
Your desperate stand ends in a dramatic rescue, and you then play as rescuers as they take on their next mission. For example, after fighting your way through enemy artillery positions, you find yourself facing a frightening onslaught that threatens to overwhelm your squad. Playing as different soldiers provides markedly different combat experiences, and the game transitions between protagonists in logical ways. The great battlefield chatter portrays intriguing facets of professionalism and camaraderie among the soldiers, setting an authentic tone that enhances the experience.ĭuring the course of the campaign, you engage in heated firefights and quietly infiltrate enemy encampments, which are familiar actions that feel good thanks to solid controls. It's probably for the best that Medal of Honor didn't take on a wider representation of the current conflict, focusing instead on the characters you meet in the field and their soldierly attitudes. While come cutscenes provide good dramatic set-up, the ham-fisted interactions that take place in the command outpost often feel cliche and cheap. It's easy to keep track of who you are and where you fit into the offensive even though you play as multiple characters. The nicely varied environments provide an attractive array of places to wage war, and even though the visuals suffer from some technical imperfections, the fact that the whole campaign takes place in one region of the world creates a good sense of cohesion. You are part of an American military effort to find and eliminate Taliban forces, and the grounded-in-reality premise feels more immediate than those that feature fictional enemies. The single-player campaign takes place in Afghanistan, where craggy peaks loom over dry, rocky terrain. Both the single-player and multiplayer components provide some robust entertainment, and though flaws and limitations keep it from being all it can be, Medal of Honor still distinguishes itself on the field of first-person battle.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's The online multiplayer offers many thrills of its own, and the adherence to realism makes for battlefields where the only thing between you and a swift death is your gun and your reflexes. The campaign finds a reasonable balance between realism and escapism, where it manages to provide a fairly engrossing experience despite its flaws. Unfortunately, this energy is diminished somewhat by a bunch of video game-y elements, like invisible walls, invincible allies, and an incongruous icon that pops up whenever you get a headshot. From the chatter among the soldiers and the authentic weapons to the environmental continuity, there are many elements that enliven the campaign with an invigorating sense of realism. Medal of Honor tries to do just that by representing a real conflict that is really happening in a real country between two real opposing forces. In the crowded first-person shooter market, it's important for a game to carve out a niche-do something better than or different from its competitors.
