Medal of Honor is set in present day Afganistan. Follows the journey of 'tier one' operatives. Unlike other current shooters, it doesn't glamorise the warfare. Yeah there's swift health regeneration, and I'm sure the game is a lot easier to play than the conflicts are to be a part of, in real life... however the game doesn't have you globe trotting, saving the world. It's all about simple objectives, and doing what you need to as a front line operative, taking an airfield, infiltrating Al quaeda campsites.
It's actually quite refreshing. I found it much easier to relate to, and take interest in the games plot with the game being set in present times. The deaths of allied soldiers was able to have much more emotional impact when the story stays, realistic. As you realise that these could quite easily be real people. The game plays to that strength bringing real issues like friendly fire, into play with the games plot. I found a relatively hard-hitting experience, plot wise relative to other 'modern warfare' experiences.
Gameplay wise, the game singleplayer plays relatively well. Pretty much as you'd expect actually. The games aim assist is pretty strong and the difficulty a little low so I was compelled to turn the aim assist off, and switch up onto 'hard' for a more engaging experience. It wasn't particularly challenging, but it does force you to play 'seriously'. Methodology found itself more important than having lightening fast reactions, checking corners, following instructions and just generally being cautious was what saved my life rather than aiming ability.
The weapons also all have a great feel to them. They sound fantastic and recoil satisfyingly making them feel really realistic. The impact they can have on environments can really help too, seeing an LMG chip away your cover until you're forced to move, and the realistic bullet penetration of the weapons helped made combat interesting. There were a couple of points where I was able to take out soldiers behind cover, after seeing their shadow - that became an awesome although presumably unintended mechanic.
It looks pretty good too. Texture resolutions are all pretty high quality, the character models are adequately detailed, and the lighting effects are stunning. Visually I never really felt that the game let me down. Where it does unfortunately is in technical quality. At times the games framerate stutters during more intense sequences... fortunately though it's rare, and never dropped to levels where it becomes unplayable. Probably the most glaring issue is during a quad bike sequence the game keeps freezes up. Probably because it's streaming the textures as you go, and on the quad you're going pretty fast, so it has to pause to keep up... but it's not really excusable and ruins the sequence.
It's also pretty short, taking me around 5hours to complete... although I was left satisfied by the experience I was definitely also left wanting more. More which I felt I payed for considering the £40 entry fee. Not to say it was significantly shorter, if at all than it's competition. It also features a 'tier one' mode where your graded on combat efficiency, repeating the missions from the campaign.
On top the singleplayer mode, there's also multiplayer. Whilst the singleplayer is developed by Danger Close, the multiplayer is produced by Dice, and is unfortunately where I felt the games standards began to slide. The multiplayer is pretty standard, if you've played Call of Duty 4, or Battlefield Bad Company 2... it's pretty much a hybrid of the two.
Whilst the game borrows a lot from those two titles, one of which being Dices own. It doesn't seem to borrow with any concision. It takes killstreaks from Call of Duty, but it doesn't execute these correctly. Specifically it doesn't give the team your using the streak any warning. It just feels like you're being unfairly punished, with random deaths, many of which I should add happen the instant you spawn as the game often features fixed spawns who many players online choose to abuse.
It follows a very similar progression system - too but there are, so, so few weapons and gadgets to unlock... there quickly becomes very little incentive to continue for the sake of unlockables. Furthermore, there multiplayer is plagued with irritating bugs. Could you believe the multiplayer actually locks up (for 2-5 seconds) every time one of my friends comes online? Hell, mics don't work in lobbies and parties are constantly split apart. I'd go as far as to say the game isn't very well balanced either, but I guess that's not up to me to decide, although I did think DICE had learnt from the original Bad Company, the horrible effect that one-shot-kill sniper rifles can have on the game.
Overall unfortunately in a genre which is held up by it's multiplayer component, Medal of Honor manages to fall far short. The singleplayer is strong, but the Multiplayer brings the quality right down to the floor. It's not entirely unplayable, it's just that there's been better around since 2007, with less technical issues, too.
Good
Gameplay - it's pretty standard but for the genre it's all pretty satisfying
Plot - The down to earth realism kept me engaged where other FPS fail
Sound - It seems all of EAs FPS have phenomenal sound quality, MoH is no different.
Graphics - I've seen better (Killzone 2) but between the mainstream multiplatform FPS, MoH manages to stand out thanks to good visual quality in general, and fantastic lighting.
Needs work
Content - Both singleplayer and multiplayer are lacking in term of overall content. The multiplayer has too few weapons and maps, the singleplayer is too short.
Presentation - From suttering framerate, to poor hud presentation (in multi), this area could use some work.
Hated
Multiplayer - It feels like copypasta of Bad Company 2, it plays like, Bad Company 2 or Call of Duty 4 with a plethora of additional technical issues. It just doesn't manage to match the quality of either of the titles it takes inspiration from, and playing this for extensive periods when there's other superior titles out there is questionable.
Verdict
In the end if you're looking for a singleplayer experience Medal of Honor is a pretty decent one, but it's short. As are all the FPS of it's type, nowadays - it's difficult to argue that the multiplayer is able to extend the games lifespan when it's of such poor quality. The game overall isn't too hard to recommend, it's just hard to recommend over the alternatives (Call of Duty / Bad Company).
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