Monday Modern (and controversial) Reviews: Medal of Honor

Welcome back to Monday Modern Reviews! Today we will be taking a look at the new and controversial Medal of Honor.

The Gamer Dude here filling in for the Gamer Chick while she's away. Don't worry she'll be back next Monday with a review of Fable 3 but for now I'm here and I will be reviewing a few games to hit the store shelves recently starting first with the new Medal of Honor game aptly titled "Medal of Honor."

The Medal of Honor series has been around for over a decade now and it set a precedent of how First Person military shooters are supposed to be played. Despite it's main competition Call of Duty pretty much overshadowing them now with the Modern Warfare (and upcoming Black Ops) series of games, Call of Duty wouldn't be here without Medal of Honor (MoH came first).

The series was created and developed by Steven Spielberg (he was hot off the heels of Saving Private Ryan) and was designed to be a First Person Shooter that put you into the shoes of an Allied soldier during World War 2. Well they ran with that gimmick for 12 games (even after CoD moved to Modern War scenarios) and despite mixed reviews from critics, the series has sold well. On top of that it has developed a hardcore fan base, so loyal that their outcries for a new Medal of Honor, this time in today's settings, was heard by the developers at EA and Dreamworks and they decided to oblige.

All the way through E3 2010 and even leading up into PAX Prime 2010, Medal of Honor was thought to be serious competition for Call of Duty. The game was made by two developers, Danger Close and Digital Illusions, each tasked with taking a crucial part of the game and working on nothing else but that. DC got to take on the Single Player game, making it engaging, fun, and if nothing else cinematic, and DI was tasked with doing what they do best: multiplayer. They ARE the people behind Battlefield if you remember. But then news came in about the game's multiplayer, more specifically who you could play as, and this game went from a top tier competitor to a blacklisted bastard of a game.

What do I mean? Well the news came in that in any multiplayer match, you could choose between playing as the American soldiers or the Taliban. Now to some that just seems like an "Okay what about it?" but you have to realize that we are not only still at war with said Taliban, but said Taliban has killed a LOT of people's fathers/brothers/sisters/cousins/sons/daughters and people are still pretty worked up and sad over that. So for people to play as Taliban soldiers and kill British and American soldiers....kind of hinky. I mean I knew where EA was coming from since in any match there will be opposing sides and the opposing side of the American/British soldiers is the Taliban, but to a lot of people it seems tasteless.

Well people got up in arms about this and since that announcement Canada, Australia, and the UK have all tried (unsuccessfully of course but still tried) to ban this game from being released and the US Military responded by banning the game from PX's all over the US and the head of AAFES basically damning EA and saying that they would never work with a game developer again (they let EA check out there resources, outfits, weapons ect for realism) unless they know full well of what's going into the game.

And since the Supreme Court hearings are going on about the whole violent video game controversy, the game industry pretty much shoved this one under the bus and ignored it. But is the game any good? Well it's good but it's no Modern Warfare.

The game loosely follows Operation Anaconda which was one of the US Military's first big operations in the War on Afghanistan. You play a squad of soldiers under the call sign Neptune and play specifically as a soldier named Rabbit. There are three others in your squad, Voodoo, Mother and Preacher, and your job is to find an informant named Tariq, rescue him, and get the vital information he has out of him. You also alternate between other characters as well, each providing a different gaming style from Rabbit. Rabbit is your typical FPS kind of shooter, Deuce is a Sniper, Dante is just a badass destruction machine, and Hawk is a gunner inside an airship. Rabbit is the main story and where you'll get most of the plot developments but I do appreciate having the other characters there.

The story itself is cinematic but pretty cookie cutter. If you've played one Modern War story you've probably already played Medal of Honor's story. It doesn't take risks like the Modern Warfare series or uses humor like the Bad Company games but it's not bad, just generic. It's also unforgivably short, clocking in barely around 4-5 hours. I realize multiplayer is the main mode of transportation for these guys but if you are going to have an entire developing team focus ONLY on the SINGLE PLAYER, make the SINGLE PLAYER WORTHWHILE!

The multiplayer is where it's at though in this game and the multiplayer is really good. It uses a lot of the elements set forth by the Bad Company series (as well as a little Call of Duty) and uses a class based system. There is Riflemen, Special Ops and Sniper. You earn experience as you play and the more you play, the more you unlock which actually helps your character grow. Say for example you are a Sniper and you want to use a Scope. Well you have to be level 3 before you can use a combat scope. See, it gives you incentive to play!

There are a bunch of different modes, mostly standard to what you're used to on FPS's, but two game modes, Clean Sweep and Hot Zone are definitely my favorites, taking an old style (King of the Hill and Last Man Standing) and growing them into something better then before. There are also 8 maps currently with more to come in DLC.

Overall this is a game that will divide players. If you want a good single player AS WELL AS a good mulitplayer then you are out of luck. The story is mediocre and cookie cutter with some noticeable drops in framerate and pop in during the more cinematic sequences. But the mulitplayer is extremely well done, entertaining and for any fans of Battlefield it will be like your second home. Do I recommend it as a buy? Personally no, I prefer a good single player as well as good multiplayer but I would definitely give this one a rent.

Oh and the whole Taliban thing was removed and changed to "Opposing Forces" to get rid of some of the controversy. It still has some baggage though so changing it really didn't do anything. Plus it's still the Taliban in the Single Player mode...just saying.