User Review : Medal of Honor

MOH Multiplayer Review

by Desertcamo

10/13/2010

Let me preface by saying I am not biased towards a single FPS game. I have played many different types including Goldeneye, Far Cry, Halo, CODs, and Battlefields and enjoyed each for their own aspects. I think it is important to note this in that a lot of major gaming news outlet's reviews have been blamed with poorly reviewing the game by basing off of expectations than actual gameplay, but I digress and on to the actual review....

This game can be loads of fun and the shooting mechanics and gameplay are some of the best I have experienced since COD: World at War and COD4. I will start off by noting some of the things that make this game fun. The speed of the game and twitch reflexes it require are great and as always DICE provides terrific audio to really immerse the player. The maps are fun although a lot of the maps seem very similar and their isn't much distinction really which is a bit of a disappointment. Also some of the gametypes are really fun but are borrowed from other games. Sector Control is a faster paced Domination from COD. This is my personal favorite due to how quickly teams ca change the momentum of the game and seems to have the best spawning mechanics of the gamemodes played thus far. Also I love the killstreak system they have added. It goes off of points instead of amount kills so the player can get killstreaks from things like capturing objectives, getting assists, or extra points for headshots. Also I like the option to choose from Offensive or Defensive killstreaks based on situation. I tend to use mostly the defensive ones unless i know an area of highly concentrated enemies. Now on to some negatives.

On the flip side of the coin, the astonishing lack of content in this game makes it fall way short of its inherit potential. There are only three different classes the player can choose from; Assault, Spec Ops, and Recon. Each class has three different customizations you can preform on each rifle; Optics, Barrel, and Ammunition. Allowing the user to unlock opentip ammo(a more powerful variant which lowers accuracy and range), sound suppressors, red dot scopes, ACOG, laser sites etc. One of the short comings is the varying of weapons. The different weapons that the user can unlock and use seems woefully meager and reuses the same guns multiple times. For instance instead of adding a better gun when a user reaches level 10 in a class they just get a slightly better version of their original unlocked gun for that class. If you added up all of the unique guns in the game they would not equal up to even half of other FPS shooter's players have access to now. Also there really aren't that many maps to play on. DICE could get away with minimal amount of maps in BC2 because matches usually took from 20 minutes to an hour and the maps were huge and diverse. With this game's matches, with the exception of Combat mission which itself only as three maps, a player can expect 5-10 minutes to finish a match. This makes playing the same map frequently redundant and I'm afraid to say that it will grow stale shortly. Another lack of content is the awards the user can unlock. DICE's Bad Company 2 offered many hours of the player trying to win hard to obtain insignia's, match pins and stars with each weapon. Medal of Honor's pins and medals are severely lacking and I have unlocked 3/4 of them in just a days playing. This is disappointing and really hurts the longevity of this game. I don't think it would of took much from DICE to add weapon stars to give the player something to strive for.

Now on to gameplay problems I have noticed. First and foremost spawning. The spawning is horrible. Many frustrating cry's come from my headset from teammates repeatedly getting spawn killed by a loathsome sniper on the other side of the map. This is most apparent in Team Deathmatch where teams frequently get spawn trapped. I don't know how this got through DICE's QA department especially since they had a beta. It seems simple implements could have remedied this from making the player invulnerable for 2 seconds after spawning or being able to spawn on other players. Another gameplay bug is with the killstreaks. I have not noticed a problem so far with the defensive ones but have with the offensive ones. For one they use the binoculars to laser target where you want the airstrike, missile, strafing run etc. The problem is most of the levels have many buildings in terrain so this makes effectively being able to utilize a strike more than 20 feet in front of you a challenge. Also if you get a guided missile and are guiding into a horde of enemy's and just so happened to get killed while doing so, your missile miraculously disappears. On a smaller not I find that the right thumb stick is way to sensitive for knifing. I find myself accidentally knifing the air in close quarter fights with enemies and have seen other players have this blunder as well. Killcams absent in non-hardcore modes is baffling. In this game you die very quickly so repeatedly getting killed and having no idea where it is coming from can be disheartening. With all this said the only one of these bugs which is bad enough to make a huge impact on the user is the spawns.

In closing, MoH does offer up some really fun, fast paced combat and if you can afford more than one game this holiday season then it definitely worth picking up and enjoying. Sadly though the lack of weapons, maps and unlocks will make this game get old a lot quicker than other major FPS titles which will be available in the next couple months. If you want a game to tide you over until COD:BO, Crysis 2, Brink or BC2:Vietnam then this will be a fun game for a month or two. If you are looking for a FPS that will keep occupied for months to come this is not it.

Rating 7/10

Score

7.0

Graphics

7.0

Sound

7.0

Gameplay

7.0

Fun Factor

7.0

Online

Overall

7.0