I thought I would go through this since I am so pissed of about it. So, for my anniversary (a beautiful one full year of marriage it has been, if I should say so myself) my wife got me a new LG home theater system (model LHB535) with Blu-Ray player to compliment my LG HDTV. How I do love her, I would say her gift, but it’s a surprise and she will receive it on Saturday, which is our anniversary proper. Anywho, what better way to celebrate a true 5.1 Dolby Digital set-up than to get a new video game! Queue Medal of Honor, DICE (Digital Illusions CE) and Danger Close’s new re-birthing of the Medal of Honor series, meaning no more of the World War II crap, as that is officially old hat. I pick this game up, slide it on into the Xbox 360, power on, and……!
…I have options? I have to, from the start menu, choose whether I am playing single player campaign or multiplayer. Ok, weird (Sidebar: I didn’t follow this game very closely pre-release wise, so this may have seemed normal to those in the know. More on that later), but I of course want to enjoy the single player mode before I test my chops online. I will say this about MoH…it is a stunningly well done game. The very fact that when you reload you M4 rifle, the developers had the forethought to make it so you have 31 rounds of ammunition (30 rounds in the magazine, 1 in the chamber), that you can lean from cover, and that you can slide into cover just made this ex-soldier happy as a clam. The controls are tight, the story is amazingly done and very well told, and the graphics are…good. Honestly, this game started to remind me of Modern Warfare 2 at times, but since this game is based on actual accounts of the first couple weeks in Afghanistan I followed through to the end. Ah, the end of the game…. a tear jerker if there ever was one. And then it was all over. The campaign will only take you about five hours to beat, and my only real gripe was at times it felt very buggy, and I would suppose it felt buggy due to Modern Warfare: Black Ops being right on the horizon.
So, single player campaign conquered, what else is there to do besides play some multiplayer.
>NOTE<
This is the part of my account of this game where it turns into an incessant rant, so if you made you decision already to buy this game, do yourself a favor and stop reading this and just rent/Gamefly the game and be done with it.
>END NOTE<
I jumped into the multiplayer expecting to use the skill I attained in single player to get my sot group on. How fu**ing WRONG was I? Apparently, Danger Close made the single player campaign, while DICE made the multiplayer. It also seems that they have used two separate game engines to make the game, so the weapons feel different, the movement feels different, hell, and you can’t even go prone or slide into cover! It’s just a different game altogether, and that’s why you have to choose which version of the game you are going to play at start.
Ever heard of DICE? They made the lovely Battlefield series. And, NO, I am not taking about the console ones, though I have had the displeasure of playing those. You see, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 are, IMHO, the jewels in the landfills of coal DICE releases. The main thing both BF2 and BF2142 have that make them special is they are , it dreads me to say this, PC games, and they are absolutely WONDERFUL. Matches can be as large as 64 players per map, that’s a 32 on 32 match! You have a LARGE assortment of vehicles and weapons to choose from with a well integrated upgrade system that make you character better without giving them a game breaking weapon to attain nor a super powerful vehicle that everyone scrambles for that can’t be taken down in a myriad of ways (an argument can be made for the mechs, but just try piloting on of those things and then tell me they are game breakers…). Both games are 5 and 4 years old respectively, and they are still better than every single console effort DICE has ever done, period. Each console effort is like a stripped down, ugly, thoroughly beaten up rendition of the glorious PC versions. The vehicle count is cut in half, that graphics are subpar by comparison, the player count is halved, that maps are no where near as innovative, etc, etc. This one doesn’t even have the Battlefield name attached to it, but it’s the same game engine and the same concept, thus it’s the same game and I hate it all the same.
Here’s a complaint, one of many, why is it when I spawn in my only freakin’ spawn point on the entire map where everyone spawns, I have a mortar strike raining death upon my head? Or better yet, all of the maps are loaded with choke points so every time I spawn and move, I get sniped?
In this game’s defense, professional reviewers tell me REPEATEDLY that the multiplayer has a steep learning curve. OK, how about Fu** That Noise. I bought a video game I wanted to play and enjoy, and I guess to get better I am supposed to just die every 10 seconds and figure out a way to overcome that? Halo: Reach looks like a damn cartoon compared to the realism this game portrays, but then again Halo is a lot more fun with it’s multiplayer than this game ever will be. I can see why EA was so adamant to get this game out before MW:BO, it doesn’t stand a bloody chance!
Without a solid multiplayer, this was just a really short, albeit genuis campaign experience for me. As such, I will return it back to Gamestop and patiently await Modern Warfare: Black Ops.
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