Medal of Honor Heroes is a giant mess: on one hand the gameplay is good enough, though the sequel improved it considerably, on the other it's filled with bizarre design decisions that sap all the fun out of it.
For one, much like Killzone 2 would do a few years later, you can only ever carry one primary weapon at a time plus a useless pistol, which means that you will almost always go for a machine gun of some sort and completely disregard any shotguns, rifles or rocket launchers you find, as collecting them will mean sacrificing your workhorse weapon. Guns also drop at random from enemies, and rarely at that, so forget about dumping your useless M1 Garand at the first enemy you kill and grabbing his MP40, as only one or two enemies per mission will drop weapons you can actually collect. If that weren't enough, most weapons are basically never present in any of the levels, for instance the staple of every WW2 shooter, the Kar98k, is only ever found in the first mission.
Enemies throw a stupid amount of grenades, which kill you in one hit and have no grenade indicator whatsoever unless standing right on top of them. The only way to know that a grenade is near you is keeping an eye on the radar at all times, which is the only place where a yellow blip representing a grenade is shown at any time. The result of this are many, many sudden and undeserved deaths which, coupled with the absence of any checkpoints during missions, is infinitely frustrating. It's also the only way you will die, since the game is very easy even on the hardest difficulty with all assists turned off, with no reall difficulty spikes to mention.
Fortunately in regard to the absence of checkpoints, missions are extremely brief: we're talking 5 minutes on average, so starting over when you die isn't really that much of an issue. Sadly, the missions are also really, really bad: instead of deliberately designed objective-driven levels, what we get 80% of the time are little more than botmatches in which you and a gaggle of stupid AI companions who constantly get in your way have to run around what look like recycled deathmatch maps and capture and hold flags like in a king of the hill multiplayer match. This boils down to standing around motionless for several seconds while the flag is captured, and then move on to the next. To spice it up, sometimes the enemies will be able to recapture these points, meaning you'll have to make the rounds to reacquire them until a point counter decides you've done enough and the mission ends. It's bad, and it's the vast majority of missions, with only a few of them presenting something even remotely similar to level design.
The music is good, with the excellent Allied Assault main theme prominently featured in a show of stunning lack of effort, but at the very least there's some quality to be found in the package. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the voice work: repetitive, low quality and with German soldiers speaking in English, it's definitely subpar.
Just about the only other positive aspect is the inclusion of an offline deathmatch against bots, which is absent from the superior sequel and, now that servers are gone, helps to stretch out the value of an otherwise forgettable package.
Heroes 1 is a bad game, luckily the sequel fixed most of its problems.
For one, much like Killzone 2 would do a few years later, you can only ever carry one primary weapon at a time plus a useless pistol, which means that you will almost always go for a machine gun of some sort and completely disregard any shotguns, rifles or rocket launchers you find, as collecting them will mean sacrificing your workhorse weapon. Guns also drop at random from enemies, and rarely at that, so forget about dumping your useless M1 Garand at the first enemy you kill and grabbing his MP40, as only one or two enemies per mission will drop weapons you can actually collect. If that weren't enough, most weapons are basically never present in any of the levels, for instance the staple of every WW2 shooter, the Kar98k, is only ever found in the first mission.
Enemies throw a stupid amount of grenades, which kill you in one hit and have no grenade indicator whatsoever unless standing right on top of them. The only way to know that a grenade is near you is keeping an eye on the radar at all times, which is the only place where a yellow blip representing a grenade is shown at any time. The result of this are many, many sudden and undeserved deaths which, coupled with the absence of any checkpoints during missions, is infinitely frustrating. It's also the only way you will die, since the game is very easy even on the hardest difficulty with all assists turned off, with no reall difficulty spikes to mention.
Fortunately in regard to the absence of checkpoints, missions are extremely brief: we're talking 5 minutes on average, so starting over when you die isn't really that much of an issue. Sadly, the missions are also really, really bad: instead of deliberately designed objective-driven levels, what we get 80% of the time are little more than botmatches in which you and a gaggle of stupid AI companions who constantly get in your way have to run around what look like recycled deathmatch maps and capture and hold flags like in a king of the hill multiplayer match. This boils down to standing around motionless for several seconds while the flag is captured, and then move on to the next. To spice it up, sometimes the enemies will be able to recapture these points, meaning you'll have to make the rounds to reacquire them until a point counter decides you've done enough and the mission ends. It's bad, and it's the vast majority of missions, with only a few of them presenting something even remotely similar to level design.
The music is good, with the excellent Allied Assault main theme prominently featured in a show of stunning lack of effort, but at the very least there's some quality to be found in the package. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the voice work: repetitive, low quality and with German soldiers speaking in English, it's definitely subpar.
Just about the only other positive aspect is the inclusion of an offline deathmatch against bots, which is absent from the superior sequel and, now that servers are gone, helps to stretch out the value of an otherwise forgettable package.
Heroes 1 is a bad game, luckily the sequel fixed most of its problems.