Medal of Honor is a long standing franchise that can't seem to consistently make better than average games. Of the dozen or so MoH titles released over the years two or three come to mind as excellent, while the vast majority just stand out in my mind as being fun and competent but merely average.  Danger Close's latest offering of the franchise, Medal of Honor, sadly falls into the second category.

What's disappointing is there were a couple moments in the game where I saw signs of brilliance shining through the veil of mediocrity, and it's a shame that brilliance wasn't used more consistently throughout its very short campaign mode.  And while there are some things that Danger Close really nailed, such as the realistic use of military acronyms and jargon throughout the campaign (which will cause all but the most military saavy gamers to miss out on a lot of what's going on) and fantastic sound effects, Medal of Honor feels rushed, somewhat incomplete and very much feels like a game that tried to be both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 but couldn't quite harness the essence of what made both games so fun.

Graphically, the game is hit or miss. The campaign mode kicks off with an urban setting at night and right out the gate I was thoroughly unimpressed. Medal of Honor does not render dark scenes very well at all, and I feel like the developers could've made better use of light sorces to make things look better than they do. It feels very rushed. To be fair, another night level does a little better as it takes place in a more open terrain with a beautiful full moon illuminating the level, but starting the game with such a dull looking level put a bad taste in my mouth from square one. 

Then there are times when the game looks stunning and shows off some impressive lighting.  You are treated to some beautifully rendered views high up in the mountain with the sun shining high above, glinting off the random patch of snow and streaking through the trees and shrubs. Then you'll be thrust into a cave and things get ugly again. It's jarring and really takes you out of experience when parts of the game look so beautiful and others look dark and muddy.  Explosions and particle effects are good enough but not great. Some of the larger explosions in the game, such as when calling down strikes from an AC-130, look decent, but things like grenade explosions and the like are unimpressive and fail to convey any sense of power. Without trying to reference the other two games Medal of Honor is trying so hard to be too much, said games featured way better graphics and effects. The game also suffers from an inconsistent frame rate that often slows to a crawl, as well as frequent texture pop-in and screen tearing. Graphically, in a nutshell, Medal of Honor is.....wait for it....average. Surprise!

If you're expecting the craziness of Modern Warfare 2, with its smooth frame rate no matter what's going on on-screen, or the beautiful vistas of Bad Company 2, a game which always looked gorgeous no matter what type of terrain you were on, you won't get either. Instead you'll get brown deserts, bland caves and the occasional trek up and down a mountain, which is usually when Medal of Honor looks best.

Medal of Honor is one of the most heavily scripted games I've ever played, so of course there are scripting bugs and frequent issues with clipping, which is really no surprise coming from an Unreal Engine game. Other people have reported scripting bugs that broke the game and required restarts from older checkpoints, but I have not encountered any so far in my two playthroughs. The only advice I can give is do what the game wants you to do, and you should be fine. And what I mean by that is, the game wants to hold your hand and lead you down a very specific, linear path at all times. Trying to stray from that path could very well break the scripting.

A lot of modern shooters play out more like amusement park rides, not actual games, with linear gameplay featuring scripted explosions going off left and right, a gun battle here and a vehicle turret sequence there, not allowing very much in the way of exploration.  Medal of Honor is no exception. In fact it's probalby the most hand-holding shooter I've ever played. You're literally funneled through levels and are rarely given any opportunities to flank your enemies. It's frustrating to be in a level where you're making your way up a mountain and invisible walls are basically pushing you up or down a very specific path, especially when so much more territory is rendered than can actually be traversed.  If heavily scripted games that play out the exact same way each and every time you play them doesn't bother you, this shouldn't be an issue. The occasional invisible wall in video games usually doesn't bother me too much, but Medal of Honor constantly reminds you, rather rudely, that flanking and exploration are not allowed. I can understand that the developers wanted the events to unfold in a very specific way and didn't want you, the player, to miss that by veering off the path, but the invisible barriers in Medal of Honor are ridiculous. It's 2010. Can we chill out with the invisible walls please?

EA marketed this game as realistic for months, so playing as Navy SEALs, Tier 1 Operatives and the elite Army Rangers and fighting my enemies head on, using no flanking strategy whatsoever, is shamefully unrealistic and flatout unacceptable.  Furthermore the decision to rename the Taliban in multiplayer to the generic 'opposing force' is again unrealistic. Let me get this straight. In the multiplayer scenarios I'm inserted into actual locations in modern afghanistan and fighting the 'Not Taliban'? Huh?  Furthermore, in the campaign mode you're clearly engaging the Taliban as it is referenced multiple times, and you are shooting and maiming a lot of them. There are moments when you your own guys getting hurt and killed by the Taliban. Why is there such a moral divide between the campaign and multiplayer? It doesn't make any sense.There are decidely unrealistic touches such as an icon that pops up on your screen when you score a head shot, and the large icons that appear above your team member's character models when your crosshairs hover over them, and when they speak, both features that effectively kill the immersion while reminding you that you're playing a video game.

Overall, I don't feel like Medal of Honor is any more realistic than other recent shooters. You're still a guy with a gun mowing down wave after wave of bad guys, and sniping enemies 1000 yards away with great ease, not having to worry about bullet trajectory, wind variables, etc. Apart from taking place in real world locations and using authentic military jargon, it's just another over the top modern military shooter.

EA was also marketing the game as a tribute to our troops so I was put off, and quite frankly embarassed, by how the highly trained professional soldiers were portrayed in the game. There's a lot of  "let's kill our way up this mountain" and "we're gonna kick everybody's ass, yeah!" bravado going on. The reality is, a lot of SEALs and Operatives have educational backgrounds that do not include the military, and all of them are as mentally tough as they are physically hardened. During their years of training it was their spirit and mental toughness that pushed them past when their bodies told them to give up. They are highly intelligent, professional soldiers, not meatheads with assault weapons. I can imagine that any of the real life professional soldiers who were consultants to Danger Close are going to feel a little betrayed when they see how "realistic" Medal of Honor is.

On the multiplayer side of things Medal of Honor is, again, a little bit like Bad Company 2 and a little bit like Modern Warfare 2, but stripped of many things that made both games great. It has the frantic, arcadey pace of Modern Warfare 2 (try to live longer than one minute), but the looks and sounds of Bad Company 2, as it's rendered using BC2's fantastic Frostbite engine. It has an upgrade system that's similar to both games but is stripped down, and it has the killstreak rewards of MW2 but, again, stripped down and simplified. Just like the single player mode it feels rushed and incomplete. You cannot squad up, revive fallen teammates,drop ammo boxes or pilot UAV's and helicopters as you could in Bad Company 2. Weapon upgrades are predictable - use a specific kit long enough (Rifleman, Spec Ops, and Sniper) and you unlock various upgrades such as new weapons, optics, upgraded ammunition, and suppressors that you can customize your unlocked guns with. Nothing original.

There are a couple poorly designed maps that quickly devolve into a dominant team spawn sniping (get used to getting sniped a dozen times in any one map) and grenading the other side unmercilessly until the map ends. One time I literaly could not go more than a few steps before being sniped or blown up for the entire duration of the map. The competitive multiplayer is fun, but if you've played "those other two games", you've literally experienced everything Medal of Honor multiplayer has to offer.  That said, I've put in about a dozen hours online with friends and for the most part it's been fun times, but I'll just stick with Bad Company 2 thank you very much.

Finally there are no cooperative gameplay modes to speak of, which is disappointing. There's a Tier 1 mode that I assumed would be coop, so you can imagine my disappointment when I got a buddy of mine together in a party only to discover that it was the single player campaign all over again, only with different objectives and time trial goals to strive for in an attempt to add replay value to the short campaign mode.

So there you have it. Medal of Honor isn't great, and it isn't terrible. Every moment of the game is mediocre and the entire package lacks polish. It's a shame. You can see brief moments of potential in both modes of gameplay, but the entire package ultimately lacks polish, polish that could've been applied if the game had a few more months of refinement instead of being pushed out the door to try and steal customers away from Call of Duty: Black Ops. If you're a military buff like me, you'll likely enjoy the campaign, despite it's flaws, and get a few hours of enjoyment out of the multiplayer, but most people will probably just want to rent it for the short, but fun, campaign mode.