Medal of Honor continues having an identity crisis.
This game is so fucking weird. Its presentation tries to sell it as a more authentic WW2 experience, while its gameplay is the most arcady and unrealistic MoH has ever been. The health system is unlike anything I've ever seen. You have 4 blocks of health, each of which takes one or two shots to diminish, but unless it's completely diminished it can recover. This clearly incentivizes staying in cover and avoiding getting hit. The aiming system is also pretty unique. You can't move while aiming down sights, but you can lean in all directions. Also the only way to prone is via aiming while sitting and pressing down, which is weird, but you get used to it. These mechanics clearly encourage a careful playstyle, the kind we usually see in Call of Duty. Yet the upgrade system rewards you for rushing into crowds and taking out several opponents in a row. And the rewards you get are also improvements to the reckless playstyle. For example, you get a large magazine, which allows you to shoot without reloading longer, or a double-magazine, which allows for faster reloading, or a knife attachment. All these are very useful in close-quarters combat and not so much in distance. The ironsights are also much less reliable than before, which makes you wanna come closer to the enemy. This dissonance haunts you throughout the entire game. The most fun I've ever had here were moments when I'd jump into a room with a shotgun and go on a killing spree, but this always leads to me nearly dying. Btw the impact from hits here is so satisfying that it's very hard to resist using the shotgun. What I found really cool is that they allow you to select a loadout before the mission, but that also contributes to that dissonance, as it breaks the immersion.
The main concept of the game is brilliant. You play as a paratrooper and every mission starts with you parachuting onto the map. This is a genuinely great idea, which in theory should allow for many ways to complete the same missions. But this idea is ruined by a terrible level design. Levels are mazes. Every task is usually hidden in such a location that has only one access point to it. Whichever part of the map you land in, you're still gonna have to go through all the same corridors because there are impassable obstacles and invisible walls. And OMG, I don't think I've ever seen THIS many invisible walls in any other MoH or CoD. So, despite technically allowing you the freedom of traversal and custom order of task-completion, the game ends up feeling MORE linear than the actually linear WW2 shooters. In this regard it compares unfavorably to even Medal of Honor: Heroes, a PSP game. Speaking of which, when playing Heroes, I sometimes felt that it would be nice to have a mini-map, because sometimes on the radar several tasks can be out of range, so you don't know which is closer. But in Heroes that wasn't much of a problem because the maps were smaller and easier to traverse. But here I'd often run in circles trying to just get to the next task, so here a mini-map is almost crucial.
Despite its flaws, the game feels like a solid shooter for a while, until it decides to go insane. One of the missions places you on a bridge packed with panzergrenadiers and expects you to make it through. Like what the actual fuck? They supposed to be anti-tank units! When has ever in the history of humankind anybody ordered an entire fucking platoon to wield rocket launchers against regular infantry? Then later in the game you are introduced to armored MG42-wielding elite soldiers that can take two fucking shotgun shots to the head point-blank. This is just bizarre. These must be some kinda genetically-modified super-soldiers. What is this doing in a historical WW2 game? So anyway, these guys are bullet-sponges and a pain in the ass to kill. So naturally the last mission is PACKED with them. After you complete all the tasks and have to escape, you're gonna have to go through a room with at least 6 of them. Good luck. I died like 5 times there before I memorized the layout and decided to make a run for it. They're deadly but pretty slow.
I guess I have to give this game props for not having any escort missions, turret sections, tank-driving sections or horde-mode sections. But then again this game doesn't really have much of anything. I beat it in 4.4 hours, but that's including deaths, unskippable briefing cutscenes and my tinkering to launch it on Linux. So in reality there's less than 4 hours of real gameplay here. I'd honestly rather recommend Medal of Honor: Heroes instead. It's a more modest, less expensive, but much more polished and fun implementation of mostly the same formula.
This game is so fucking weird. Its presentation tries to sell it as a more authentic WW2 experience, while its gameplay is the most arcady and unrealistic MoH has ever been. The health system is unlike anything I've ever seen. You have 4 blocks of health, each of which takes one or two shots to diminish, but unless it's completely diminished it can recover. This clearly incentivizes staying in cover and avoiding getting hit. The aiming system is also pretty unique. You can't move while aiming down sights, but you can lean in all directions. Also the only way to prone is via aiming while sitting and pressing down, which is weird, but you get used to it. These mechanics clearly encourage a careful playstyle, the kind we usually see in Call of Duty. Yet the upgrade system rewards you for rushing into crowds and taking out several opponents in a row. And the rewards you get are also improvements to the reckless playstyle. For example, you get a large magazine, which allows you to shoot without reloading longer, or a double-magazine, which allows for faster reloading, or a knife attachment. All these are very useful in close-quarters combat and not so much in distance. The ironsights are also much less reliable than before, which makes you wanna come closer to the enemy. This dissonance haunts you throughout the entire game. The most fun I've ever had here were moments when I'd jump into a room with a shotgun and go on a killing spree, but this always leads to me nearly dying. Btw the impact from hits here is so satisfying that it's very hard to resist using the shotgun. What I found really cool is that they allow you to select a loadout before the mission, but that also contributes to that dissonance, as it breaks the immersion.
The main concept of the game is brilliant. You play as a paratrooper and every mission starts with you parachuting onto the map. This is a genuinely great idea, which in theory should allow for many ways to complete the same missions. But this idea is ruined by a terrible level design. Levels are mazes. Every task is usually hidden in such a location that has only one access point to it. Whichever part of the map you land in, you're still gonna have to go through all the same corridors because there are impassable obstacles and invisible walls. And OMG, I don't think I've ever seen THIS many invisible walls in any other MoH or CoD. So, despite technically allowing you the freedom of traversal and custom order of task-completion, the game ends up feeling MORE linear than the actually linear WW2 shooters. In this regard it compares unfavorably to even Medal of Honor: Heroes, a PSP game. Speaking of which, when playing Heroes, I sometimes felt that it would be nice to have a mini-map, because sometimes on the radar several tasks can be out of range, so you don't know which is closer. But in Heroes that wasn't much of a problem because the maps were smaller and easier to traverse. But here I'd often run in circles trying to just get to the next task, so here a mini-map is almost crucial.
Despite its flaws, the game feels like a solid shooter for a while, until it decides to go insane. One of the missions places you on a bridge packed with panzergrenadiers and expects you to make it through. Like what the actual fuck? They supposed to be anti-tank units! When has ever in the history of humankind anybody ordered an entire fucking platoon to wield rocket launchers against regular infantry? Then later in the game you are introduced to armored MG42-wielding elite soldiers that can take two fucking shotgun shots to the head point-blank. This is just bizarre. These must be some kinda genetically-modified super-soldiers. What is this doing in a historical WW2 game? So anyway, these guys are bullet-sponges and a pain in the ass to kill. So naturally the last mission is PACKED with them. After you complete all the tasks and have to escape, you're gonna have to go through a room with at least 6 of them. Good luck. I died like 5 times there before I memorized the layout and decided to make a run for it. They're deadly but pretty slow.
I guess I have to give this game props for not having any escort missions, turret sections, tank-driving sections or horde-mode sections. But then again this game doesn't really have much of anything. I beat it in 4.4 hours, but that's including deaths, unskippable briefing cutscenes and my tinkering to launch it on Linux. So in reality there's less than 4 hours of real gameplay here. I'd honestly rather recommend Medal of Honor: Heroes instead. It's a more modest, less expensive, but much more polished and fun implementation of mostly the same formula.
2 Comments
@Purdon I haven't yet. It's on my list. I need a more powerful computer and a new controller.
Misterii
5 months ago