Medal of Honor is like a really fantastic movie. The only other game I've ever played that has as strong a cinematic style as this one is Crimson Skies. The levels are very natural and convincing and the missions are well scripted and have a great sense of pace. And all the character of the game comes through without any real cutscenes. Apart from the mission briefings all the action and story takes place during play. It's too bad that this approach gives the end of the game an abrupt sort of ending but when people talk about good presentation, this is what they're talking about.
It's not apparent until you play through it a second time, but there's an awful lot of scripting that goes into this game. The same characters and situations that seemed so spontaneous the first time around suddenly begin to seem a little more predictable. The landing at Omaha Beach is a great example of this. As the individual soldiers run up the beach, they encounter the same situations and hit the same positions every time.
But even the first time you play through the game you'll probably notice a few instances of this. For one thing, your allies are subject to the stern dictates of a fate that you cannot change -- no matter how many times you load a game. Characters will die when their time comes and there's nothing you can do about it. This is particularly frustrating at the start of one of the earlier missions when one of your guys dies despite your every effort to save him. It seems cheap and arbitrary (not to mention frustrating after the eighth or ninth reload). Likewise, if a given character isn't fated to die you can watch him get shot up all day without falling.
But it's all still so compelling that you won't really mind the scripted bits. The campaign starts with the rescue of an OSS officer in 1942 and ends with the destruction of a...well, I won't spoil that, but let's just say that it ends three years later. Although you'll kill lots of soldiers from Algeria to Norway, this is incidental to the real objective of the game -- blowing up Nazi weapons -- from AA guns to submarines to whole manufacturing plants. Lots of little objectives must be met along the way.
The 20 levels which comprise the six missions are all rather large. A small compass helps point you to your next objective. (Like Ghost Recon it doesn't necessarily indicate whether or not the objective is above or below you.) The missions seem a bit episodic and unrelated but there's a strong sense of continuity and interest here. The objectives lead from one to another in a largely linear fashion (although there is some flexibility) and you'll usually always have a clear sense of how and why a mission progresses and develops as it does.
There are a few moments in this game that are likely to stick with me for a long time. Since everyone already knows about the landing at Omaha, I can go ahead and spoil that one. You begin in the Higgins boat on your way to the beach. An officer is giving out orders as shells impact the water around you. Once you reach the beach, the doors open and you rush out onto a vast beach covered with hedgehogs and other forms of Rommel's asparagus. You'll have to advance from cover to cover while watching your allies fall all around you. Avoid artillery strikes and machine gun fire all the way up to the shingle. And that's just the first few minutes of the level. The Omaha sequence is really one of the best things I've ever played but there are plenty of other awesome moments that I won't spoil here.
Some of the sequences are too difficult to be enjoyed. Quite a few require you to sally forth and get killed before you even figure out who's shooting you. There are quite a few areas of the game where a seemingly endless number of troops will come running at (usually behind) you. Sometimes this makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. It seems a bit cheap but it's meant to put pressure on you to move forward. In any case, it's kind of cool not to feel secure in an area you've already cleared.
As a special operative, you're supposed to be working alone on most of your missions. Ironically, the game is at its best when you're acting as part of a team. Having a few soldiers on your side boosts your enjoyment of the game immensely. Running through a town with a squad of riflemen around you is downright exhilarating. You really feel as if you're part of a team and, since you're sometimes subordinated to one of the friendly AI soldiers, you're told to carry out specific tasks. Nine times out of ten, it'll sound something like this: "Powell, you take point while we walk fifty yards behind you and listen for the bullets."
There are three bigger problems with the addition of extra troops on your side though. First off, they're typically given to you when you're likely to encounter lots of enemy resistance. Once you've got a dozen guys on the screen shooting at each other, the game starts to chug a bit. Second, you have no control over your units. They sometimes fail to get safely away from explosive charges that you yourself set off. Third, the inclusion of nearby soldiers who aren't shooting at you make the pre-scripted events much more noticeable.
Enemy AI is a little more flexible. Sadly the enemies are much too aware of their surroundings than they ought to be. They'll zero in and put three bullets in your head before you even see them. This is more of a problem in open areas with lots of cover but it's damned frustrating. The enemies are usually pretty good at not exposing themselves to unnecessary fire but since they have access to more stances than you, this seems kind of unfair. Enemies can go prone and fire around corners while only exposing their hands. You cannot. What's really cool is tossing a grenade into a room, hearing lots of German shouting and seeing the guys come running out the door. What's not cool is seeing your grenade thrown back in your face before it goes off.
Okay, maybe that's a little cool.
Weapon balance is first-rate. While games in this genre typically give you access to a wide variety of pistols, machine guns, crossbows and potato catapults, Medal of Honor makes do with a much smaller arsenal. But each is very well designed and well suited to a particular task. The few novelty weapons (the shotgun and bazooka) don't get as much attention as they probably should but the M1 Garand, sniper rifle and Thompson machine gun are reliable enough that you probably won't even consider other weapons.
A lot of people have complained that there's no blood in the game. I honestly don't think that brings the game down at all. You don't need Sam Peckinpah blood effects in order to create realism or intensity. A nice blood model can intensify those qualities but it's not the only thing that can contribute to believability or interest. The game does have some really impressive weapon effects -- the small puffs of dust when you hit a body or a wall, the splinters that fly off of doors, and the small grenade explosions are all first-rate and the absence of blood shouldn't put anyone off. In any case, the Teen-rating means you'll have more people to play against online.
Since the game still hasn't been released, we haven't been able to test out internet play. We have played plenty of LAN games though and, assuming that the performance doesn't deteriorate that much over the net, Medal of Honor could definitely give Wolfenstein a run for its money. Instead of selecting classes like in Wolfenstein, you'll select a weapon to carry. This sort of sets your role in the game but it doesn't seem to require the same level of cooperation found in Wolfenstein. We'll be covering the basics of multiplay in another IGNsider feature later this month once the servers have some more people on them.
In order to appreciate the full effects of the game, you need a really kick-ass system. Thankfully, an awesome configuration setup lets you tweak and tune the details to find the best mix of appearance and performance. I had only a few slow-downs playing it at home in 800x600 with medium details on a P500MHz with 512MB of RAM and a GeForce 2. On better systems you can expect much-improved graphics and operation.
Even on a medium level of detail, the game is remarkably beautiful. The faces and character models are incredibly lifelike and believable. Animation and expressions give you a real sense that the characters in the game are distinct individuals (even if it's hard to tell them apart while you're shooting them). The architecture is astounding and the cities are completely believable. Ground textures are probably the only real weakness in the game but even these are passable.
Tal pointed out to me one weekend that the barrels in the game have real volumes of liquid in them. As you shoot them, the liquid pours out. It pours out faster if you shoot more holes in the barrel. And the level of liquid is modeled as well so if you shoot the top of a barrel, the liquid will only run a short time; if you shoot the bottom, the liquid runs until it's all out. Searchlights have swarms of moths surrounding them. If you shoot a light out you are rewarded with a spray of sparks. It's these touches that make such a huge difference in drawing you into the game.
The sound shares this same level of detail. Weapon sounds are all supremely satisfying. (I love the ping sound the M1 Garand makes as it ejects a clip.) Explosions and engine noises will give your subwoofer a real workout while the scoring is suitably cinematic. The voice work in the game is quite good and, unlike Wolfenstein, all these Germans speak the right language.
Since I started working here, I've only gone back and replayed three shooters that I had already finished -- Half-Life, Soldier of Fortune and No One Lives Forever. But over the Christmas break I played through Medal of Honor quite a few times and it's likely that I'm going to play it a few more times before the year is out. You will too. While the game has some small (but galling) problems, the overall effect is profound. The only people who I won't recommend this game to are people who just hate action games and people who don't own computers. Otherwise, you should get it and cancel your plans for the next week or so. Unless your name is Dan Adams in which case, I fully expect you to be at work next week.
-- Steve Butts
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