Alright, it sucks I have to put a disclaimer in my own review, but when dealing with video games and a crowd with a large number of hairless-chest thumping Justin Biebers, the word "fanboy" gets thrown around WAY too much. I will start my review by saying I own CoD4, MW2, and now MoH. I played the BFBC2 beta, I downloaded BF 1943 when it first released on the Playstation Store, but I have never played BFBC1 or the full release of BFBC2, so I came into the latest MoH with only a slight familiarity with the feel of EA's DICE games. If anything, I'm a fanboy of Frontline, and a frequent player of MW2, but understand and appreciate the different approach EA/DICE took with MoH versus Activision with MW2.
I used to play MoH: Frontline for hours, loved the soundtrack, and pre-ordered Rising Sun, but still returned to Frontline, which stands as my favorite modern release wartime FPS (Duke Nukem 3d being my #1 all time fav). I've played MoH games long before I ever stepped foot into a Call of Duty game.
This game was hyped up like crazy. Nobody expected Treyarch to throw in the towel with Black Ops because of this game, but MoH has failed to live up to said hype. Not to say that it's a horrible game. I got tired of reading "I want a refund! I can't play online!"... It's day 1 kids, relax, be patient, play the campaign mode, do your pre-algebra homework, inspect your lip for any incoming mustache hairs, or do whatever it is 13 year olds do these days.
I pre-ordered MoH for a couple reasons. To keep me occupied until Black Ops releases (because I'm tired of MW2) and to re-live Frontline. I played the beta. It was rough, but most betas are. EA seemed to respond to a lot of the feedback so I assumed the release would be a bit more polished. It is, but only slightly.
Starting with the single player campaign:
I'm only halfway through and I've moderately enjoyed the campaign thus far, but still have a few gripes. I started on medium difficulty, thinking it'd be challenging enough to keep me entertained, but not overwhelmingly difficult. Now that I've played through this far, I'm thinking I should have just jumped on hard. I've only died once, and I'll explain why in just a minute. I have had, on multiple occasions, AI walk AROUND me to go fire at my team, leaving me completely unnoticed and unharmed as if I were invisible. As other reviewers have pointed out, the enemy can be hiding behind a soggy Kleenex and be completely safe from your fire. The environment is semi-destructible. I was able to shoot a few rounds at a stack of tires and chip off tires one by one to reveal the enemy's head (well, a teensy little bit of his turban), but the wooden crate he was hiding behind must have been filled with blocks of lead, because nothing made it through.
Even being somewhat out in the open, if the enemy fires at you, no need to run and duck for cover, just watch for the flash reports and aim for his head... trust me, you'll have time.
The only time I've died was while playing the second mission, called Breaking Bagram. We cleared and secured the airfield, but once we made it into the warehouse, the fourth guy was missing (Mother? I'm not sure who's who). So when we secure the warehouse and start making our way over to the tower, my team just holds up in the second floor of the warehouse waiting on this dude to get there, but he never shows. And at that point, the entrance to the warehouse is sealed shut. I've reloaded at the last checkpoint, everybody is accounted for, but once we get into the warehouse, he's gone... I've done this several times with no change. My teammate VooDoo waits by a door upstairs in the warehouse, so after we cleared out the warehouse I ran up to this door before VooDoo could block it and I was able to walk right through it (just like using the "idclip" cheat code in Doom (that's an old (and awesome!) computer game for you Teen Disney watchers)). After clipping through the door, I go downstairs and look outside to see nothing... literally, absolutely nothing. It's just white. I step outside and immediately fall underneath the map.. I keep falling, watching the map above me getting smaller and smaller.. then finally I smack and die and have to start allover again. I finally had to replay the entire mission to get through this level, not sure where this fourth dude kept hiding out, but he is seriously not a good wingman. Chump.
Multiplayer is, well.. an experience. I've played all available matches, mostly as Rifleman, and have an hour of online game time racked up so far and I'm already bored with the maps they keep sticking me on, especially when I play hardcore and it gives you random match types, but will put you on the same exact map 2-3 times in a row. There's only a total of like 4 maps, too. Pretty unexciting. Unless you love the taste of a sniper's bullet in your mouth, your best bet is to stay on the ground. Don't look over walls, don't hop up on buildings, crates, ladders, etc, stay low and stay covered, or else you're sniped. Even on CoD, I'm always on the move, but not a run-and-gun type player. I look around corners, I sneak behind enemies (I always get "Most time near enemies"), but this technique doesn't work here. I think the only way to produce successful numbers are sniping. I have about a 50/50% K/D ratio, so it's not that I'm horrible at this game, but seriously, MP needs some work. There's still a die-delay after being shot. Countless times I come across an enemy player and we both shoot and kill each other. I know that's possible at extreme random times, but this will happen multiple times within 1 team deathmatch round that only lasts a few minutes.
Frontline: This is at least half the reason I bought this game. Seriously, if it weren't for being able to play Frontline again, plus now I can play for trophies, I might have just taken this to GameStop and traded it for BFBC2. It's not that it's the crappiest game I've ever played (it's not, by far), but it definitely hasn't lived up to the hype. I could tough out playing MW2 until Black Ops comes out. I know a lot of it can be patched, but just because it can be doesn't mean it will be, we'll just have to hope for the best.
If you have any questions about anything I said (or didn't say), please comment and I'll address. Bottom line, this game is fun, but it's a lot of unmet hype. Get it, you'll like it as long as you keep an open mind and don't set your expectations as high as the hype told you to. It has potential to be better, it has potential to be a LOT better, but will never be game of the year material.
*EDIT* 19-Oct-2010
Ok, not so much of a review edit, but more of a heads up that I will soon be adding to this. I've been able to get more game play in, mostly on multiplayer, so I'll be able to share a bit more of my opinion on this game. In a nutshell, I'm liking it more than I did with the first few hours of play I had, but not sure I'm to the point where I'm going to change the star rating. Plus, I shared my dislikes and never really got to touch up on the likes. Stay tuned...
*EDIT* 22-Oct-2010
Alright, now I've got a few moments to add onto this review.
Single player - I still stand by most of what I said about single player above, the enemy is comprised of slow-to-fire, horrible aim idiots, and your teammates are quicker to the trigger, but just as horrible of a shot as the enemy is. To parrot what others have said, I would like to have more freedom to move about, but it's basically follow your teammate(s) on the invisible track throughout every level. I've restarted the game on hard and I really don't see a difference between it and medium difficulty that I initially started playing. I haven't run into any new bugs, the closest thing that I've come across though is the shot/impact delay. For example, I'll shoot at a wall approximately 10-15 yards away from me and there will literally at least a half-second delay from the point of pulling my trigger and hearing the blast to the actual impact of the bullet. This is acceptable if I were doing 600 yard sniping, but not within spitting distance. Hopefully this is something they can patch since it's supposed to be a realistic game.
Multiplayer - I don't know what it is, but there seems to be much less sniping going on. Snipers can still be an issue, but they don't appear to be as problematic as before. I have not played my gameplay style whatsoever, but I'm living longer, getting higher K/D rations, more points, etc. There is still the death delay problem. If you're firing an automatic rifle and get sniped, for example, you'll still be standing, but your gun will quit firing for a half second before you actually die. Almost giving you this weird "did my game just freeze up on me?!" feeling.
Overall - The graphics for the most part look great, but still some odd, random "wth is that supposed to be?" moments. Like in the first level when you're waiting on a missile strike to open up this huge gate. The dirt and debris falling down to the ground is just brown streaks, very much like something you'd see on a Wii or PS2 FPS. Why they cut corners on stuff like that while putting in so much detail in other areas, I don't know. Like one of the multiplayer maps, if you look off in the far distance, you can see trucks driving down roads, and these have nothing at all to do with the game play. They can do that, but they can't do better than a half-arse brown smudge for debris?
I'm enjoying the game a lot more than I did the first few days. The storyline is ok so far, nothing too extreme, but nothing too boring either. I will continue to update as I continue playing this game.. until Nov 9, that is.
Any questions? Please post and I'll respond. Medal of Honor - Ea Games - Electronic Arts - Fps - Playstation 3'
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