Developer - Danger Close (singleplayer)

DICE (multiplayer)

Publisher - Electronic Arts

Now this review is a tricky one to start off. I wasn't really sure how I could comment on the graphics and sound etc, because this game feels more like 2 seperate ones. The single player side of it is developed by Danger Close, and uses the Unreal Engine 3 throughout, whereas the Multiplayer is Developed by Dice and uses the Frostbite Engine previously seen in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Both have there plus sides and there negatives, so rather than just give the game one over all score, I am going to review both the Single Player and The Multiplayer aspects and score them individually.


Single Player

This latest iteration of Medal of Honor acts as a reboot to the series and is set in the ongoing conflict in Aghanistan. For most of the game you play the roll of 'Rabbit' as you fight your way through the usual get to Point A, Defend Point A style missions.

The campiagn sees you fighting in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. You play as multiple characters, each with their own style of missions. Levels range from long distance sniping, hostage rescue and even a brief stint as a Helicopter Pilot.

I prefered playing the sniper missions over the others. I don't know what it is, but I really enjoy this style of gameplay. The Chernobyl level in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is what really set the standard for this game style. Playing as a sniper you are basically in cover, with your spotter telling you where each enemy is, and it's your job to take them out quietly and quickly. The enemies reaction when you miss, is what makes it feel so real. Initially they look around confused by what just happened, then rush for cover behind rocks or trees. And sometimes even run out quickly to grab the weapon they forgot to pick up. In a kind of sick and twisted way, it makes actually picking them off one by one even more satisfying. However, as with the rest of the game, for the most part the enemy AI is rubbish.



Enemies tend to always run and hide behind rocks, but then it turns into a game of 'Stache Whacker*' (*Left 4 Dead 2 mini-game). All you need to do is sit and wait for them to take it in turns to pop their heads up out of cover, while taking them out one bt one. Sadly this makes the game feel easy on any difficulty, because the enemies are too predictive, and this play style stays consisistent throughout.

Another thing I noticed quiet a few times, which for me became a issue after realising it wasn't a one time thing, was that you could be stood looking at a path ahead, and there's no enemies to be seen at all, but as you get closer, the scripting kicks in, and enemeies just appear. Now I don't mean they run out of cover and start attacking you, they literally just appear in the middle of a wide open area. It felt more like I was playing Medal of Houdini.

I experienced 2 instances of my game freezing half way through a level, which resulted in me having to turn off the xbox. There was also one occasion where the game wouldn't load the next objective no matter what I did to try initiating it, which resulted in having to restart the whole level again, luckily it happened at the beginning of a level so it wasn't too frustrating.

The graphics are a bit hit and miss, The daytime levels look extremely good, the lighting is realistic, and the atmosphere makes it feel like you are actually there. However, in comparison to this, the night time missions are very dull and bland looking, and aren't really add anything special to the game.

The musical score is very good for the most part, and set points in certain missions have that epic wartime struggle feel to them. One thing I felt was slightly out of place though, was at one point while blowing things up in a helicopter, a 'Linkin Park' song began to play. I like Linkin Park, but it felt like it served no real purpose and kinda took attention away from what was actually happening.

One of my favourite parts in the Singleplayer campaign came when me and my squad were hold up in a small shack being attacked from all angles in the mountains, with our cover slowly being destroyed. Bullets were literally flying everywhere, the team ammo supply was running out and they just relentlessly kept coming at us. It had a real epic feel to it which I haven't had in many FPS's as of late.

Although there's the problems stated above, with the bad AI and the game freezes, I still actually enjoyed playing through it. It's not the best game out there at the minute, and definately isn't something I'd rush out to buy at the current release price, but I see this game inevitably coming down to around £17.99 by the time Call of Duty: Black Ops has been out for a month or two, and at that point it's definately worth checking out. I really liked the last few missions, and it has what I personally thorugh was a very good ending.

A new feature for the series is 'Tier 1 Mode'. This lets you replay the levels you have completed in the campaign but is set against the clock. You have Par times to complete each level under, and you earn times for headshots/killstreaks. These are generally quiet easy, the only challenge in them is the fact that there are no checkpoints at all. If you die towards the end of a level, you will have to start it all again, which can be quiet frustrating. But the Par times are actually quiet forgiving, if you take your time and dont just try rushing the level, you can easily manage to finish it with a few minutes to spare.

The single player achievements are mostly straight forward. Alot of them are unmissable, and unlocked just from finishing the levels. Each level has a seperate achievement for completing a certain requirement. Such as beating a certain part in under 2 minutes and getting x amount of kills without being detected. They are all pretty easy to get really, and playing through the game on Hard on your first playthrough will unlock the other difficulty achievements as they are all stackable. There's also the usual achievements such as kill 5 enemies with one grenade, get 30 pistol kilss etc. I'd give the achievement difficulty on the single player mode 5/10.

Overall I think it's definately worth checking out, and with a completion time of around 4-5 hours it's not the worse game you can play if you're bored or just want some easy achievement points. I give the Single Player 6.5/10,


Multiplayer

The Multiplayer aspect of this game will be pretty familiar to fans of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It uses the same game engine, and so has the same excellent graphics. However rather than having the wide open areas like Bad Company 2, this game has much smaller maps, and the game is fast paced and hectic like Modern Warfare 2. Rather than dying and having to wait 10 seconds before you can respawn again, this game respawns you within 3 seconds and puts you straight into the fight again. Put simply, you WILL die alot. It can be very annoying and off putting to knew player but with a little patience you'll eventually deal out as good as you get.

I was very hyped for the multiplayer of this game, I'm a huge fan of BFBC2, and used to love MW2 before the cheaters took over it. After my first online game I was very dissapointed with it. I felt majorly underpowered. I must have died around 20 times and only had about 2 kills. Enemy weapons were all modified and felt much more powerful than mine, as soon as I ran around a corner I was instantly sniped, and the game has no kind of kill cam whatsoever, so you have no idea where you were killed from. Which leads to another problem that I'll get to later. After playing about 5 games I decided I hated the multiplayer and went back to finishing off the Campaign.

I came back a few days later, because I knew I was going to write this review, and I couldn't really base it on my lack of skill. After still dying instantly, and being killed with no idea where the enemies were, I started playing a little more tactically. I stopped just trying to run to objectives, and instead started just hiding in places and watching how the enemies worked, and where the positions they hid were. I quickly learnt the best routes to outflank them and get a few kills from behind. And with every match I started getting more and more kills, and was ending them with a postive Kill/Death ratio. I actually found myself getting hooked.




The matches in general are pretty short, some game modes require you to hold a position for 5 minutes, and if you are successful the game ends there and then, however when on the attacking team, we once finished a match by destroying both objectives in around 47 seconds. Because of this some matches to feel really short, but it's also very good for dropping in and out of games when you have half an hour to spare. Bad Company 2, used to take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour to finish one match, so for me this is a very welcome addition.
Not all game modes are over so quickly though. Modes like Sector control can take upto 20 minutes to finish, and is probably the best mode to use if you want to level up quickly. Because you have a longer time period to earn more XP points.

Like most online FPS games now, points you earn online, are translated into XP points which level up your character, resulting in unlocks. These range from new weapons, to new scopes or ammo types.
There are 3 multiplayer classes which consist of Rifleman, Special Ops, and Sniper.
Dice also seem to have taken a leaf out of Call of Duty's book, by adding kill streak awards. Get so many points in the round and you will unlock the option to either use Offensive or Support Rewards. Offensive rewards are things like Guided Rockets, Artillery Strikes etc, while Support Rewards help boost your teams effectiveness by giving them things like Ammo Drops, Kevlar, and using a UAV to show enemy locations on everyones radars. There are 7 levels of rewards, and you unlock them by earning points without being killed.

Something I noticed is that due to there being no kill cam, everyone seems to camp. Snipers just sit at the back of a map, killing everyone, and due to there being no bullet drop its a easy option for new players to actually manage to get some kills. People that aren't sniping tend to either be all camping around the objective killing anyone who comes close, or just camping in a corner somewhere near your base killing you as you run past. It's a major problem, and I can't help but think that the achievements are responsible for this.

One of the hardest achievements in the game is for using all 7 offensive support items. Because this means you have to get lots of points without dying, it gives everyone a reason to just hide back and shoot people from a distance. It happens in almost every game you join, but luckily for me, if someone kills be 6 times in a row, I make it my goal to find them and finally get the kill, and that adds a element of fun that I actually enjoy in every game.

The achievements in general are pretty straigh forward, they range from playing each game mode for 2 hours, reaching maximum rank in one class, being in the top 3 of the scoreboard in 10 games and simply playing each game mode for 2 minutes. They can all be unlocked gradually and although you can focus on getting each one, I found they just naturally came with general progression using one class. They can take a while to unlock them all though due to the 'playing each mode for 2 hours' achievements. I give the achievement difficulty a score of 6/10.

Overall the Multiplayer is actually very good. It takes time to get used to, and the amount of times you will die at first is extremely off putting, but I recommned you stick at it and eventually you will get the hang of things and have one of the best multiplayer experiences available at the minute. And for that reason I give it 8/10.