XCVG
ModRetro Legend
Re: XCVG's Review Thread
Medal of Honor (Singleplayer) Review
Medal of Honor is a realistic portrayal of the Afghanistan war: It's bleak, boring, and has no story.
Medal of Honor (that's the full title) is a modern warfare reboot of the WWII shooter series. Obviously, it tried to follow in the footsteps of Call of Duty 4 and Battlefield 2. I say tried, because both of those were a lot better than Medal of Honor. In fact, Medal of Honor has gradually been decreasing in quality since Allied Assault, which is probably why they wanted to reboot it. Allied Assault was excellent, Pacific Assault was meh, Airborne was terrible. I'll only be covering the singleplayer campaign here. I haven't tried multiplayer, but that's not why. The multiplayer segment of the game was developed by a different company on a different engine. I'll also be comparing Medal of Honor to Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty 4 a lot.
So, let's start off with the story. You are an elite Tier 1 Operator clearing some mountains in Afghanistan, or something. There isn't much of a *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing story. There's a little bit of war room drama where your CO faces off with a general over a comm link or something like that. This isn't the deliberately over-the-top superweapon plot of BFBC2 or the dramatic if a bit implausible power struggle of Modern Warfare. It feels pretty *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing pointless, actually. Maybe it's supposed to be dark and realistic, but it just feels stupid and lacking in direction.
If only more of the campaign was like this.
Maybe it's just the storytelling that falls flat on it's ass. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on. There are lots of invasive, pre-rendered cutscenes (ew). All I could tell was that they were blowing flax up in Afghanistan, but it took me a while to realize that there wasn't any story. No bad guy, no revolution, just the war in Afghanistan. There are lots of jarring transitions, both in-mission and between missions. Apparently I was playing as three different people- there are two AFO teams and some Rangers- but I couldn't tell because everyone looks and acts pretty much the same. For some reason, all the AFO team (whatever that is, I heard SEAL mentioned a few times near the end) members have beards and all the Rangers are clean shaven. And there are still no female characters. Which is too bad, since it would have bumped the terrible score up a bit. Well, there's the chopper pilot, but you don't even see her. At least she doesn't get you killed.
The story is all over the place. There are no mission briefings and little conversation to clear things up. One moment you're assaulting a camp, then defending an LZ, and then there's a vehicular segment. There is one in a helicopter where you take out mortar sites. Helicopter missions are cool, but it's too linear and scripted and I really couldn't care less about some mortar sites. Usually, you'll be wondering what the *Can'tSayThisOnTV* is actually going on. The lacking storyline could be excused if the gameplay was good.
It looks like MW2, but it is definitely not MW2.
Unfortunately, Medal of Honor is inferior even to BFBC2. Perhaps they were going for realism with the bleak, boring campaign, but the gameplay throws that out the window. In almost every mission you start with two weapons plus a pistol with unlimited ammo. You can ask your teammates for ammo, which in effect gives you unlimited ammo. Totally realistic. The enemy AI is simplistic but does a decent job, but your teammates are terrible. They are constantly getting in your line of fire, can't cover your six, and can't kill enemies three feet in front of them. If you are behind cover, even partially behind cover, you're safe, but stick your head out a little bit and you are dead within seconds. Rigid cover-based gameplay is lame in my opinion, but it's not too bad once you get used to it.
It's the little things that really ruin the campaign. Shoving static cutscenes everywhere does not make the game more cinematic. It's not as bad as Bad Company 2, but it's still pretty jarring. There are a ton of invisible walls, enemies spawn right in front of you, and there are constant notifications, including an icon that pops up whenever you get a headshot. The little voice echo was supposed to add realism but I just found it annoying. At least there aren't supply crates full of guns- but there isn't a great variety of weapons either. There is an objective indicator, but it only pops up when you pop up the HUD. You'll need it. I often had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. Checkpoints are poorly placed- sometimes there are tons when it is totally unnecessary, sometimes none when they are.
Terrorist camp number forty-nine cleared out, sir.
Despite it's flaws, the campaign is decent at first. Then it starts to get boring. By Day 2 (the third act basically) I was pushing myself to play. It basically goes like this: Assault encampment, defend position, assault, defend, etc, with some extraction mixed in there. There are the vehicular segments I mentioned, as well as a night stealth mission, but there isn't enough variety overall. The mountains of Afghanistan seem like a good setting, but there isn't enough variety in the terrain. It's basically small villages and mountain. There aren't any bunkers, cities, or cargoships here. It gets same-old very quickly. There are some fun missions, but mostly it's just the same.
Visually, Medal of Honor is nice, but nothing special. One might say it looks spectacular, but everything does nowadays, so it isn't really spectacular, is it? The game is musically sparse, and when there's music, it's of lower quality and lacks the energy of the music in CoD4 or MW2. Which is a shame, really, since better music would improve the tone and liven up the game quite a bit. One thing I found disappointing was the lack of flexibility for controls. Obviously this wouldn't be a problem for console gamers, but I prefer hold-CTRL-to-crouch and hit-z-to-prone to using one key for both. I got used to it, but I would have preferred more flexibility.
I wanted to like Medal of Honor. I enjoyed Allied Assault, which I first played years ago. I like Call of Duty, which MoH failed to emulate. Visually, it's beautiful, but the music sucks. Basically, Medal of Honor lacks the quality of Modern Warfare (1 or 2, you pick) and lacks the charm of Bad Company 2. It has a bleak, boring, poorly told storyline, no destructible environments, gameplay that is decent at best, and a lot of obvious flaws. I paid $50 for Call of Duty 4, and it was worth it just for the singleplayer campaign. I got Medal of Honor for half price at $30 and I hope the multiplayer is good, or it will have been a waste of money.
Score
Immersion: 4 - crappy story, poorly told, and lots of flaws wreck suspension of disbelief
Gameplay: 6 - decent but repetitive, at least there are some vehicular segments to shake things up a bit
Quality: 7 - it looks nice, but the music is awful
FINAL SCORE: 57%
Verdict: Medal of Honor was a good try of a jump-on-the-bandwagon modern warfare reboot. Unfortunately, in trying differentiate, they changed all the things that made Modern Warfare great.
Medal of Honor (Singleplayer) Review
Medal of Honor is a realistic portrayal of the Afghanistan war: It's bleak, boring, and has no story.
Medal of Honor (that's the full title) is a modern warfare reboot of the WWII shooter series. Obviously, it tried to follow in the footsteps of Call of Duty 4 and Battlefield 2. I say tried, because both of those were a lot better than Medal of Honor. In fact, Medal of Honor has gradually been decreasing in quality since Allied Assault, which is probably why they wanted to reboot it. Allied Assault was excellent, Pacific Assault was meh, Airborne was terrible. I'll only be covering the singleplayer campaign here. I haven't tried multiplayer, but that's not why. The multiplayer segment of the game was developed by a different company on a different engine. I'll also be comparing Medal of Honor to Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty 4 a lot.
So, let's start off with the story. You are an elite Tier 1 Operator clearing some mountains in Afghanistan, or something. There isn't much of a *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing story. There's a little bit of war room drama where your CO faces off with a general over a comm link or something like that. This isn't the deliberately over-the-top superweapon plot of BFBC2 or the dramatic if a bit implausible power struggle of Modern Warfare. It feels pretty *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing pointless, actually. Maybe it's supposed to be dark and realistic, but it just feels stupid and lacking in direction.
If only more of the campaign was like this.
Maybe it's just the storytelling that falls flat on it's ass. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on. There are lots of invasive, pre-rendered cutscenes (ew). All I could tell was that they were blowing flax up in Afghanistan, but it took me a while to realize that there wasn't any story. No bad guy, no revolution, just the war in Afghanistan. There are lots of jarring transitions, both in-mission and between missions. Apparently I was playing as three different people- there are two AFO teams and some Rangers- but I couldn't tell because everyone looks and acts pretty much the same. For some reason, all the AFO team (whatever that is, I heard SEAL mentioned a few times near the end) members have beards and all the Rangers are clean shaven. And there are still no female characters. Which is too bad, since it would have bumped the terrible score up a bit. Well, there's the chopper pilot, but you don't even see her. At least she doesn't get you killed.
The story is all over the place. There are no mission briefings and little conversation to clear things up. One moment you're assaulting a camp, then defending an LZ, and then there's a vehicular segment. There is one in a helicopter where you take out mortar sites. Helicopter missions are cool, but it's too linear and scripted and I really couldn't care less about some mortar sites. Usually, you'll be wondering what the *Can'tSayThisOnTV* is actually going on. The lacking storyline could be excused if the gameplay was good.
It looks like MW2, but it is definitely not MW2.
Unfortunately, Medal of Honor is inferior even to BFBC2. Perhaps they were going for realism with the bleak, boring campaign, but the gameplay throws that out the window. In almost every mission you start with two weapons plus a pistol with unlimited ammo. You can ask your teammates for ammo, which in effect gives you unlimited ammo. Totally realistic. The enemy AI is simplistic but does a decent job, but your teammates are terrible. They are constantly getting in your line of fire, can't cover your six, and can't kill enemies three feet in front of them. If you are behind cover, even partially behind cover, you're safe, but stick your head out a little bit and you are dead within seconds. Rigid cover-based gameplay is lame in my opinion, but it's not too bad once you get used to it.
It's the little things that really ruin the campaign. Shoving static cutscenes everywhere does not make the game more cinematic. It's not as bad as Bad Company 2, but it's still pretty jarring. There are a ton of invisible walls, enemies spawn right in front of you, and there are constant notifications, including an icon that pops up whenever you get a headshot. The little voice echo was supposed to add realism but I just found it annoying. At least there aren't supply crates full of guns- but there isn't a great variety of weapons either. There is an objective indicator, but it only pops up when you pop up the HUD. You'll need it. I often had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. Checkpoints are poorly placed- sometimes there are tons when it is totally unnecessary, sometimes none when they are.
Terrorist camp number forty-nine cleared out, sir.
Despite it's flaws, the campaign is decent at first. Then it starts to get boring. By Day 2 (the third act basically) I was pushing myself to play. It basically goes like this: Assault encampment, defend position, assault, defend, etc, with some extraction mixed in there. There are the vehicular segments I mentioned, as well as a night stealth mission, but there isn't enough variety overall. The mountains of Afghanistan seem like a good setting, but there isn't enough variety in the terrain. It's basically small villages and mountain. There aren't any bunkers, cities, or cargoships here. It gets same-old very quickly. There are some fun missions, but mostly it's just the same.
Visually, Medal of Honor is nice, but nothing special. One might say it looks spectacular, but everything does nowadays, so it isn't really spectacular, is it? The game is musically sparse, and when there's music, it's of lower quality and lacks the energy of the music in CoD4 or MW2. Which is a shame, really, since better music would improve the tone and liven up the game quite a bit. One thing I found disappointing was the lack of flexibility for controls. Obviously this wouldn't be a problem for console gamers, but I prefer hold-CTRL-to-crouch and hit-z-to-prone to using one key for both. I got used to it, but I would have preferred more flexibility.
I wanted to like Medal of Honor. I enjoyed Allied Assault, which I first played years ago. I like Call of Duty, which MoH failed to emulate. Visually, it's beautiful, but the music sucks. Basically, Medal of Honor lacks the quality of Modern Warfare (1 or 2, you pick) and lacks the charm of Bad Company 2. It has a bleak, boring, poorly told storyline, no destructible environments, gameplay that is decent at best, and a lot of obvious flaws. I paid $50 for Call of Duty 4, and it was worth it just for the singleplayer campaign. I got Medal of Honor for half price at $30 and I hope the multiplayer is good, or it will have been a waste of money.
Score
Immersion: 4 - crappy story, poorly told, and lots of flaws wreck suspension of disbelief
Gameplay: 6 - decent but repetitive, at least there are some vehicular segments to shake things up a bit
Quality: 7 - it looks nice, but the music is awful
FINAL SCORE: 57%
Verdict: Medal of Honor was a good try of a jump-on-the-bandwagon modern warfare reboot. Unfortunately, in trying differentiate, they changed all the things that made Modern Warfare great.
