Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

I really wanted to like this game. I waited a bit to buy it, and bought it along with its first expansion pack (Spearhead) which I haven't played yet. I won't say I disliked it, but I can't rave about it. It just wasn't that much fun to play. There are a lot of good things about the game, a lot of mediocre things, and some things that need fixing. Maybe the expansion will be better. The good, it gives an excellent scope of feel, at times, of battlefield conditions. The beach landing at Normandy was very, very cool. However, I had to play it on easy because of the way you got targeted by the machine guns. Maybe there is a trick to dodging, but I couldn't figure it out. The difference between medium and easy is that you move faster, so you can get to the next barricade and thus evade the fire. I really liked driving the tank and blowing up houses. And at times, being part of a team, killing Nazis and being in a big fire fight, it was very cool. The mediocre. The game got monotonous. You kill Nazis. You kill more Nazis. You kill still more Nazis. After a while, you don't even think of them as people, just Nazis that you need to kill to move on. They aren't very individual, and there isn't much of a story being told, I.E., a main guy that you are supposed to kill, or are opposed to. Granted, this is a WWII game, and the average Joe grunt wasn't a part of the big picture, but still, it was just the same thing over and over again. In addition, most of the levels involved sniping. For campers, this is great. But at times, you had to go out in the open and get hit just so you could figure out where the enemy was hiding. Sure, it added to the suspense, and was fun at first, but then it got old. Lastly, your squad mates for the most part are useless. You wind up doing most of the killing, and if too many of them die, you lose and have to restart from your last save. What needs fixing. Sliding along walls, you tend to get hung up on the wall. You also move very slowly, especially in snow and sand. So this might be realistic, but if you need to move quickly, because a sniper has you in his sights, well, good luck. You don't jump much either, which is fine, I hate jumping challenges in FPS games.
Another thing, dead bodies. Sometimes they disappear, sometimes they don't. To me, you do it one way or another. I like having dead guys around. It makes it more realistic. OK, some real gripes. There are certain levels where Nazis are endlessly coming until you do something, like reach a certain point or finish a level. They literally come out of the woodwork. Now, in some games this is fine, but if Medal of Honor is supposed to be realistic, how realistic is it that endless guys come? It turns into a shooting fest until you can get to the next point. Grenades - when you throw a grenade into a room, the AI gets hokey. The Nazis will run over to the grenade and wait to get blown up. While this is entertaining since they fly through the air, it isn't very realistic. They do use grenades against you, which is pretty cool, haven't seen that since Half-Life. Last gripe - the game was WAY too linear. Like in the forests, you never got the feeling of "space" to roam around in. I know, the engine can't support it, but still, it takes away from the realism when doors are locked, you can't move up a hill, roads are closed off on both sides by "dense" brush, etc. In a real war, you go everywhere to fight and avoid getting killed. In this game, you walk towards the enemy in a virtual tunnel and shoot until the enemy is dead. Overall, I did like it, I just can't rave about it. I don't really understand how it spawned so many games, I have so overdosed on all things German that it will be a long time before I try another WWII shooter. Personally, I enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein better - except for the GLARING fact that the Germans in that game spoke English.


Going German with the sound was good. All of your weapons sound very cool. The machine guns in the towers are raspy when they are shooting at you, the sound is different when you take over a gun. And the Germans ALWAYS announce themselves before you go into a room or they charge you. They are certainly portrayed as a yappy bunch. OK, so let me end my review on a positive note, because after re-reading this it sounds like I am griping. I am not - I just wanted to be blown away by this game because of all the reviews and all of the hype, and the fact that this game spawned a relatively new genre (Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942, to name a few). But I didn't get it. I had more fun, believe it or not, with Unreal Awakening, which I played right before this. If this game had come out after Half-Life, I probably would've raved about it, but it just didn't do enough new, original things to warrant the hype. OK, I blew trying to be positive about it. Maybe Spearhead will be better, we'll see.


Basically you perform lots of missions and fight Nazis. I won't go into gameplay detail, other than to say that you do some fun things, like drive a tank and blow stuff up, and you get to blow stuff up, you get into some major shoot outs, and you kill lots and lots and lots and lots of Nazis. There are even some missions where you impersonate a Nazi and walk around without killing anyone, until the alarm goes off. I would have liked to have the option, in addition to crouching, to laying down. In a fire fight, no one is taking a knee. You get low fast. For that matter, you get low and try to dig into the ground.