A good WWII FPS for the PSP
We are back to the late 1930s, early 1940s in Europe. You're holding a Thompson MG, a pistol, and several grenades for good measure. When you realized that a grenade just blew up in your face and shoddied your vision, you immediately activate a Med-kit off screen and continue the fight. Ladies and gentlemen et les autres, this is Medal of Honor Heroes (aka MOHH), one of two first person shooters for the Medal of Honor franchise. Of course, its name would be overshadowed by other FPS titles, but those who decided to give this game a shot would enjoy a well-developed FPS that is capable of adjusting to the limitations of the PSP control scheme... for a while.
It's World War Deux and you know what that means: Axis-people-killing-time! You play 3 characters who served in the conflict and participated in some major campaigns like the Battle of the Bulge. Once you land in your location you make life difficult for your enemies: Smoking them up, blowing stuff up, and if you can manage to collect some important enemy papers that's a bonus too. With the story so paper thin that it shouldn't be talked about in length in a review, let's get straight to the mechanics. For the most part the controls work really well. Your character can at least do some fundamental commands like move himself and the camera, reload, duck, change weapons, aim down iron sights and, of course, unload the weapon ONTO SOME NOT-SAYS! OH YEAH! (or not).
Beyond how well the controls work, there's very little else to praise about the game. It's a standard FPS romp which is super-heavy in firefights and man-to-man combat. One small downside I have to note is the AI behavior. Your comrades do very little, getting the rare kill and is only there to cheer you on and give out instructions like taking cover. The enemies are no better, as they tend to just stand in the open rather than taking cover, though to their credit are expert marksmen, can overwhelm you with superior numbers, and are also unafraid to throw a ton of grenades. Another small oddity I found is that there are some omissions when it comes to animations, which is just lazy in my opinion. You can see your character reload a gun, throw a punch or a grenade, but it feels really weird when there are no animations showing you that you've used a first aid kit other than the health bar, or when you kicked a grenade without seeing any shuffling of the feet. There is also little variety in the missions because, as I mentioned before, it's just about blowing Stuff X up, fold down Area Y, stealing Object Z and escaping. In its entirety, however, it's really hard to fault the gameplay; it's entertaining if a bit generic and stale, and can really suck the player into the action.
However, once you step outside of shooting up foes you can start finding holes in the product. For one thing the presentation is comically laughable, at least from the presentation standpoint. I know The 3rd Birthday (another game I've written a review for) came out years later, but it goes to show how unimpressive MOHH is. Textures are blocky if not nonexistent, and the character models look really really retro, as if they've been pulled out of the PS1. The only graphics that don't look dated are the menus and the black and white videos that are characteristic the WWII FPS genre. To the game's credit, I like the one track they've used in this entire game, the theme they've recycled from MOH Vanguard. Yes, it's a bit of a rip-off but at the same time it's a really great piece, sounding both slightly somber and heroic simultaneously.
Another real problem I found about the game is that it is very brief. I've beaten the game in the normal difficulty setting with an attempt to earn some silver medals (beating primary + secondary objectives), and even then I failed to break the 5-hour mark. However, for those who want to uncover everything that this game has to offer, there are three difficulty settings, each stage requiring you to get a gold medal to ensure 100% completion, though that's easier said than done, since a gold medal means that you need to do all the objectives, kill enough guys and with a high accuracy rate. There's also a skirmish mode, which is like multiplayer mode but with bots, and you are pressed to kill as many bots as you can without dying too much. Then there's the aforementioned multiplayer that allows up to 32 players (via infrastructure mode but other than that it's 8 players), which is no doubt the highlight of the game, assuming you have 32 people with you.
Medal of Honor is a simple but fun game. It doesn't try to do too much and if you can roll with its WWII narrative then you'll have a blast. Unfortunately, unless you have buddies that have a copy of the game I'm skeptical about this game's staying power since the campaign is much, much shorter than the average action game of FPS game. Assuming that you don't have those friends, a rental should provide you ample opportunity to see 95% of the game's content.
Gameplay: It's simple, the controls work, but the AI is horrid. Still, shooting up Notsays while bullets are whizzing around is pretty exhilarating. 4/5
Presentation: The theme is awesome. The graphics? Not so much. 3.5/5
Bonuses, Alternatives, Replay Value: The skirmish mode and the multiplayer are nice diversions but the campaign really cuts down the game's staying power. 3.5/5
Final Score: 11/15 (around 3.5 stars)
A should-rent because of its short campaign.
