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The 'Medal of Honor' single player campaign ends abruptly after about 4 hours of in-game play and is symptomatic of a game that feels as though developers rushed it to the market before it could meet its full potential. The 'Medal of Honor' franchise totally dominated the World War II, first-person shooter games on the previous generation of consoles. Replete with oversight from Dreamworks, the franchise had loads of polish and an awe-inspiring theatrical game design.  Expectations for its resurrection as modern-day shooter set in Afghanistan were very high. For next-gen consoles, Activision's 'Call of Duty' thrust ahead as the cutting edge title in military shooters. Its towering achievement being last year's 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II'.  'Medal of Honor' feels like a pale clone compared to it. The controls feel the same, the characters and game environments look the same - even the in-game menu looks like it's ripped out of the COD franchise. 'Medal Of Honor' plays like a decent downloadable 'Modern Warfare' expansion - something that game distributor EA can't be happy about if it was looking to topple COD. Simply put, 'Medal of Honor' doesn't tread any new ground beyond setting the game in the Afghan war.  I actually really liked these surroundings and the commitment to combat authenticity. For most of the game, you play as a Tier One Operative - essentially the “Elite of the Elite” of U.S. Special Forces autonomous teams of commandos who serve as the war's frontline. These guys are bad-ass. The single player campaign thrusts you into the chaotic world they inhabit and shows you the amazing team reliance they must employ to survive Unfortunately, on the medium-level setting, your Taliban opponents are not in any condition to offer any kind of resistance.    Most of the combat consists of being thrown into some sort of ambush. Your opponents sit back in cover, shooting, ducking and popping their heads up. I would estimate that more than 80% of the encounters are finished by sitting in cover and sniping your hapless enemy as the predictably lift their fat heads up. On one occasion, as a joke, I sat about a foot behind an enemy while they did this again and again. After a few minutes, I decided to end the outright foolishness with a melee attack. The single campaign is laughably short. I would call it short and sweet, however, the most difficult battle in the game is about halfway through here you play as a U.S. Ranger whose platoon is being overwhelmed by rushing Taliban.  It's a deeply rich and hard fought battle, where if you let your enemies flank your position, you're finished. It's all downhill from there with the rest of the combat devolving into an elaborate version of “whack-a-mole”. I could chalk it up to the fact that Tier One Operatives are just that good - which is probably true - but something tells me the AI testing was done pretty quickly. 'MOA' offers more seasoned gamers challenges, such as timed missions. These are definitely hard but don't really enhance the game. Part of the appeal of the best modern first-person shooters are their intensity. You never feel quite in control. Something I would imagine a real combat situation is like. 'MOH' feels more like an antiquated shooter with very linear mission goals. On a harder difficult setting, your enemies can be tougher and you can die faster but there is something very sanitized about the gaming experience since it is meant to recreate a situation we know is unbridled chaos in reality. It should be noted that a couple of special levels, where you pilot a combat helicopter and a few ingenious long range sniping sequences, are welcome additions but these flashes of genius are undermined by the rest of the game's sloppy execution. Multiplayer is par for the course. I preferred the multiplayer on EA's 'Battlefield Bad Company 2', which was a much richer game experience but it's pretty intuitive and challenging for hardened FPS combatants. Had it been twice the length, and more polished, I think 'MOH' would have been able to recapture the wonderment of its predecessors. It's going to take some exceptional DLC or a committed online gaming crowd to breathe life into this reboot. Pros: Realistic game setting and character design Intuitive controls - about a five minute learning curve Nicely rendered game design Cons: Little innovation from other modern warfare FPS games Terrible AI Ridiculously short single-player campaign   Medal Of Honor Format: Xbox 360 Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Dice, Danger Close ESRB Rating: M for Mature Official Site: http://www.medalofhonor.com/ Rating: 6.5 / 10

 

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