Medal of Honor (2010)

In the world of military FPS military games, I grew up a Medal of Honor diehard. I followed the series from WWII to the modern age with this game. Unfortunately, the franchise wouldn't live much longer than this game. So, yes, I am a bit biased to this series.

I'll start with the gameplay. The game was built off the Frostbite engine, which Battlefield also used. The shooting feels pretty good for a game of the time. You shoot where you aim and you can shoot through the holes in a grate without hitting an invisible wall. The enemy AI is rough though. It's pretty simple pathing; run up in the open, duck behind cover, and pop out to take pot shots. There was at least one occasion where an enemy was shooting through a rock and hitting me. You also never go into a mission solo, you're part of a 4 man team. The ally AI doesn't fair much better. They will definitely drop some bad guys, but they also can't throw grenades worth a damn & like to run in front of your firing lane.

This game also does the thing that was popular at the time, that is having levels where you take control of different vehicles, such as an Apache attack chopper or C-130 gunship, or the obligatory sniper mission or stealth/knife mission. While they are a sign of the time, I do enjoy the little breaks they give from the normal firefights.

The graphics have aged a bit, but for the time they are fine. The world textures look the worst. The rocks/mountains are painted on, along with the doors, unless it's one you breach. The character models are fine. There's about 4 different types of bad guys that are just recolored, and all the American military guys look a like. This game also really likes showing off the dust rain effect from a resulting "danger close" explosion. The music in Medal of Honor games has always been something I love. They really nail the WWII movie feeling with big orchestral pieces. Those are back in this modern Medal of Honor. Those musical moments feel both too much and refreshing. Refreshing because, most modern shooters go for a minimalist score or something with a more modern techno vibe.

Now, onto the story. This was during the height of FPS games that were all about how cool military guys are. Medal of Honor's story is not exempt from that. This game does feel more grounded & realistic, likely because it is "inspired by" actual events from the War in Afghanistan. The story follows a team of SEALs and a Delta Force unit as they clear Taliban out of the mountains over two days, and this game is a tactical lingo wet dream. They all have fun codenames like "Mother", "Vegas", & "Voodoo". There's a half-hearted attempt to characterize them and there's some fun back & forth banter, but they're all generic SpecOp guys. Line them up, I couldn't tell them apart. Your player characters are all silent protagonists, which I always prefer a voiced protaganist.

There's also a general who's armchair commanding from an office in America that is being the archetypical "pompous, ego driven general". He wants to get several Army battalions into the mountains ASAP, even though the SpecOps teams are still gathering intel. The CO on the ground wants to send in local Afghan forces into the mountain first, but is overruled by the general. I can only assume the general was considering the media images, that it would look better for the evening news to have the American army storming up the mountain over just some foreign rebel force, but he never states that's his reasoning. He also orders C-130 to fire on an unidentified convoy that ends up being the friendly Afghan forces which were led by an American taskforce. I know the military is fine with covering up it's "accidents", but the fact he ordered fire on American soldiers feels like the kinda thing you don't just brush pass, but that's what happens. Nothing happens to him by the end of the story, and that makes the story feel more grown-up to me.

And yeah, while this game is definitely pro-military it does seem self-aware. The first mission where you play as the Rangers taking the mountain has the Rangers being all "bro-military" and gung ho, but once shit goes sideways they realized how unprepared they were. These are things done in other game stories, but something about it here feels more earnest. There's no Vietnam War movie moment of "Why are we here doing this?" but you see how communications break down and how the military isn't as effective as they'd like you to believe.

The story ends with the SEAL you've been playing as dying as his team gets rescued from the mountain. Even today, it's still an ending that gets me. Another great moment is when your Ranger squad is stranded in an abandoned hut with Taliban storming down from the high ground, and you all are running low on ammo. The music score starts to swell as you are left with only your pistol to defend yourself when two Apaches swoop in to save your bacon. It's a well done moment.

All in all, I still feel like Medal of Honor is one of the better military FPS because it always felt more grounded than the other two big series, and I hated to see the series end. The grounded & methodical story does make this game seem a bit slower and mundane, but I appreciate it. It's also a short game that I wish stayed a bit longer. The ending was also a bit open ended, because they must've known they were getting a sequel.

Beat on Hard on loan from my cousin. He seems to have no interest in getting his games back so I still have it and might play through again. I did not try the multiplayer and probably never will. I used mouse and keyboard with my xim4 and quite enjoyed the game. I can't remember much these years later and military shooters tend to blur together anyway. I particularly liked the ability to always have a pistol along with the 2 usual weapon slots, though I would have preferred a single button press to switch to the pistol. With 2 presses required, it makes it much less effective to switch to the pistol mid combat when your primary needs to reload. Another featured I liked was bumming ammo from teammates, and how it only works for NATO weapons. So you can use what you want without worrying about scavenging or saving ammo. Great since sniper rifles are my preferred weapon. I enjoyed the helicopter missions the most. I did not find much particularly annoying. Mostly minor things like how the name of your character keeps changing but does not display his name, which I found a bit confusing when the game gives you orders by name. What you are talking to me? Sorry I don't remember this guy's name, what did you say again? Same with how the guns don't have names in the HUD so you have to guess what they are based on shape. There were a couple bad parts that I thought were unfair; one time you have to find an rpg without any direction marker within a short time limit or die. Another when counter sniping and if you don't kill them fast enough they will one shot you; pretty sure at one point your ally gives you the wrong direction, which of course got me killed.

Overall a solid game but nothing spectacular.

7.2/10

Medal of Honor is mostly just boring. You walk a bit, open a door, shoot at static enemies, repeat.

I played this on Normal and it's a joke. Whenever you get hurt you just wait a couple of seconds and you're fine. The enemy provides no challenge; you can basically stand in the open, casually aim at their head and kill them. Guns have no sway so you basically can't miss. At some point i just walked around a group of four enemies and knifed them all in a row. They didn't seem to be aware that people can, you know, walk. This probably explains why enemies always seem to stay in one place.

Aside from being laughably easy, the game also actively discourages player input. You can only kick in doors when prompted. One time i tried to kick in a door but couldn't, so i figured it was there for show. Then an enemy came through it. Just terrible terrible design. Often you see clear paths to get to somewhere but you're not allowed to diverge from the path EA lays out for you. They desperately keep holding your hand, in case of climbing even literally. You can't climb by yourself, your buddy has to go first and pull you up.

Unless you want to be constantly patronised and you feel like you need to compensate for something i definitely wouldn't recommend MoH. Even the tacked-on BF3/4 campaigns were vastly superior to this garbage.