Medal of Honor: Vanguard

Welcome to the 8-year old franchise that just managed to chase away all the fans with its latest installment. If anyone had doubts, I'm talking about Medal of Honor: Vanguard, the biggest disappointment that EA could provide as a present from the Easter bunny. Joke aside, how exactly do the producers expect to compete against the brilliant Call of Duty and Brothers in Arms series, if they're going to release such failures? It's true that Call of Duty 3 is as big a failure as this is, but the expectations were higher, specially when you had the chance to see where others went wrong. It might be that I'm playing the PS2 version and missing some cool gameplay mechanism that the game has on its Wii version. It might be just another World War II first person shooter... It's not the last, though...

Story You'll be playing as Colonel Frank Keegan during the four main campaigns that changed WW II's history. I'm talking about the Husky Operation, Operation Neptune, Operation Market Garden and Operation Varsity. You might recognize Operation Husky as the Allied invasion of Sicily and you'll be hearing a lot of Italian while you're "visiting" the beautiful cities. It all starts on July 10 1943, when the 82 nd airborne division landed a bit far from their planned destination. As Keegan, you'll control a couple of soldiers and lead them to victory while participating in campaigns that decide the fate of the war. During the Neptune Operation, you'll be playing an important part in the liberation of France, since this is a part of the great Overlord Operation. As you might already know, that's the famous invasion of Normandy, or that gruesome amphibious landing campaign that left behind many injured and dead men.

Being a paratrooper was never easy, specially when you'll be dropped behind the enemy lines in Holland, while starting the Market Garden operation. You'll have to conquer a couple of key locations and advance in the enemy's territory. Finally, Operation Varsity will be the largest airborne operation ever, happening on March 25, 1945 and signaling the defeat of Germany. So, you'll be victoriously crossing the Rhine and marching towards the Nazi hideout, you'll be getting medals and...it's going to be a happy ending. Lots of black and white clips where included in the game to give that authentic feeling of the '40-s and show you details about the greatest conflict that the world has ever known.

Concept & Gameplay Don't expect to be stunned by awesome concepts and things you've never seen before as it's time again to grab the same weapons and go to war, yet again in the same locations. You'll be able to use classic Axis weapons like: the MP40, the K98, the STG44 or maybe the Stick grenade for some quality explosions. Such tools of destruction will usually be gained from your foes, by picking them up from the floor. The standard Allied weapons are the arch-famous Thompson, the frag grenade, the Enfield, the Colt 45, the M1 Garand, the M9 Bazooka and the B.A.R. Two of them can even be customized and you'll add a scope to the M1 and larger ammo barrel for the Thompson. These can only make the weapon look cooler without being extremely useful. As the action goes on, you'll visit most of the countries involved in the second World War, doing a lot of damage to the locals, specially the ones that are aiding the Nazis. You'll be battling it out in the forest, in big towns or small rural settings.

The environments are pretty varied and I wish that houses were as well... We've been entering the back door and climbing the same stairs to get to the hole in the wall on the second floor from the release of the first Medal of Honor title. I can say that Vanguard brings nothing new to the series exploiting the innovations of the past installments, in a decent way, but still not delivering that "je-ne-sais-quois" to leave the fans open-mouth. EA initially wanted to implement vehicle driving missions, but still there's no trace of that, so we'll be satisfied with the standard combat missions ...or not. Most of them are something like "enter the house, shoot the Nazis and get out alive". What bothered me the most about this title was the horrendous AI and those enemy soldiers seemed more like lambs sent to the slaughter than fierce Nazis. There were some moments when I died, but it was mostly due to immense bugs that had the foes firing through walls and hitting me straight in the head.

Because you're part of an Airborne division your missions will depend a lot on the place where you land at the beginning of each campaign, since there are some places that are filled with bonuses and weapons that can change your progress drastically. Working as a team can be helpful, specially when Keegan is covered by a couple of sharp-shooters while trying to take out the first line of defense of a well-guarded bridge. Medal of Honor Vanguard, "borrowed" Call of Duty's life meter, simply a couple of tiles that appear on the screen every now and then, colored in glittering red, showing you that the going just got tough. Taking a lot of consecutive bullets will trigger such red meter alerts. The game also features some bullet-time sequences, that start right after the explosion of a grenade, or a tank shooting near you.

You'll have clouded vision, you'll see and hear everything around you in slow motion and probably end up dead. The other soldiers in your division will never die, unless it's a predefined event, usually signaled after it happens, by one of your guys saying "John Doe is down" or something like that. Pathfinding is horrible in Vanguard, if not non-existing, because you can only follow certain paths, even if you're running in the midst of a thick forest...at night. All that grass around and we can't see it moving, while we crawl through it, because we have to walk in a straight line in order to get to the other side alive.

Keegan can blow a couple of things up including bridges, doors, tanks or entire buildings and you'll do so by pressing and holding the X button that triggers an explosive mechanism. Then there's the classic "Stay away!" warning and the few seconds left till the blast. One thing that shocked me, specially in the first two missions, was that, even if was playing the game on the normal difficulty setting, Nazis were scarce and lacked from places where I, for one would have planted them. Also it bothers me that, after that target-practice with Call of Duty 3, I keep missing in Medal of Honor: Vanguard. So, if it's not my lousy aiming, it must be the game... It would be a lie not to admit that some weapon's recoil is pretty cool, but from realistic recoils to missing 40 percent of the shots there's a long way.

Video This is the greatest downside of the game... If you thought that you were reading a review that criticized Medal of Honor: Vanguard till now, wait till you read this! It looks like I'm living a nightmare, going back in time and playing a very bad Call of Duty (the very first one). I might even compare this title's graphics to the first Medal of Honor, but let's not exaggerate, since a mass of pixels that's 8 years old can't compare to....today's mass of pixels. It might be the last time that we see a Medal of Honor title on the PS2 and it's time to quit those antique graphics in the favor of the appealing next-gen visuals.

There's already a sequel coming for the PS3 and if that's not the best MOH game, everyone can start playing Call of Duty and saying "Bye bye!" to EA's game. All the soldiers look exactly the same and you could compare these sort of visuals them to the bad football sims that EA Sports pulled out of the hat a few years ago: you'll tell the difference between your soldiers and the Nazis thanks to the colors of the uniforms. I must tell you that it shocked me to find out that in 2007 we still have games, where a character or his weapon can pass through walls or the corpses disappear a few seconds after the enemies die. Thank God that at least the cutscenes look good, well it might be because they're short clips made dozens of years ago...

Sound The soundtrack saves the games and there are some of you fans of the "Saving Private Ryan" movie that will listen to the songs and remember the great movie. The atmosphere that's created by orchestral works is good enough to make you forget about the visual and gameplay flaws, at least for a little while. Dialogs are not much, soldiers scream in agony, the superiors yell and give orders and the Nazis scream in their native language. It's pretty interesting that you can witness a multicultural blending, specially when you hear Italian curses, followed by French orders and shouts in German.

Multiplayer The multiplayer features the same game modes that we've been playing since the release of the first shooter. You'll be able to choose between a regular deathmatch or a team deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill and scavenger hunt. The only new mode here is the scavenger hunt that will have you picking up supplies and delivering them in order to complete your missions. Were you expecting online play? Well, guess again, since it's split screen time and you'll be needing one hell of a TV screen to play a multiplayer game with three other friends. It can be entertaining or frustrating, depends on one's patience and the ability to have fun while watching only a small segment of your screen.

Conclusion Personally, I'm a huge Medal of Honor: Allied Assault fan and the world of WWII shooter ended there for me. I tried playing Call of Duty 2 and 3, found them appealing, but still MOHAA remains my favorite title. So, here comes Medal of Honor: Vanguard, with huge expectations from the fans (probably the producers too) and delivers the same experience that we get by playing the older titles. What's there to do? If you're a patient kind of guy, you'll wait for a sequel and hope for the best, if not and you've just bought the game... you might consider trading it for a Medal of Honor: Allied Assault CD.