Final verdict: D+
Final playtime: 5-6 hours
This game was pretty much just as painful and pointless as the war it’s based on.
With a story so schizophrenic that you’ll never know what’s going on or why, Medal of Honor’s campaign feels utterly fruitless upon completion. The story focuses on… Well, nobody in particular. There’s about 5 or 6 different groups of people that you keep switching between, and it never stays with one group long enough to learn anything about their characters, histories or personalities so they all just seem like generic soldiers.
The mission is also vague. “Kill the Taliban”, in summary. Which Taliban? Where are they? Why do we have to kill them? These questions aren’t really answered. Yes, I know it might seem obvious. The Taliban are bad. They are in the Middle East somewhere. You should kill all of them. But those answers aren’t enough. “Kill all bad guys” does not constitute a compelling plot.
I’m sure you already fully understand the premise of the game already. You are an elite soldier and you have to kill all the towelheads because they did 9/11. You are a badass. You have a friend who has a full beard and wears Oakley shades. Clearly he is a warrior. A Tier 1 warrior no less. He could kill a dude. You know, if he wanted to. Maybe he’s already killed a dude one time.
Shit, what else am I supposed to say about this game? It’s a modern day setting FPS. You already played it when it was called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Then you played it again when it was called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And both of those times it was better and more compelling than this time.
Gah, there really isn’t anything more to say, alright? It’s an FPS set in the middle east. What more do you want me to say about it? It’s all brown and sand color, you have the same guns you’ve seen in all shooters since COD4, there’s often some dust in the air that makes it hard to see. Actually the dust gets in the fucking way a lot of times.
This is seriously the most generic, bland FPS I’ve ever played. There are no surprises. There is nothing unique about it. It makes absolutely no effort. Make no mistake, this was a game that intended from the start to ride entirely on its brand name alone. Oh, and of course it’s only about 5 hours long.
It has your usual gimmick missions. There’s the sniper mission, but that sucks. You’re prone. You snipe a few guys. SNIPING TIME IS OVER COMMENCE RUNNING AROUND SPRAYING AT ANYTHING THAT MOVES AGAIN. There’s also the on-rails shooter section where you’re the gunner in a helicopter. That would have been fun if it wasn’t so short and easy. I mean, it felt pretty badass I’ll admit, but it’s so short that the feelings of badassery don’t have time to register in your brain and make you feel good.
I could have liked this game if it was longer and actually put in effort. But it’s simply… there. It exists. You play it and it’s done and you forget about it, because nothing about it sticks with you.
It has its fair share of bugs and glitches of course, but none of those are particularly game breaking. Or at least, the ones I experienced weren’t, but I might be one of the lucky ones. The game’s worst flaw is that it doesn’t ever make it obvious what you actually have to do. Objectives aren’t particularly clear most of the time. For instance, during the helicopter gunner mission I mentioned earlier, I’d shoot my way through the majority of the mission with my primary 30mm machine gun, remove the threat of RPGs, and upon flying away from the target village would get shot down by a barrage of RPGs from the village that I just cleared. As it turned out, I had to destroy a particular building in the village using rockets which I wasn’t aware I even had because there was no indication that I had them or needed to use them. There’s a lot of moments like that in the game, with little to no indication of what it is you actually have to do, and no minimap or anything like that to give you so much as a direction to head in.
Other than being extraordinarily bland and short, the game doesn’t do anything explicitly wrong, though. it plays well. It looks antastic. It feels pretty good for the most part, barring the occasional terrain glitches and getting stuck on invisible things. As I already said, I would probably like it a lot if it just put in some effort.
Final verdict: D+
Final playtime: 5-6 hours or so, maybe.