The Medal of Honor beta has finally made it way to x-box live for commoner to enjoy(who pre-ordered of course, or got lucky and got one free from the Best Buy website).  I’ve played some and frankly, the game feels like a derivative . It’s got all the same gameplay stuff.   Noob toobs, kill streaks, yatta, yatta.  You’ve seen it all before.  I’d say you get killed a bit faster but thats it.

The whole destructible environment stuff DICE has been cutting a niche in the shooter market with is absent in Medal of Honor.  They already said it wouldn’t have much destructible environments before so I was expecting it.  The class customization is similar to Battlefield to where the game already has classes set out for you and you can unlock stuff for each as you use them.

It’s mostly about infantry combat.  There were some tanks scattered around one map I played in but I rarely saw anyone get in them and the few that did were blown up shortly after.

The kill streaks seem to be based on what class you’re playing.  As the Rifleman class I was able to call down an air strike by using a set of binoculars and pointing where I wanted the bombs to hit.  This feels pretty redundant since you have to poke your head out and risk being shot while doing this.  You’ be just as well off shooting them yourself if you have the luxury of staring at the enemy.  The air strike takes a second or so to actually happen and if I’m not mistaken friend and foe alike can see where it’s going to hit before it does.  The strike itself has a surprisingly small area of effect and does almost no splash damage.  I think I’ve only seen one person ever get killed by one.

As a sniper my kill streak bonus was basically a UAV.  You pull out something that looks like a walkie talkie, press a button and suddenly everyone on your team can see enemies on their radar within their vicinity. Getting enough kills to earn a second killstreak bonus just seems to let you use the same exact bonus over again.  You don’t seem to get different bonuses as you keep racking kills.

It’s hard to describe but the graphics but they’re really nothing impressive at all.  I mean it’s nothing horrible but it’s nothing to gawk at.  It looks worse than Call of Duty 4 but it looks better than Crackdown.  Over all I’d say it’s average and the art style itself is nothing out of the ordinary. Alot of brown and gray.  It makes finding enemies a bit difficult.

The beta includes two modes, Combat Mission and Team Assault.  Combat Mission is basically Bad Company’s Gold Rush.  One team tries to destroy some objects and other try to defend them.  In the game’s description of Team Assault it say it’s like Death Match but based on points earned.  So you’d think the team that kills more would win.  Wrong.  I’ve been on the team getting killed more and still come out with a win.  Since it’s based on points achieving things like headshot kills and assists help alot.  Essentially it practically comes down to luck.  Who doesn’t try and aim for the head?  And the game seems to count assists only if you do a significant amount of damage and don’t get the kill.  All I have to say is why couldn’t it just be normal deathmatch?  They better have it in the full game.

The worst thing this game suffers from judging from the demo is that it brings nothing new to the table, does nothing different and does nothing better than the competition.  They played it safe.  You’ve seen this all before and it was in a game you’ve probably played before called Call of Duty 4.