Not Even Worthy of a Bronze Medal
Written: Mar 14 '02 (Updated Mar 16 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Attractive graphics. Mildly interesting story. Easy to play. Good Sound.
Cons: No strategy required. Inconsistent AI. Incredibly Linear. Just another skin for quake
The Bottom Line: -
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| mickp's Full Review: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault For Windows |
After years of ignoring first person shooter type games I was finally pulled into the fold by such excellent examples of what can be done with this genre as Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon, games which mixed shooting action with incredible realism, heart-pounding tension and the requirement of some deftly executed strategies to complete your goals.
Of course, the fact that Medal of Honour - Allied Assault uses the Quake 3 engine had me a bit worried. Nothing bores me faster than yet another new skin for quake - so I waited until the reviews raved. I waited until the newsgroups were full of ecstatic posts about the wonders of the game, with words like "Stealth" and "Covert" thrown around faster than bullets from a turret mounted machine gun.
I never expected to get something as slick as Rogue Spear, but the thought of some sort of middle ground between action and strategy shooter, full of World War II story had me whetting my lips.
MOH:AA has a pleasant enough front end, with the options menu incorporated into a sort of Allied HQ scene, not unlike that used in European Air War a few years back. A rather simple tutorial is included to allow the player to come to grips with the pretty standard controls of the game and a bit of pre-game first hand experience with some of the weapons. It was during the tutorial that I became a bit more worried. I wasn't taught how to peek around corners, or lie flat on my stomach or a number of other practices which I thought I would need for survival in warfare. Surely I wasn't just going to run around gunning everyone down?
The start of the first mission looked promising. COOL! My team had captured some German trucks and we were sneaking inside their camp. The nervous chatter among my comrades as the Nazi checkpoint guard perused the false ID's made for a feel of being in an interactive movie - We were really going to sneak into the camp! This game is going to be so cool!
It was a moment after the German became suspicious, everyone jumped out of the trucks and started shooting at madly that I gained my first inkling of what MOH:AA was going to be like. About two minutes later, when just out of interest I decided to empty several clips of ammo into my allies and he didn't seem to be injured or even put out in any way other than having his helmet drop off, the inkling became a strong suspicion, and a couple of minutes later, after I had nearly single-handedly killed about 30 Nazi soldiers and walked into a room and healed myself simply by running over a large, inviting medi-kit that realisation set in. There was nothing strategic about this game - This was not only the Quake Engine - This was Quake in a WW2 game's clothing.
After the first level, things looked like they might get better. I entered a darkened area of the camp, which had inexplicably failed to be alerted by the mayhem that had just taken place a few hundred yards behind me. Guards walked lazily down the street. According to the briefing letter, which must somehow materialize on your person, since you are in the middle of a battlezone, I had to rescue an SAS trooper and cause some sabotage. This sounded more like it. I crept into the town. Unfortunately there is no real possibility of sneaking past the guards. Your enemies seem to have two settings - either they see you or they don't. You can empty a clip from a very loud machine gun into one guy and have his friend in the next room still be sitting down to a nice game of solitaire when you barge in. There are some moments when "alerted guards" are scripted, but at very few times during the game are there any consequences for your actions.
The "sabotage" wasn't too satisfying either and consisted of shooting a guard in front of a truck and walking up and cutting a large, red glowing cable with a pair of wire cutters, which must have caught a ride in with the briefing letter. It's not like you have to get the wire cutters out and manually snip either. They just appear as a small graphic at the top right corner of your screen at the start of the mission and in true action FPS style, you simply press the "action key" on the glowing target object (while still wielding your gun).
Of course, as you can tell, I am one seriously unimpressed gamer and my loathing for the stock/standard tripe that the gaming community seems to lap up with delight obviously biases me a bit, but COME ON. Other reviewers harp on the realism, yet it isn't possible to kill your allies with friendly fire. Guards do not respond to gunfire mere feet ayay unless it is scripted or they have actually been shot at or have seen you. The SAS operative, Maj. Grillo, has his seeming invulnerability explained away by taking a swig from a large bottle marked with a red cross at regular intervals. What is this supposed to be? Healing potion? Is this World War II or The War of the Ring?
The Quake 3 engine, sure is pretty and the graphics ran smoothly on my P4 1.9Ghz, but it doesn't do a very good job of making exterior locations believable. Everything feels like the interior of a large, square room wtih very straight angles and defined borders and the game is so incredibly linear, that you almost feel like you are riding some sort of Disney attraction featuring animatronic German soldiers. All of the "tedious" wandering around and puzzle solving has been removed in favour of a tour-group like progression and points of special interest glowing red.
The one area where MOH:AA leaves superior games like Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon for dead, is the behavior of the enemy once they have actually seen you and are taking fire. The enemy will duck and weave, hit the deck, duck behind cover and dodge your fire in any way they can. Unfortunately, if they haven't seen you, it is a simple matter to walk right up behind them and plug them at point-blank range in the back of the head and even if you do get a bit shot up, your soldier can never be killed by a single deadly head-shot and never shows any sign of injury, but plods on like The Terminator until his energy is expended. Such a shame.
MOH:AA does offer some unique features which set it apart from being just Quake with a WW2 skin and theme. At one point I found myself riding a jeep (which moves along about as fast as those rail-mounted cars in Jurassic Park) and operating a mounted machine gun. What follows reminded me a lot of the strafing missions in Cinemaware's classic Wings - You travel along a set path and machine gun everything that steps out at you. This part is even more like a Disney ride than the rest of the game. It plays out identically each time, the gun has (as far as I have seen) unlimited ammo and there is no option to hop off the back of the jeep and run along side it or anything else that would make the game real, immersive and entertaining.
Much has been made of the story and it does indeed seem promising, but begins to peter out as you progress, in a similar manner to Half Life - Blue Shift. The soundtrack features some stirringly adequate wartime music and there is some pleasant voice acting (in both English and German) to add a bit of flavour.
If you love Quake 3, Half Life, Serious Sam and that sort of game, you are probably going to get a kick out of MOH:AA, but I prefer my games to hold a little more realism (shame on those reviewers who praise this game for it's realism) and a lot more substance. At best, I rate MOH:AA as an attractive looking game, which is fun for a brief bash every now and then if you are bored, but lacking in any long term (or long gaming session) potential and worth no more than two stars.
Update
Today, I upgraded the rating of this game to three stars as I have found that it improves remarkably in the later missions. There is still a lot of repetition, but there are some convincing European war scenes, including the stunning Normandy Landing which is quite horrific in it's realism (in appearance, not gameplay).
Recommended:
No
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mickp
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Member: Mike Price
Location: Aussie in Las Vegas, Nevada
Reviews written: 431
Trusted by: 270 members
About Me:
An Australian living in Vegas - Eating too much buffet and writing too many Epinions.
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