A very lackluster AAA release for 2010
Oh poor Medal of Honor, seemed like you were doomed from the start. You come out a month after the sales juggernaut that was Halo Reach and that's not even counting Call of Duty: Black Ops will pull considering the popularity of that franchise. But also, there was always this kind of..."off" feeling about the game, from its severely lackluster beta to the controversy concerning the use of the Taliban, I wasn't exactly having a ton of hopes for the game. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the game as the campaign has some cool moments and multiplayer tends to have lots of replay value in and of itself but the main issue that plagues Medal of Honor is a sort of identity crisis: 2 separate modes, 2 teams and a feeling that the game is trying to be something else other than what it is.
The campaign centers on a group of soldiers during the Iraq War as they help rescue their trapped brethren, take down enemy strategic positions and survive the conflict before they can go home. Rather short sentence describing the story, isn't it? Well that's partly two-fold: one as that you don't get a central villain in the game, an overarching goal that will take you to the game's conclusion. The campaign feels like you're just being told to do things yet don't get a sense of how important it is or what its impact is. While it would probably be unrealistic to put a wisecracking baddie, the game feels like a bunch of objectives you accomplish yet no thread that ties them together other than "because we're fighting the enemy". Another issue people have had is the fact that the campaign is rather short and while the game didn't keep track of it, I'm pretty sure a good 5 or 6 hours was spent on the campaign alone...on Hard. I don't personally think it's an issue since by the time the final missions were coming along I felt like any more and the game would start to grow tedious, it's like putting 50 ingredients on a burger: you could do that but when 5 or 6 does the job, why have so much else?
While EA Los Angeles, renamed to Danger Close worked on the single player, Dice of Battlefield and Mirror's Edge fame did the multiplayer and this is where the main issue I have with the game is: it's basically a Bad Company 2 mod over top Call of Duty gameplay. Whereas Activision's flagship series tends to be more arcade-y and up close fighting since it's very easy to lone wolf that game, Battlefield tends to require more teamwork, strategy and communication. Medal of Honor doesn't carve out its own niche to separate it from those previous 2 series, or something like Killzone 2. Not to mention there's not a lot of gametypes with a limited number of maps on those gametypes, class progression has 3 classes up to level 15 and the "customization" is somewhat laughable since there's not a wide range of weapons to use. Spawn killing seems to be all the rage right now and needing to unlock the sniper scope feels kind of stupid since it's hard to provide cover fire to a team who probably has 4 teammates, all with scopes. One cool thing they added was when you get a killstreak reward, you can choose to offer defensive abilities such as more deadlier ammo or flak jackets for better defense or pick the standard air strike and mortar fire. It's nothing compared to the customizable set of Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops but it offers some different strategy.
My general feeling on Medal of Honor? It feels like a stopgap; it's a game you play occasionally while you wait for something else to come down the line. "Well there's not much else out I want to play until <insert game name here> comes out" is kind of how I see this game, it's not offensive, it's not awful and poorly made but it's not anything remarkable either. With Bad Company 2: Vietnam coming, Battlefield 3 in the works and of course Black Ops, some of you might say "why bother" and others will probably just check it out for curiosity's sake but color me unimpressed on this one.
