effectively Bad Company 2 only with smaller maps. While the game is fun to play, in a few months time it will be eclipsed by Black Ops as players divert their attention to pastures new.
What this also means though is the singleplayer game is in effect a separate game, with not even a consistent HUD between them. This is two games in one, so anyone hoping to skill up going solo before hitting Live is out of luck.
And now, onto the singleplayer mode. Oh boy, where to begin? I’ll begin with the technical faults. The engine itself struggles to keep up at the best of times; outdoor scenes have textures popping in and out all over the place and frantic action scenes can regularly drop the framerate to well below the 24fps minimum expected. And all of this using textures that would have looked out of date compared to Modern Warfare 1.
AIs regularly run through rocks, slide around or just behave like muppets. Describing the Taliban as an “intelligent foe with knowledge of the terrain” is marketing speak for “they stand behind a rock (with their head sticking out) and pop up occasionally to shoot at you”. In other words, there is no challenge here which brings me onto the story itself.
At just over four hours long (on Normal), this is pitifully underwhelming. Halo: Reach took longer and that’s a franchise I’m more than proficient at. In terms of storyline, you follow two (or is it three, they’re all the bloody same) squads battling through Afghanistan to… do… something. Honestly I have no idea what the storyline was supposed to be. At first you’re hunting down a hostage, then you’re landing on a mountain, then you’re flying a helicopter and then you’re running away.
There is no narrative here, nothing to make any of the characters endearing to you. The only time you know you’ve changed squad is when you have a different weapon load-out. Modern Warfare 2 can be forgiven it’s over-the-top, end-of-the-world story compared to this drivel. The Tier 1 mode (aka Call of Duty’s arcade mode) provides a bit more longevity but even that is soon eclipsed.
At the end of the day, Medal of Honor was supposed to rescue one of the longest standing action game series. Instead it’s a massive miss-step at a time when such a move could be deadly. Making a Modern Warfare rip-off would have been more than sufficient, but instead we are given this halfway game that feels more like a B-title, than the triple-A budget it was given.
My rating: 4/10
