Medal of Honor Warfighter Review
Updated: 11/01/2012“Medal of Honor Warfighterstrays off the path that made MOH great. While providing some entertaining bits of gameplay, it falls short of being innovative.”
Medal Of Honor (MOH) was a title we relished. Something we “experienced.” What should we have expecteded when a big name such as Steven Spielberg was involved in the storyline? Superior gameplay, graphics, enemy AI, level design and an exquisite sound-track. It received a 92/100 on Metacritic and was a great start to an ever expanding franchise. Medal of Honor Warfighter however, strays off the path that made MOH great. While providing some entertaining bits of gameplay, it falls short of being innovative.This article is not intended as hate mail. However this author feels that Medal of Honor Warfighter does a disservice to the original Medal of Honor game and until its bugs are sorted, consumers should avoid the game. Even Battlefield 3 Premium owners should steer clear of it’s half-off coupon price of $30.
Authenticity
Danger Close touts “authenticity” and a “storyline written by Operators from the [specops] community”, though it fails to somehow link the missions in an easy to follow manner by presenting the SEAL operators at different locations throughout the world at different points in the timeline.
It is disappointing that the developers offered 10 different nations Tier 1 Operators, yet the single player campaign fails to let players experience any of them. The developers were rather ethnocentric, letting you only experience the game from the side of the US Navy SEALs. It would have been nice to play as a KSK operative or any other provided Spec Ops unit.
Story
One of the biggest problems of Medal of Honor Warfighter’s single player campaign is that there is not an event that personalizes all the operations. It fails to provide the hook that links the player to the story to give the player some purpose. While this may not represent real world military operations, a hook would have created more of a connection to the story for the player to want to complete the missions. Without the hook it becomes a generic shooter that attempts to wow the player with the latest technology and graphics, which in this case fail to redeem it’s shortcomings.“Friendly AI is dumb and doesn’t know how to react to situations properly. The game is so scripted, the friendly AI will push you out of your place of cover or concealment if you’re not in the right spot.”Technical Stuff
Danger Close stated that they would use the Frostbite 2 engine that was used to create Battlefield 3. While playing the game it becomes clear very early on that the Frostbite 2 elements they incorporated are few and far between. Structures cannot be destroyed, bullets from a Tac-50 (.50 caliber sniper rifle) cannot even penetrate bamboo fences and the maps are abysmally small, comparable to Call of Duty Modern Warfare. About the only semi-destructable elements from Frostbite 2 are specific designated structures that the player can use for cover. Deviating from any specific path only presents the player with invisible walls and expiring timers to “cow funnel” the player down the proper path.
Level design in MOHW is rudimentary, generic and provides nothing new. Most maps have issues with invisible walls either preventing access to what should be accessible areas but were deemed too much of a vantage point or stop bullets. The latter is usually an issue when trying to shoot someone through bushes or peeking around obstacles to take out an approaching enemy. Both are truly frustrating when one looks at other modern shooters that allow for a lot more freedom of movement and decision making.
Enemy AI in single player is nigh omnipotent. All it takes is to expose oneself to the enemy and they instantly know where the player is. The enemy character animations won’t even match up with their action, which is to instantly attack the player. If the enemy is looking away at an angle greater than 90 degrees and the player peeks to observe, the enemy will start shooting and the animation won’t change fast enough, but bullets will fly the players way at a 90 degree angle from the weapon, or grenades will fly 90 degrees from the direction of where they’re throwing.
Friendly AI is dumb and doesn’t know how to react to situations properly. The game is so scripted, the friendly AI will push you out of your place of cover or concealment if you’re not in the right spot. The player’s partner may decide to kneel and shoot at an enemy, however the oil drum blocking his view is, to him, completely permeable and he’ll continue firing kneeled and not bother stand up and shoot over the drum. The Friendly AI will let the player do all the work as well. Instead of actually doing enough damage to kill something the player pretty much will do all the killing. The player is also the focus point, regardless of whether the friendly AI is out in the open. Instead of the enemy shooting any of the partners, the enemy will, 95% of the time, focus on the player as the target. So, using real CQB (Close Quarter Battle) strategy is pretty much out of the question, barred by the limited and narrow level design.
The sound effects aren’t very realistic, but one could say that they may have sacrificed realism for more “fun” sounds. This, however, goes against the “authenticity” that was promised. Occasionally the game’s sound engine appears to be hampered by a low number of available channels and sounds seem to cut out if there is a lot going on. The music tracks are decent and varied enough and appear to fit the moments properly.
The real icing on the cake for Medal of Honor Warfighter are a couple of car chase missions in the game, which were designed by some guys from the Need for Speed series. Those two car chase missions, surprisingly, are a lot more fun than the rest of the shooting part of the game. Maybe it is because not much AI is involved. But, they provide some definitely relief from the repetitive shooting parts of the game.
Danger Close does seem to have a fetish for the various ways of opening doors though and have included a mini-game within Medal of Honor Warfighter that allows you to “level-up” your team’s ability to open doors. One will progress from using their foot, to using an axe, to crowbar, and various explosives. However the first few methods are pathetic examples of opening doors and really should prepare the intended targets for an incoming room clearing. Here is a video by Miracle of Sound pretty much explaining Danger Close’s fetish for door breakage:
Uninspiring
All in all the gameplay in Medal of Honor Warfighter is uninspiring. There was a review by Kotaku that talked about the flashlight being really good… however, I’ve yet to find the flashlight or at least how it works? The Kotaku site appears to be down temporarily at the time of this writing because of flooding due to Sandy.
Respect
Last but not least, I must give props where props are due and applaud Danger Close’s effort of including the family aspect of being a military operative. That aspect, presented in Medal of Honor Warfighter, doesn’t just affect special operations families. It affects every active duty member of any military service, all over the world. So, in that respect, Danger Close, I salute you.
Multiplayer review to follow: it’s “aight” in some ways, but stunted in others.
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