Medal of Honor Xbox 360 Review

Medal of Honor is the third FPS game to get a reboot into modern warfare after wearing out players with World War II throughout the series. It seems everyone is jumping on the modern warfare band wagon after the success of Call of Duty 4. Medal of Honor takes place during the current war in Afghanistan in 2002 and places the player in a squad of a United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The player switches between a multitude of characters and roles just like in Call of Duty Modern Warfare. The main difference being that the story in Medal of Honor is somewhat believable as opposed to the ridiculous apocalypse scenario that Call of Duty Modern Warfare is known for. As a result, the story engages the player and creates a sense of emotion for the squad all the way to the dramatic ending and subsequent sequel teaser. The player gets a sense of what it is like storming hideouts and having multitudes of enemies up on the hilltops shooting down at the player just like what would happen in real life. Environments are partially destructible and the graphics are fairly good considering most of the game is desert wasteland. There are a few texture loading issues at times and the death animations are a bit stiff though.

The single player campaign in Medal of Honor consists of about eight hours of solid gameplay. The only problem with the single player is that is extremely easy even on the hardest difficulty and sometimes the player’s AI teammates will actually walk into the line of fire as they seem to be scripted to stand in certain areas, which can become an annoyance. Medal of Honor also has a “Tier 1” mode, which is basically an even harder difficulty level only unlockable after completing the campaign on normal. Tier 1 mode allows the player to go through missions with slower health regen, no ammo resupply from teammates, increased damage from enemies, no HUD display, and death forces the player to restart the entire level. Tier 1 also has leaderboards to compare best times, kills, etc., with other players.

Multiplayer in Medal of Honor is where the game fails miserably unfortunately. Multiplayer has three classes to choose from: rifleman, sniper, and special ops. Each class has specific weapons they may utilize and strategies for playing them successfully. Just as in Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor rewards players for killing enemies and staying alive by allowing them to use support actions at certain intervals. The support actions vary from mortar strike, rocket, missile, artillery, strafing run, and air strike, and cruise missiles, to ammo resupply, jammers, and UAV intel. The only negative to the support actions is that they can be launched on the enemy spawn points, thus creating a griefing/spawn killing cycle. The other issue with multiplayer is that some of the maps are so ridiculously small, that within a few steps, the player can be within the enemy spawn point and begin spawn killing or in some cases, be perched up on a balcony and have a clear line of sight for sniping the enemy spawn point.  Clearly, level design was overlooked in developing multiplayer. There are four multiplayer modes that consist of Team Assault (team deathmatch), Sector Control (control points), Combat Mission (team objective), and Team Raid (bomb planting). There are also eight maps to choose from.

Medal of Honor is an attempt to reboot the series that has fallen to the wayside with franchises such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Battlefield Bad Company dominating the combat FPS genre. The story is the single element holding this lackluster title together. The single player campaign is solid despite the few graphical glitches and extremely easy difficulty levels. Tier 1 mode helps to give players a challenge, but the multiplayer mode fails miserably to the extent that players who buy this game should not even enter the code to access multiplayer in order to add resale value when they resell the game or trade it in. Hopefully, the next entry in the series will correct the gaping flaws in multiplayer, because as it stands now, Medal of Honor is just a rental, and an average FPS in a genre with far superior games.