Medal of Honor Review (PS3)

Ah Lovefilm, you do serve up some mixed bags for me. Excuse the shameless promotion, but through Lovefilm I'm able to get a couple of new games every month to play. This month is one of the more contrasting offers I'd been sent. First to arrive was Medal of Honor, and secondly Star Wars Force Unleashed 2. Now I wasn't massively enthused about the arrival of Medal of Honor to be honest, so much so that I made the rookie mistake of playing Force Unleashed first!

Door hinges in Afghanistan would take years to recover

See, the problem here was that I was a massive fan of the original Medal of Honor, as I was of the Call of Duty series. The World War 2 FPS at it's finest on show. The re-imagining of Call of Duty into the Modern Warfare juggernaut didn't really sit well with me. I eventually got round to playing them, and my fears were confirmed. Massive explosions, big guns, fast paced mindless FPS game. It was a thrill ride for sure, and a lot of action packed into a few hours, but that's about your lot. The story lines were basic at best with little realism that made the original series great. So I was a little worried when I saw that Medal of Honor was following suit with its series and moving into the modern arena.

Say "Hello" to my little friend!

My fears were not immediately allayed in the first few levels. An all action explosive start to the game, but with little linking anything together as you jumped between a couple of characters serving in different sections of the American forces in Afghanistan. But at some point even unbeknownst to myself I started to really get involved in it all. I began to realise that this wasn't CoD, it wasn't a story of one super soldier against the world but a story of a potentially real campaign and the soldiers within it. It also begins to interlink brilliantly as well. At one point you take on the mantle of an infantry soldier stuck behind the front line. You're holed up in a ruined building but the Taliban forces are flooding the area. Your commanding officers calls for support are becoming more desperate. It's looking bad, I'm beginning to think that this may be one of those tearful "hold the line" moments where our heroes meet a grisly but noble death, when over the hill swoop a pair of attack helicopters and make mincemeat of the opposing forces. God Bless America! From here a quick cut scene later and you're now piloting one of the attack helicopters weapons systems and clearing out various enemy camps and targets. All goes well until you come under heavy RPG fire. Again, all looks lost until a sniper team on the nearby mountainside are on hand to save your bacon. From here follows a mission as the sniper team picking off local targets. All of this against a backdrop of political infighting as the Commanders-In-Chief back in Washington are ordering the Generals on the ground into rash moves. The whole thing climaxes with a genuinely emotional set piece which comes as a stark contrast to the adrenaline rushed final few minutes of action. The only problem I have is that even though it's a well paced, believable story, it still seems really short!

For the sake of completeness, I also tried out the multi-player mode. Again I was expecting a CoD style team death match with a ranking system. However, having been so surprised by the single player I should've really seen this coming. The multi-player mode was again really enjoyable. The main mode I was playing was a style of Bad Company 2 lite style of game. 2 teams face off, one has 5 points to defend, the other is charged with capturing them. 3 class choices, a soldier, a sniper and a spec ops (RPG wielder). It's fast paced and popular enough but I don't understand why if you put in a rank system (additions and items are unlocked as you rank up) why you can't match the game to be a little easier on the newbies like me. I was thrown in at the deep end with players so far above my rank and level it was difficult to make massive progress.

Band of Brothers: A day at the beach

So I really enjoyed Medal of Honor even though I didn't think I would. There were a few minor issues that niggle away. The game feels a little easy if I'm being honest. The A.I of both enemies and allies didn't seem the most intelligent. Enemies weren't using cover particularly smartly leaving heads exposed often making for an easy shot. They were also slow to react to my presence allowing for easy kills as you moved around the map. Your allies didn't really seem that helpful, often it seemed as though they were just waiting for me to clear out a certain area before moving on to the next.

All considered though Medal of Honor remains a great FPS with a surprisingly rounded and realistic story. It has the fast paced all action moments, but doesn't (and doesn't need to) match up to Call of Duty in that department, but for me it beats it hands down in all other areas.

8/10