Ever since EA announced it was rebooting it's Medal of Honor franchise and setting it in modern day Afghanistan, I have been excited. It takes a serious effort to pull off the feat of depicting a very real war at a time when that war is still current; soldiers are still out there doing things being portrayed in this game. Turn-on CNN or Fox News for 10 minutes and see if they don't bring it up. EA tasked its LA studio, turned Danger Close with creating the single player portion of the game, and Swedish Battlefield developer DICE with crafting the multiplayer side. The result is essentially two games that do not feel connected to the other. Unlike other modern war shooters where the single player doesn’t stray far from the multiplayer, this feels like two different games in one package, that's what made writing this Medal of Honor review so difficult. The result: a jarring mixture of different ideas, designs and overall feel. The single-player campaign is set up by the September 11th terrorist attacks that ignited the war on terror and takes place over a six-month period. From there you strap on the boots of two different Tier 1 operators, Rabbit of AFO Neptune and Deuce from AFO Wolfpack. Throughout the campaign you take part in various real world events, such as the capturing of Bagram Air Base from the Taliban in late 2001.
The real purpose of the campaign isn't to provide an action packed thrill-a-minute experience, though it is but rather to open the window into the lives of the men who are on the front lines of this war, the ones who have sacrificed their lives at home in order to protect the country they love. A brothers-in-arms story takes shape though the 6-7 hour experience, as you shift story perspectives between the different characters, which all link together in some way as their paths intersect. As they interact with each other, you move from one character to the other and it makes for great pacing as there is hardly a let up in the action or story telling. The story is also broken up with a variety of things to do and accomplish, as you don't just run and gun the whole time, but rather you are rewarded with a few gems through out the game. At the end of Medal of Honor's story, I was feeling the same thing I did when I first saw Black Hawk Down, empathy. After you finish a level in the game for the first time, a new mode is unlocked called Tier 1 mode. In Tier 1 mode the difficulty is ratcheted up and a series of stipulations are put into place as it acts as a score attack mode with leader boards for different categories like head shots, grenade kills, accuracy and so on. For those who want a serious challenge with leader board ranking on the line, Tier 1 mode isn't to be missed and a very welcome addition to the single player campaign.
Multiplayer is a different story, and a larger part of Medal of Honor's package than the single player offering. DICE built the multiplayer on it's proprietary Frostbite engine, the same as it's Battlefield Bad Company games, but don’t expect huge levels with massive destruction and vehicles. It's a faster pace than Battlefield, more akin to the Modern Warfare series. The multiplayer is much like those before it, choose a class, rifleman, spec-ops or sniper, which dictates what kind of weapons load out you can choose from the beginning and go to work. As you progress in multiplayer you will unlock attachment options for your weapons load outs. Nothing that hasn’t been done before in other modern war shooters but is essential to the depth of the multiplayer. It also has a great set of modes available, including my favorite, combat mission, which is much like Rush Mode from Battlefield, but given its own set of rules for Medal of Honor. DICE does introduce a few interesting twists to the kill streak idea in that it's not given for a set number of kills, but at a set number of points, of which you get a minimum of 10 for a normal kill, but you can get an additional five points if you gamble and aim for for a head shot, and even five more for a savior kill resulting in 20 points per kill when you need 50 for your first kill streak.
This feature review conludes on the next page, please click below to see our final thoughts on Medal of Honor.
