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The Medal of Honor series has always been one of Electronic Arts' flagship titles. Each entry in the series is usually
the EXACT same thing, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still a fun game. Eventually, the formula will get tiring,
but not yet. You play as Lt. Mike Powell, and this game takes place well into World War II. You are sent on numerous one-man
army style missions against the Axis forces throughout the war, but the entire story isn't covered in this one game. No, you
have to play ALL the games to get a complete story of the Second World War and its non-existent killing machines, who are
featured in the Medal of Honor games exclusively. Throughout your service, you take part in Operation Torch, infiltrate a
U-boat facility, take place on the Omaha Beach landing, cut through Axis forces in France, and finally end up in Fort Schmerzen
for your final mission. Of course, because this is after all an Action Game, that is a fair bit of storyline. The problem
is, is that there is no input of any kind from your character, so you never hear him talk to anyone or anything. Fortunately
that problem was fixed in the video diary cut-scenes of the 1st expansion, but I won't go into that here.
Anyways; graphically, this game was terrific when it first came out. Of course, it uses the Quake III engine, which was
a glorious engine when it first was available to developers. But this game used it close to the max. A very good example is
on the Omaha beach level. When you are charging towards the beach all the crap hits the fan as your squad members are blown
away (no gore however) as shells make dents in the sand. At the same time the ground shakes as machine gun fire sweeps the
remnants away. It's all a terrific display of the PC's capabilities (of about 3 years ago), and has yet to be matched by a
Medal of Honor game (because they were all on the consoles except for this). The sound and music are equally impressive as
all the glorious and enriching sounds of hot lead escaping a barrel sound strangely like the ones in Saving Private Ryan.
The music is full orchestral and it rips the depression feeling right from the 40's augments their impact in this package.
Gameplay is standard action game. You pick up weapons as you go and receive ammunition from defeated enemies. The largest
problem, however, is that you can carry way too much and live way too easily. You can take up wards of 20 shots on the easier
modes and still more than 5 on hard. Also, at one point I could carry my pistol, 6 grenades, a Browning Automatic Rifle, a
Thompson, AND a shotgun. World War 2 was not about one man armies! Another problem is artificial intelligence. Enemies will
just stand their and shoot you. They don't move for the most part, but they keep on shooting you blindly until you or they
die. But where the game loses the most points is how boring most of the post D-Day missions are. It feels like the developers
wanted to just use the exact same textures on the levels. It was always snowing, and it was always night time. Another problem
was that there were near impossible missions where enemies would use their weapons to shoot you down when you could barely
see them. Often times there were a thousand of them just shooting and eventually you'd die anyways because of their insane
accuracy.
Multi-player features plenty of maps which are mostly well constructed and fun to play. You have your standard gametypes
(minus capture the flag) and some objective modes added in for good measure. My personal favourite is the Omaha
beach level where you have to sneak into the bunkers and detonate two cannons. First you have to get past machine gun fire
from enemy players and detonate bangolores. Then you have to go through the trenches and through the bunkers three levels
and then you get to go through more trenches. At last you have to take 5 seconds to set the bomb and then wait another 5 seconds.
On with the review. There are still several problems with mutli-player as well. At first, before any expansion, the weapons
were terribly inaccurate. Second, there are ZERO physics as you can just aim at someone and not have to calculate running
speed and aim ahead. You can just line up sights and fire and they'll be hit. This is another reason why I took major points
off.
However, if you don't care about realism, and are willing to go through fun levels and then trudge through bortastic
ones, then this is a decent package; although there are some much better choices.
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