Medal Of Honor Review

Have you ever ordered a steak ‘well done’ only to feel like it could have done with a bit more time on the grill?

That’s the feeling Medal of Honor leaves me with.

Set in war-torn Afghanistan and based on actual battles that took place there in 2002, MOH puts you in the boots of US Rangers & Tier 1 Operatives, the best the US Military has to offer.

This is the franchises’ first steps away from the all too familiar WW2 era, a wise decision by lead developers Danger Close.

After ten long years of the same setting and with lacklustre sales for 2007’s Medal of Honor: Airborne; EA decided to revamp the series. And make no mistake about it; MOH is not hiding the fact that it’s going straight for Call of Duty’s throne.
Now I can’t speak about MOH without directly separating the Single player from the Multiplayer, more so than with any other FPS. This is because the game uses two entirely different engines for each, Danger Close using the Unreal Engine for the SP and famed Battlefield developers DICE using their own Frostbite engine for the multiplayer.

I felt the campaign was a bit short. I had it finished in around 5 or 6 hours; and that was on hard difficulty. If you’re a regular shooter fan you’ll want to play the campaign on hard, anything less will be far too easy. The extremely predictable enemy AI doesn’t help much either, causing most fire fights to boil down to you aiming at the spot where you know the enemy will appear out of cover, firing and repeating until the battle is won.
With that said, I found myself engaged with the characters and story, the music is excellent and the sound is one of the high points in the game. The convincing military chatter adds a lot to the experience; the Apache gunship mission being a highlight in this respect and is frighteningly realistic.

The game looks good, notably the motion capture of your AI teammates looks quite believable; but overall it suffers noticeable frame rate issues in the single player campaign, mostly whenever there’s a large explosion such as air support. The game also struggles to handle draw distance very well, which is painfully clear in missions that take place in or on mountain ranges.

The multiplayer has a very similar look to Bad Company 2 which shouldn’t come as a surprise given its developer and engine. On the plus side the MP doesn’t have the same frame rate problems, although it does seem to have a small bit of lag but that can’t be blamed entirely on the engine.
The online portion of Medal of Honor feels quite thin, and I’m not sure it has enough content or staying power to go toe to toe with Black Ops come November. The game struggles to reward you for levelling up; most levels you only get a new type of ammo or nothing at all. The weapon and attachment unlocks are few and far between; which is worrying. It’s quite fast paced too, which will feel strange if your used to playing Bad Company 2 but you’ll be right at home with if you’re a Modern Warfare-er.
Medal of Honor is by no means a bad game. The single player campaign may be short and feels slightly unfinished, but the story is engaging and great fun to play through. It really makes you feel like a bad-ass Special Forces soldier.

The Multiplayer feels like a strange Bad Company/Modern Warfare hybrid; and it kind of works.

It may not have the staying power of either of those games, but like the single player campaign; it’s just great fun and surprisingly addictive.

If you love shooters with an authentic, engaging story and a fun, easy to jump into multiplayer and you just can’t wait until Black Ops, Medal of Honor is for you.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s some ‘Opfor’ forces that need to be taken care of.

Here’s our interview with Greg Goodrich the Exec Producer of Medal of Honor! Awesome guy! (and we’re still convinced its him in the pic!)