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style="font-style: italic;">The enemy is well-equipped as
well, and just as deadly as you are.  Shoot first, ask
questions later!

If you want to talk about a difficult
market to penetrate,
let’s talk about modern first person shooters. 
Call of Duty has taken the western world by storm, but the
gang at EA
and DICE aren’t about to give up on taking a piece of that pie. style="">  Medal of Honor, their new
FPS, takes a
serious and fairly realistic storyline and pairs it up with that same
adrenaline filled, grind-but-not-a-grind multiplayer that millions of
people
play every night. 

You’ll take the role of several
soldiers in the war on
terror in Afghanistan over the course of the campaign. 
Battles will be won with your eyes between
the sights of a rifle, manning a machinegun in the back of a truck,
riding an
ATV behind enemy supply lines, and even controlling a veritable
battleship of
laser guided weapons via laser targeting. 
You’ll have to be precise and deadly with these weapons,
because your opponents
are shooting to kill!  A
few good hits
and you are down for the count, in single or multiplayer.

Cautions

The ESRB gives this a Mature rating for Blood, Strong Language, and Violence. This game certainly does earn its Mature rating. It’s a bloody game, and with the ability to manipulate corpses with further gunfire and the ‘colorful’ commentary of your squad in singleplayer, not for the little ones to see or hear.

Gameplay - 80 / 100

Storming around urban environments, the objective almost always remains the same—kill or be killed. You do not have a health bar and instead your HUD will get bloodier and bloodier to indicate when you’re about to fall, but this will recover if you go without getting shot for some time. This time is significantly increased when you’re playing the Tier 1 online challenge mode, so getting in the habit of employing cover and lean tactics is critical to your survival.


Whether you’re using analog sticks or a mouse, aiming down the sights is quick and easy to land those headshots. There is no cover system, but you can go into a crouch or prone very quickly, and using the lean feature, can somewhat simulate cover. Just be careful of sticking your head out into a sniper’s scope!


Aiming grenades is a bit of a chore, but after some practice you can nail people behind walls like a champ. This is also the first game that I’ve played that didn’t have either completely mandatory, or completely useless night vision. You’ll get some use out of it every now and then and it makes spotting opponents hiding among debris incredibly easy. Ammo for your primary weapon Is scarce in the campaign, so be prepared to switch to other weapons or ask your teammates for ammo as the mission goes on—they are quite lengthy.

Graphics - 90 / 100

Everything from the weapons to the lighting is very well done. Muzzle flashes are vibrant and can be used as a way to detect players out of sight range. The slowdown when you take heavy damage or have a grenade blow up nearby can be really distracting and doesn’t add anything to the visual experience. Textures are solid, even up close.


Many of the animations are top-notch, but still nothing really stands out. The AI in the campaign will slide behind cover, dive in dangerous situations, and generally die in a visually pleasing manner that doesn’t look scripted. Explosions are a bit subdued, namely the RPG, but for a game focused on looking down an iron sight and shooting people in the head, it’s not a deal breaker for the graphics.

Sound - 77 / 100

Gunfire, whizzing bullets, the sounds of your weapons firing…. The major components of a war game are all good. The sounds of the cover and concrete being destroyed by gunfire you’re hiding behind are wonderful and really make you panic to return fire or find more protective cover. The explosions effects of grenades, RPGs, and Mortars coming crashing down range from wonderful to pathetic. Unless the explosion is on top of you, it sounds like a weak piece of fireworks.


The music is your standard war tunes, and serves as functional background music to your menus. In game, the music is barely there (if at all!) and while some may see that as helpful to locating your opponents, others might find it lazy. Your squad mates love to talk, and whether it’s shouting about opponents down or about how mad they are using a variety of four letter words, it comes through crisp and clear.

Multiplayer - 90 / 100

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style="font-style: italic;">Sadly, the vehicles aren't in
multiplayer.  I guess we'll have to turn to Twisted Metal for
our dose of machine guns and cars.

As Coalition or OPFOR, a variety of team-based multiplayer
modes await.   You
pick one of three
classes (Rifleman, Special Ops, or Sniper) and as you accumulate kills
and
score with them, you level each up to unlock new weapons and ammunition
for
your weapon kit.  You
can customize your
loadout between deaths, and the respawn timers are rather short. style="">  The maps range from lots
of narrow alleys, to
hilly terrain that favors those that have the high ground.

Value - 77 / 100

59.99 is a price not easily paid for what amounts to a Modern Warfare 2 clone with a few new features and a better campaign. However, it comes with the original Medal of Honor Frontline, giving it a much needed boost in value. The multiplayer is as addictive as the game it copies, and while that adds to the value, it also makes you wish they did a little bit more with it to push the envelope of the genre.


Be careful buying of it used. EA is including a map pack with the game and forcing people to pay 9.99 if they don’t have the respective code.

Lasting Appeal - 82 / 100

Tier 1 actually gives the single player a good bit of replayability. This mode puts you through the campaign on the hardest difficulty with additional handicaps, and it’s played like a time attack mode. You complete the stages as quickly as possible, and you get bonuses for melee kills, headshots, streaks of each, and more. You then place on the leader boards and compare yourself to the best of the best. The multiplayer is hit or miss, and if you like these types of combat, odds are you’re buying it for that and will love it regardless. If you have an interest in the game to begin with, you’ll keep coming back for more, but otherwise this won’t hold your attention too long.

Pros and Cons

Pros

-A huge leap over the previous Medal of Honor

-Good feel to combat, good visuals

-Great replayability to single and multiplayer.


Cons

-Stop trying to be Modern Warfare 3!

-Each stage feels like a bunch of ‘rooms’ of enemies, then a door you kick down, repeat until end. More variety within the stages would be nice.

-Defensive support powers are pretty terrible compared to their Offensive counterparts.

Conclusion

It’s still a solid game, but the new Medal of Honor doesn’t go far enough with the formula. It feels like too much of a cash-in on the current craze of Call of Duty, and while it makes admirable steps to making it more valuable and less repetitive, it’s still the same game at heart. On the plus side, it does come with a beta code for Battlefield 3!

Overall 80/100 - Good

Metacritic
Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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