Medal of Honor (1999)

Medal of bronzeneye

Beat 99%. I never played this back in the day but would have enjoyed it greatly. It is no Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, and does not compare to PC shooters of the time, but was still a very impressive game for an early console shooter, back before they figured out how to do twin stick controls. It controlled a lot like Goldeneye, with that stop moving to aim. It was a job to set up the controls on PSP due to the lack of L2 and R2 buttons. There was no control scheme to get aiming to R1, so I picked one that made the 1 buttons strafing and went into the PSP menu to swap the 1 and 2 buttons. So I moved and aimed using the D pad, R1 to aim, L1 to crouch, and analog stick to strafe. It was a somewhat awkward way to play but that didn't stop me from kicking ass and having fun. The main problem was not being able to combine turning and strafing, so I got brought up on the environment a lot, and there was always a couple second delay as I switched my thumb between the D pad and stick. It never got me killed though. While in the options I turned on easy aim, fast aim, and zoom aim. I tried a level without those on after beating the game, and it was much harder. I guess that was like difficulty level. The lack of easy aim seemed to significantly reduce accuracy and I found the game much more enjoyable and realistic with the accurate shooting of easy aim. After beating the game I tried custom controls, where the analog stick was mapped to the D pad for movement and aiming, and left and right on the D pad strafed while keeping forwards and backwards. Not sure if this control scheme was better or not. Perhaps making square shoot, triangle aim and R1 and L1 strafe while moving weapon swap to the stick would be best.

I played it slow and tactical, even crouching around for the first few levels thinking it was causing me to sneak up on enemies. I stopped soon after because I think it was scripted whether the enemies detect you or not. In some ways the game felt like a light gun game, but I moved around often enough. I used cover and went prone in fire fights to lessen my chances of being hit. I fell back to corner camp and ambush, and sometimes I even rushed the enemy while hip firing, especially when they were behind cover or threw a grenade at me. The BAR was by far the best weapon, with both accurate rapid fire (I would 3 round burst), and effective point blank hip fire. Though I found it really weird that it could shoot SMG ammo. This game was very loose on ammo types. I used the shotgun to great effect to run and gun without aiming in close quarters, but it was kinda made obsolete by the BAR. The Garand was my most used weapon as I preferred precision distance kills. 3 shots to kill most enemies. I tried to avoid headshots since the first was more likely to just knock of their helmet. I used the bazooka a bit late game. It was good for enemies that were too far to see or behind cover. I died a lot to the cheap rocket enemies and their 1 hit kills. That made the late game obnoxious, and I hated them. It was especially poor design with the lack of any checkpoints. I used the bazooka to 1 hit kill some of those bastards. The mine levels were the worst in the game because of them. All the other weapons I avoided using unless I had to. Smgs excelled at a very specific range that was just slightly beyond effective hip fire range, and were better than the garand and shotgun for multiple enemies. Still I pretty much only used them when the shotgun was unavailable or out of ammo. The mp40 was better than the Tommy gun, which I found to run out the clip too quickly and be less accurate. Pistols were good for getting headshots on unaware enemies and decent for taking out lone enemies. The sniper rifle was terrible because it was limited by the draw distance, and thus offered no long range advantage. It was more difficult to aim and was bolt action, making it fully inferior to the garand. Quick scoping might make it more viable in a fire fight but I pretty much only used it on unaware enemies. Grenades were the worst weapon in the game due to how awkward they were to aim. I mostly used them to drop down shafts or over ledges. A couple times I used them to flush enemies out of cover. It was hilarious how often the enemies killed themselves with their own grenades. The AI could have used a bit of work, but still better than Perfect Dark stimulants. Other than that, and some silly running around, the enemies were a treat to fight. I especially liked how they strafed, went prone and rolled around to be harder to hit. They seemed to make good decisions regarding rushing and hanging back in cover, though the level design did not allow much opportunity for flanking. I also loved their reactions to being shot, and helmets being shot off. The only way it could have been better would be with damaging enemy weapons if hit and the enemy pulling out a pistol, running away or going for a fallen comrade's gun.

I got mostly 3 star ratings and completed most levels in 1 try. I got some 2 stars for failing to finish with high health, and a few 1 stars for missing enemies. I missed the medals for missions 2 and 3 but went back to get them after beating the game. It was enough to replay the submarine level to find an enemy or 2 I missed to upgrade from 1 to 3 star. I did not need to fix my 1 star on the docks. Then I had to change my 2 star on the 1st stealth mission and the one to blow up the train artillery. I botched the stealth on my 2st try by accidentally pulling out my gun in front of a guard, thus not getting through with high health. Took a couple tries to complete it 3 star. The issue with the train level was enemies shooting me through the train and the level ending when the train blew up, preventing backtracking for health unless I knew to delay setting the bombs. Then I had to fix a 1 star on rail canyon because I missed a whole area. The spy missions did not really add anything to the game but at least there was not too many. It was great that the game had no bullshit fail conditions like destroying critical equipment, killing too many civilians, or letting an escort die. My overall shooting stats were 45% accuracy with most hits to the right arm, with head coming in second place. They called me an armslinger. The least shots were to the legs.

The game excelled at audio and atmosphere. Some of the audio gave an almost horror vibe, and I almost wanted to turn off the bombastic music to be more immersed in the levels. Other than the controls, the biggest flaw of the game was the level design. The levels got better later on, with some optional areas, semi secrets and slight branching paths, but never approached the intricacies of PC shooters like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Half Life. The limitations of the playstation were readily apparent in the outdoor levels. I would have liked the ability to customize starting weapons and replace them with enemy weapons. Still the game was very well made and fun.

8.2/10