14 DAY TRIAL // 
It's hard to bring a franchise back to life, especially when the last full outing, the Airborne title from 2007, was not particularly well liked by the fan base or by the reviewers. Still publisher Electronic Arts was pretty bullish before the release of the rebooted Medal of Honor, saying that the game was part of its strategy of getting the first person shooter crown from the Call of Duty franchise and Activision Blizzard.
It's even harder to create a successful reboot when the idea that seems to permeate every aspect of Medal of Honor is “Let's make something bigger and better than Modern Warfare 2”. The game has some interesting ideas and concepts but they seem to be showed off to the side as both Danger Close and DICE got a bad case of competition fever.
Medal of Honor is not entirely a bad package. It shows more respect than any other shooter on the market at the moment to the people who are actually fighting in Afghanistan. The game manages to very well show how forsaken and pointless some of the engagements are on a strategic feature while showing how taking a sand covered hill or a rusty airport can mean everything to the personnel of the United States military forces.
The multiplayer is also solid and engaging, quick and stripped down to the core mechanics, a more easy to get into mode than those offered by Modern Warfare 2 or by Battlefield Bad Company 2.
Story
The characters of Medal of Honor are pretty much fictional, although the soul of the single player campaign is made up of the heroism exhibited by American forces in Operation Anaconda, an against the clock and largely improvised effort to rescue a number of soldiers that were under heavy Taliban assault on a mountain side in tough weather conditions.
The developers at Danger Close, the former EALA studio, need to be congratulated for the limited scope of their narrative and for their efforts to keep all of it as closely grounded in real life military operations as possible, without making the leap to the sort of pseudo science fiction with American being invaded and world spawning conspiracies that Modern Warfare 2 attempted last year.
It's unfortunate that the single player does not have the time needed to actually develop the character of those who hide under such monikers as Panther, Voodoo, Mother, Rabbit, Deuce or Dusty. Maybe some flashbacks to their lives prior to Afghanistan or missions set during training or war games could have been used to flesh them out more. As they are the characters rarely elicit any emotion from the gamer and they mostly appear like professional, tough and no nonsense members of the military.
One nice touch from the developers is the lack of attention paid to the overall political implications of the story. This is a soldier based narrative and it's nice to get a break from plots within plots and betrayals that happen after every mission.
Gameplay The story has potential that it never realizes but the actual gameplay of Medal of Honor lacks even that, offering just an Afghanistan based shooting gallery where learning is often done via death, kicking in doors is limited to certain points and every level is very scripted, leading to situation where unaccounted for player actions can break the game and require a restart of the area.
This is the most infuriating aspect of the game, especially visible in the at night mission when we first meet Dusty and Deuce, which at one point involves placing beacons on three trucks. It's all supposed to go down quietly but computer controlled buddy Dusty, he of the overgrown beard, managed to miss the cue which required him to place the beacon on quite a few occasions, probably because I went up ahead in the level quicker than the game expected me too.
Similar situation can be seen in the siege level and in the Apache section of the game and the tight reins Medal of Honor needs to place on the player lead to invisible boundaries placed here and there throughout the more sprawling levels to make sure the right path is always taken. This even as Afghanistan offers the perfect terrain to make sure that any such obstacle, needed in a linear shooter, felt more like part of the scenery and did not break the immersion.
Another good idea the developers squandered is eliminating the Heads Up Display. It allows the player to become more involved in his actions and his surroundings but all the good feelings are eliminated by the childish and unneeded addition of an icon which pops up every time the player manages a headshot.
There are some very good sequences in Medal of Honor, like the desperate ranger defense mission and the long range sniper killing of Dusty and Deuce, but the rest feels like a rethread of familiar elements from Call of Duty with an added Afghanistan like coat of paint.
Graphics and sounds The single player section of Medal of Honor is built using a heavily modified Unreal Engine and that, unfortunately, shows. The team has done a great job of recreating the terrain and the feelings that Afghanistan delivers as a country, with the skies unbearably blue and the sun scorching everything during day and filing the air with a milky white glare (especially visible in the portion where you are defending Baghram from attack and in the mountain siege set piece). The omnipresent sand is also a nice addition, limiting visibility and simulating the disorientation that soldiers might feel in the middle of a firefight.
But unfortunately the beauty does not extend to the characters, their movements and the way objects look. Textures at times are ugly and monotone and characters go from one animation to another in weird fashion, with twitchy and scrambling moves.
The sound design deserves a lot of praise for the way it managed to take real world audio (the Apache one is particularly great) and integrate it into a virtual experience. The battlefield, while artificial in many other ways, is very true to life when it comes to how battle sounds.
Multiplayer DICE has been in charge of the multiplayer in Medal of Honor and they have been using their own Frostbite engine to create it. The result is an enjoyable section, fast paced and able to accommodate small unit tactics, in an otherwise underwhelming game. The modes are varied but the upgrade and customization elements offered by both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2.
There are just three classes and the customization options are much more limited than in those titles. The maps themselves are smaller than in Bad Company 2 and more linear (although they don't seem so at first sight), with the fights often leading to a vicious contest over a narrow choke point which then leads to one side getting close to the other ones spawn points. Support powers are crucial on the offensive to clear out such easily defendable positions.
Some of the graphical issues are also present here and the levels often feel uninspired, although the benefit from the impressive look of the Afghanistan countryside is still there. The urban battles are the most engaging and exciting, with more places to hide and better positions for ambushes.
Based on statements from the main producer of Medal of Honor the game needs to sell at least 3 million copies to get a sequel. On one hand I don't think that it should, because the game is sub par and there are precious little elements that could make a sequel a much better experience. Danger Close would do better to move on an original intellectual property, maybe linked to the military maybe not while DICE has a lot of fans eagerly awaiting Battlefield 3. On the other hand Medal of Honor shows that a first person shooter tackling a real modern conflict, with down to Earth mechanics and respect for the serving soldier can be created and the idea can be expanded to create more bite sized offerings focusing on specific operations and theaters of war, taking care to create a clear connection between the gamer and the characters.
The Good
The Bad
Conclusion
