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MEDAL OF HONOR
Platform: PC
83
Reviewed on PlayStation 3

Medal of Honor Beta Impressions

Takes plenty of influence from Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 but doesn't always capture the great aspects of either game.

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There is no question that the multiplayer for the new incarnation of Medal of Honor borrows some ideas from Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2. The success of this combination is limited because MoH drops almost all destruction from BC2 but still retains the somewhat clunky movement. MW2 was partially successful because it was an extremely smooth and refined experience, it packed in loads of unlocks and game modes providing solid play even after repetition. Medal of Honor is set during the War in Afghanistan making it your basic modern day shooter with weapons most first person shooter fans will be instantly familiar with. The MoH beta includes two maps and two modes: Team Assault on Kabul City Ruins (deathmatch) and Combat Mission on Helmand Valley (rush / assault)
 

A Mortar strike cracks into the ground around an objective.

Team Assault plays out like most deathmatch modes in other games with a few basic differences. Players usually spawn into the zone in the corners of the map and an effort has been made to try to spawn players with their team mates, in this way similar to Modern Warfare 2. This does tend to break down once player counts reach 16 or more because of the frequency of spawning. You may spawn behind or in front of an enemy in more central areas of the map. The game still retains much the same feel from Bad Company 2 and this means the movement is somewhat clunky. Moving quickly away once under fire is certainly more difficult than it should be. Players can die falling only a short distance or will lose the ability to sprint away from combat. Even still it’s fairly satisfying to move through levels taking down enemies from a range and hearing them scream out in pain.

With Deathmatch you will get a taste of the killstreak rewards (called a scorechain) in the beta. Strictly speaking you don’t gain access to the rewards by killing enemies alone, you gain them from points acquired. Extra points are rewarded for headshots, savoir and revenge kills, kill assists, objective captures or even melee kills. Even still you are going to be getting most of your points just by killing enemy soldiers. Once you achieve a certain score you get access to a mortar strike or intel then later items like rocket strikes come into play. There are crowded areas that restock ammo and some chokepoints but the use of the scorechain bonuses isn’t abused in deathmatch because enemies can be anywhere around the map.

Helmand Valley (combat mission) presents a different case for these scorechains. The combat mission plays out pretty much identically to the Rush gamemode in Bad Company 2. The fighting occurs over a smaller area and consequently scorechain attacks can be targeted with incredible effectiveness. The offensive team moves forwards, plants a charge or captures an area as mortar strikes and rockets crash from the heavens above. The attackers also occasionally get access to a light tank vehicle that seems to have been taken straight out of BC2.
 

Combat Mission: Welcome to chokepoint hell

Even without squads the attackers can spawn on the front lines behind teammates. Although sometimes deploying in on the front actually seems to mean deploy on a sniper hiding in your base. When it does work it makes the downtime for action very small unless you prefer to spawn in your base to attack from a distance anyway. Once attackers get a few kills under their belts they can call in a strike from the air to decimate the defenders who will be crowded around the very tight objectives. Defenders will rejoice because the chokepoints around some objectives in this map are tiny.
 
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#7 Jul 29, 2010 21:50:33 (Jul 29, 2010 21:50)

SpectralShock
They model it after it because its the most popular online shooter. Sounds reasonable on paper
#6 Jul 29, 2010 12:45:21 (Jul 29, 2010 12:45)

kamikaziechameleon
Wonder if they are gonna trickle out gamemodes for 12months.
#5 Jul 29, 2010 12:44:23 (Jul 29, 2010 12:44)

kamikaziechameleon
I don't understand why anyone would model a game off the design of MW2s MP.  Remove the leveling mechanic(gimmick) and you have a repetative and broken game with nill fun factor.
#4 Jul 28, 2010 04:30:02 (Jul 28, 2010 04:30)

nutcrackr
Most of the BF games were insanely fun so players could overlook the array of bugs. I didn't really get that level of fun from MoH and yet it still has all those bugs and then some.
#3 Jul 26, 2010 11:12:39 (Jul 26, 2010 11:12)

kamikaziechameleon
Even with mp being the only real focus, not a single BF game has ever had a smooth launch, 1942 didn't have audio in mp till two patches in.  bc2 didn't even let you play for the first two weeks.  Dice is not presenting their games to the standard out their today.(even if the underlying design is ten times better than competition.)  Polish should be their new years resolution.  I hear this beta plays closer to a alpha with a glut of technical bugs that shouldn't be present at this point in developement.
#2 Jul 24, 2010 19:06:00 (Jul 24, 2010 19:06)

SpectralShock
They are only working on multiplayer for this one.
#1 Jul 23, 2010 14:48:29 (Jul 23, 2010 14:48)

kamikaziechameleon
Dice has a bad rep for launching games in unplayable or unfinished states, so don't hold your breath for the MP to be good during the month of october, but around december they should have most the issues fixed and all the gamemodes unlocked  ^_^
Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Medal of Honor
83%
Great
Reviewed on PlayStation 3
Game Ranking
Medal of Honor (PlayStation 3) is ranked #287 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #30 out of 103 games reviewed in 2010.
286. Medal of Honor
PlayStation 3
287. Medal of Honor
288. Machinarium
PC
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Screenshots

Medal of Honor
22 images added Jul 2, 2010 06:02
Videos
Medal of Honor - Extended Trailer
Posted: Mar 15, 2010 14:01
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Medal of Honor - Live Action trailer
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