Before you get uppity about this review coming in a full 2 weeks after launch, I promised I would give the game a least 25 hours of my time before weighing in on the multiplayer component. And they were 25 hours well spent, despite the fact that the game has received mixed reviews. 

It has been stated ad nauseam that Medal of Honor is a mixture between Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2. While this is true to a degree, it is a description which does not do the game justice. While it may be derivative of these, it succeeds in feeling unique, and while it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre, it does what it does with conviction.

Let’s get technical for a minute

Technically speaking, Medal of Honor lags a bit behind some of its more polished contemporaries. The visuals are adequate, but do nothing particularly impressive. The engine seems well optimized, and the game runs at a steady frame rate on a range of machines. Occasional texture poping sticks its ugly head from time to time, but more worrying, is the rare ghosting which occurs, which allows you to see your enemies through terrain and buildings.  

The sound is a highlight, with realistic explosions and detailed environment effects. More than once I gave my position away by knocking over a chair, causing a previously unsuspecting enemy to turn rapidly and shoot me in the face. You will hear the clinking of empty cartridges fall to the ground, and the cracking of sniper rifles will immediately remind players of Bad Company 2. In fact, quite a few of the sound effects sound like they were pinched from Bad Company 2. Whether or not this is true is neither here nor there, but suffice to say, the game sounds the part of a AAA blockbuster. 

PC gamers will be pleased to know that Medal of Honor runs on dedicated servers. iGame, WebAfrica, Telkom and others are hosting local servers, and finding one to play on is a very simple matter of selecting your region, and clicking on a chosen server. The game is still being played enough for there to be a fair selection of busy servers to jump on at almost any time of the day. I did notice occasional lag, but this could be attributed to my ISP (Afrihost capped account), or other broader local internet problems. 

Gameplay

Medal of Honor is an interesting case study. On one hand, it fails in areas which prevent it from really shining, but on the other, it does enough right to warrant praise. 

There is a very basic class system, which Bad Company 2 players will find shallow. Your options are limited to Rifleman (regular grunt), Sniper, and Spec Ops (regular grunt with a rocket launcher).

Players can level each class up as they play, in turn, unlocking new weapons and weapon modifications. This is one of the areas where DICE really failed to clear the bar raised so high by the likes of Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, which both possess huge scope for weapon and load out combinations.  There are also not that many weapons, with only 4 unlockable rifles in the sniper class. 

The selection of game mode choices is more substantial, but does not bring anything new to the table. “Combat Mission” is the pick of the lot, and is identical to Bad Company 2’s Rush mode. The attacking team has to push the defenders back and take victory locations. Each time a victory location is taken, the battlefield map moves back to the next location which the defenders must try and hold. The attacking team has limited reinforcements (lives split among the team), so the idea is for the defending team to hold its locations until the attackers run out. It’s a great game mode, although giving praise to it feels a bit unjust as it was honed by Dice in the Battlefield series. 

Other game modes include Combat Mission, Sector Control and Objective Raid. These range from simple death matches, to planting bombs and holding victory locations. Again, nothing new is offered, but the variety is sufficient. 

There are currently 8 maps on offer. The map design in MoH has been a controversial topic. They are characterised by clearly distinct choke points, and trying to cross these can often feel like sticking your hand in a meat grinder, due to the fact that there are ample camping spots and sniper locations in firing range of them. What results is a gameplay experience which I found more brutal and intense than either Modern Warfare 2 or Bad Company 2. Where the average player can expect to get maybe 13 kills in a round of the relatively slow paced Bad Company 2, they are likely to get double as many in the same time spent with MoH. 

The gameplay is fast paced and not for the faint hearted, so expect to kill, and be killed, a lot. 

And this is where, despite its flaws, MoH vindicates itself, and provides an experience which is highly enjoyable and even addictive. If you can get used to the intensity, and learn to suck it up when you occasionally get sniped in your spawn location 4 times in a row due to some opportunist taking advantage of a map exploit, then you will probably have a lot of fun. 

The hit-registration feels solid for the most part, but many players have complained of being killed by ghost bullets. Take this example; an enemy opens fire on you so you run to cover. After making cover, you are killed by the enemy gunfire which befell you split seconds before supposedly escaping behind the safety of a massive boulder. This is a recurring problem, and can most likely be put down to some sort of intervening lag counter measure built into the hit-detection. It is hardly game ruining, but it is a bit annoying. 

All in all, despite its flaw, Medal of Honor has won me over in the time I have spent with it so far. I will continue to play it over Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, which is an achievement in itself seeing as I am a huge fan of both those games. While it is derivative, and lacks depth and scope, it somehow feels like its own game. 

Some have called it “broken”, and it is indeed flawed. But it has something which keeps drawing me back; a very raw and compelling fun factor. Yes it could have been bigger, with more maps, more weapons and more class customization. It could also have been a little more polished, and sniper rifles could probably get a damage reduction. But at the end of the day, despite its imperfections, if you let yourself get into it, you will not be disappointed. 

Reviewed on PC