Here’s an extended playthrough of the new Medal of Honor: Warfighter making use of the Frostbite 2 engine. What makes it especially interesting to Filipinos is that Preacher and the rest of Tier 1 make their way to Basilan, Isabela. To be honest, apart from the totalled jeepney and the locals shouting “Tara na! Tara na!” and “OK ka lang? OK lang ako!” it pretty much looks like any generic shooter out there.
I’m not sure what was more annoying — getting spammed with cheap knife kills in Modern Warfare 2 or getting one-shotted with semi-auto sniper rifles in Medal of Honor.
But nonetheless, EA’s latest shooter has gotten me hooked. OK a bit of perspective — I’ve been playing the MoH series since Allied Assault in 2002. This really upped the bar of first person gaming with its cinematic rendition of the Omaha beach landing. At that time, a game that could live up to the experience of Saving Private Ryan was an A-OK in my book. Then came the rest of the series — Spearhead, Pacific Assault, Airborne … and parallel this was Activision releasing the Call of Duty franchise. And thus was planted the seeds of competition. With two successful releases of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, EA was left with a reboot of their Medal of Honor franchise. Playing the patriot card, they decided to develop a Medal of Honor reboot according to a real world coordinated assault on the terrains of Afghanistan against the Taliban forces.
Medal of Honor’s single player is your typical run off the mill military shooter, with the Tier 1 boys fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. You take on the role as several operatives from the army and special operations divisions, notably as ‘Rabbit’ who belongs to Tier 1 as a frontline sniper and infiltrations specialist. I was particularly surprised that the story arc, presented from different points of view of the assaulting forces, was well stitched, giving the overall impression that yeah, this is military stuff and we’re working with clockwork precision. I was afraid that it would be a Modern Warfare 2 ripoff, DICE’sDanger Close’s accurate portrayal of the real war on Afghanistan from the accounts of soldiers had its own merit.
Of course, military shooters are bought for its replay value. Apart from a Tier 1 mode that allows you to complete the game scenarios in record time and win medals, the multiplayer skirmishes is still at the heart and soul of Medal of Honor. Medal of Honor takes the fast paced arcade action of MW2 with a more simplified class system and vehicle-enabled combat from the Battlefield franchise. The result is a series of 10 minute skirmishes to attack and defend objectives, control point domination, and team death match games for quick fix in-and-out play. The leveling system is pretty much run off the mill allowing new loadout for weapons such as gun barrel customization and targeting mechanisms. A rally point system from kills also allows offensive and defensive assists for your team. If you accumulate 50 points without dying, you can choose to either call in a mortar strike or engage a UAV in the playing field to track enemies. At higher levels, you can equip your teammates with flak vests and ammo upgrades.
Medal of Honor is currently my source of 10-minute escapes from reality. The game runs smoothly on my MacBook Pro amazingly (with Windows 7 Ultimate on BootCamp) and still looks great on a GeForce 320M graphic card. It’s a no-regret buy for less that PHP 1,500.00.
I guess the real question is, how does it compare to Call of Duty: Black Ops?