Medal of Honor

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, gritty single player set in modern day Iraq and Afghanistan
- Solid shooting as would be expected from Dice
- Game looks really quite good at times
- Voice acting is solid throughout
- Has a pretty great soundtrack as well
- Multiplayer's "Points" system to earn perks and upgrades is a neat change from Call of Duty's formula

Cons
- Multiplayer attempts to merge Call of Duty and Battlefield and fails on both sides
- Seriously, the multiplayer is really broken
- Speaking of which, Online Passes are stupid when your leading competitor doesn't have them
- Single player is extremely short and has a completely unbelievable ending
- Runs at a solid 30 FPS, but compared to Call of Duty's 60 FPS it seems...insubstantial
- Aren't we getting tired of these "USA #1!!" games where we go to other countries and shoot up native residents?
- Does nothing to differentiate itself from all the other gray modern military shooters

That beard has heard the call of duty

The Long

It's no secret that Call of Duty is pretty freaking huge. Something about it's constantly rewarding, fast-paced arcade shooter action really clicks for a whole lot of people (mostly 12-year-olds who got their parents to buy the game for them) and it escalated into the juggernaut franchise it currently is. 

EA, publisher of Battlefield which could be considered Call of Duty's direct competitor, saw the bucketloads of cash Activision was swimming in and decided that they too needed a modern military action shooter, neglecting the fact they already had one. It was called Battlefield. So they went back to their PC roots and resurrected an old World War II shooter IP: Medal of Honor. 

The persistent pitch for this game was that it was "Call of Duty made by the Battlefield guys (aka Dice)." They also went above and beyond saying they interviewed Tier Two operatives who were currently on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming they'd make this game as "authentic" as possible.

So...did they pull it off?

Yeah, cause running around killing hundreds of dudes out of cover is an "Authentic military simulation."

The single player is actually the best part of Call of Duty...er, sorry, Medal of Honor. Set in the modern day middle east, you play as a rookie (don't you always) to the Tier Two operatives, basically the badasses of the army. There's some plot involving a terrorist...something and...uh...actually I don't remember the story. While Call of Duty has gone completely off the rails recently in its stupidity, Medal of Honor tends to focus more on more "down to earth" problems and smaller missions, which I'm fine with.

I said I liked the single player, but for the life of me I can't remember why. I have fond memories, but looking back on the important details that make a story good I'm drawing a blank. I don't remember any characters (except awesome beard man, seen two pictures above). I remember doing lots of shooting down the sights, a mission where I was a sniper, a mission where I manned a turret, a mission at night, and a few vehicle sections. And I remember a final mission with an absurd level of guys I had to kill, like in the hundreds just in that mission. Realism my ass. As much as I respect Tier Two Operatives for having the balls to do their jobs every day (and I really do, honest; I couldn't do it) I doubt five of them could gun down thousands of terrorists in broad daylight without cover and emerge without a scratch. This isn't realism; it's Call of Duty.

Oh yeah, and a stealth mission. They really covered all their bases. 

Like Call of Duty's single player, it also got predicable. As mentioned above, it covers all the "necessities" of a single-player modern military shooter, and...not much else. This game really feels like EA came to Dice and said "Make a Call of Duty game, down to every detail"... and they did. Which is fine, I suppose, because the game is well paced and has a good blend of fast-paced shootouts with slower moments, but as  a whole it does nothing unique whatsoever.

Oh yeah, there was some politician who kept making stupid orders. I remember that, now.  Cliche!

But hey, you aren't buying this game for the single player (in theory, anyway), you are buying it for the multiplayer! Dice, legendary Battlefield creators, making an arcade shooter? It's like the best of both worlds! How could they go wrong?

Well, the first thing that they do wrong you see right when you open the box (or don't see, if you buy used): an online pass. Seriously, these things straight up piss me off. You market this game as the online "Call of Duty killer" and then make it so anybody buying used is locked out of online unless they pay an additional $15? Really? This is in addition to me paying for Xbox Live Gold (which I'm seriously wondering why I buy it at this point) and is you locking me out of a key feature of the game because I wanted to save a few bucks. Oh hey, what's that? Call of Duty doesn't have these stupid things, because Activision isn't as stupid as EA? What's that, EA puts these in single player games now, too? Wow, how totally insane! Well, I guess I know which multiplayer shooter I'll be picking up: THE ONE THAT LETS ME PLAY MULTIPLAYER.

Luckily I managed to "find" a code at my local Gamestop, so I was able to play the multiplayer while still having bought the game used. Guess what? It still sucks.

It isn't for lack of trying; more because of pigeonholing

At it's core, this is Call of Duty (or any shooter like it). You get modern guns with iron sights or red dot sites, aim down these sights for increased accuracy, and try to shot the guy before he shoots you. Pretty basic. It also has a killstreak system similar to Call of Duty, but with a twist: each level requires "points" rather than kills. Points can be earned with kills, assists, or capturing objectives. It rewards you for actually doing mission objectives (something Call of Duty just now figured out is a good thing to do) which means people in Domination might actually capture a point sometime rather than camp and play it like Team Deathmatch for some inexplicable reason.

Another cool thing (which Modern Warfare 3 stole) is when you get to a reward unlock, you pick either an offensive or defensive one. Offensive can be airstrikes or whatever, while defensive can increase your team's armor or provide healing or stuff like that. It's a neat idea, one that Modern Warfare 3 did a bit better, but mixed with the points system it actually shines.

Too bad the actual shooting in this game is totally broken.

Gee, this looks awful familiar.

Let me get the biggest issue out of the way first: spawning in this game is totally busted, as is sniper rifles. When, put together, you can probably guess the issue: spawn camping. Because of the way the maps are designed, often times you can spawn and immediately be killed by a camping sniper. Many sniper rifles are one-shot kills (or two, but are still semi-auto) meaning they can destroy you just a few seconds after returning to battle. Added bonus that the spawn points don't variate enough to provide you with any sort of surprise; you'll spawn in one of three very similar spots, and odds are somebody is camping it.

Nearly every match quickly turns into a snipe-fest. And unlike Call of Duty, there's a respawn timer in this game, which only exacerbates things when you wait 15-20 seconds, show back up, die instantly, and go back to waiting. It's completely awful. 

It ignores the customization and perks from Call of Duty in favor of a Battlefield-esque class system

On the very rare occasion that you get to a match that isn't a snipefest, the game still isn't that great. Unlike Call of Duty, which runs at a constant 60 FPS clip (making the action smooth and fast), Medal of Honor is locked in at 30, and you can tell the difference. The Frostbite engine, which allows destruction of building, is pretty neat but very underutilized; there's way more stuff in this game that can't be blown up than can. Actual shooting with regular person guns is also not particularly fantastic. Since you are limited to three classes you don't really get the freedom of choosing guns and attachments the competition (both Call of Duty and Battlefield) provides, so shooting never feels very personal. The actual aiming is decent but not great, and often I felt guys took way too many bullets to go down. It's like a weird bastard child of Call of Duty and Battlefield, while only keeping the worst aspects of both parents. It's like a slower, gimped version of Call of Duty that lacks the arcade feel; or a faster, less tactical version of Battlefield which loses the squad mechanics and cooperation. It's the worst of both worlds. 

Enough about the multiplayer. It sucks. Done. 

Graphically the game actually looks pretty fantastic. They do an excellent work with lighting especially to make things look both vibrant and realistic. Natural rocks in this game (especially ones with snow on them) look really really good for some reason, and the vistas you gaze over before going around to shoot a hundred more dudes are actually very majestic and pretty. This is a good looking game, minus a rare flat texture or weird graphical silliness caused by the allowed destruction in the Frostbite engine.

Sound is also very good, with voice work being top-notch (if very f-word heavy) but the real star is the sound effects. Every boom, bullet fired, or reload sounds great (if exactly like the Battlefield games) and packs a serious punch. It's Dice, they know how to make their war games look and sound great.

The game looks good. Too bad it doesn't play as such. 

As it stands, Medal of Honor seems like an experiment that failed. Nobody really picked it up, and the second Call of Duty: Black Ops showed up everybody abandoned it. When I played (which was a little while after Black Ops' release), there were only 1,500 people playing, only a few months after Medal of Honor's release. I'm sure the online pass thing didn't help, but compared to the hundreds of thousands on Call of Duty every single day, it's clear that this experiment didn't really work.

Then again, it sold enough that it's getting a sequel, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. In either case, if you are thinking about picking it up: don't. This is a second-rate military shooter in a world cram packed with games like these. If you really want another single player that involves murdering a bunch of foreigners while screaming "USA! USA!" then this is actually a pretty good game for that. But if you want a solid multiplayer experience, look to the competition. 

Two out of five stars. 

BEARD.