One of my most anticipated games at E3 2010 was EA’s Medal of Honor reboot. EA may be blatantly following Activision’s lead by taking the franchise to a modern setting, but Dice makes great multiplayer games and it should at least be interesting to see what they come up with.
Firstly, don’t expect it to feel like any Medal of Honor game you have played before. Much like how Call of Duty 4 alienated itself from its predecessors, Medal of Honor does the same by embracing the recently popularised modern warfare setting.
We were taken into a room filled with PS3’s connected via a LAN interface. About 10 journalists spent the next 15 minutes going head to head, and the top scorer won a pair of Oakley sunglasses. I happen to suck at FPS games on console, so I was nowhere near the pole position.
My primary curiosity regarding Medal of Honor was where EA would try and position it in the market. While Modern Warfare 2 has the basic action orientated modern warfare fans wrapped up, Bad Company 2 appeals to those looking for more depth. In short, Medal of Honor seems to fit in somewhere in between. While it seems to lack the tactical depth and gameplay variety that makes Bad Company 2 such an excellent game, its bigger maps (or at least the one we played) gives it a different feel to Modern Warfare 2.
On the positive side, it does feel like its own game. My biggest fear for Medal of Honor was that it would fail to carve out its own niche in a market with two very dominant modern warfare themed multiplayer shooters available. Whether it does so or not when it is released later this year is anyone’s guess, but my early impressions lead me to believe that it at least has a fighting chance.
Having said that, there was nothing about it that blew me away. It looks and plays like a mixture between Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, and without anything to make it particularly better than these two, it could easily slip off the radar shortly after release. Of course these are early impressions, and there is only so much you can see in 15 minutes. Furthermore, the game still has a way to go before release, so it is too early to draw an serious conclusions.
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Medal of Honor is set to release on 12 October 2010 in the US. If you pre-order the game you’ll gain access to the beta which starts on 21 June 2010 on PC and PS3. If you own Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and pre-order then you’ll get early-access to the beta (you should be able to play as from yesterday). The Xbox 360 beta has been delayed but according to the official website it’s expected to be available next week.
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