One Man Making a Difference
Written: May 07 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast and fun, easy to learn, the AI can sometimes be good.
Cons: Not enough squad-based combat, the AI can also be bad.
The Bottom Line: A very worthy game, definitely worth the $45 I paid for it. Good graphics and gameplay and even better sound make this game one that you won't want to miss.
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| c_squared_smm's Full Review: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault For Windows |
In the last few years, World War II has been a widely focused-on subject. Movies, most notably Saving Private Ryan, focused on the conflict, and games like Microsoft’s Combat Flight Simulator, as well as the Commandos series, gave you a chance to take part in it.
What I’m leading up to, of course, is that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a game based upon the Second World War. And while it may not always be the most faithful representation of what happened, for a run-and-gun, scripted first-person-shooter, it does a very good job.
I bought this game not knowing what to expect. I had read only a single preview article about the game, and seeing a lone copy of it sitting on the store shelves, decided “Hey, why not?”
To sum it up, 6 hours later, I was not only seriously deprived of sleep, but also more than halfway through the game-and having loads of fun. I very highly recommend this game to anyone with a good enough computer.
Why? I’ll tell you why. I’ll start right now, in fact.
Gameplay: 4.5
As I said before, this is not a completely faithful representation of World War II. It’s more of a Quake-ish game, though certainly not Quake. There’s no blood, for instance. (A note of concern sounds from the Hardcore community, but, first of all, the lack of blood can be dismissed easily enough, secondly, you can download modifications if you really want blood). Those of you expecting a super-realistic experience, like something from Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon, will be disappointed in that aspect. While you have a few chances to lead squads of Rangers, most of the game is spent with you winging it on your own.
First, I’ll cover the non-realistic aspects, to clear up any misconceptions.
The most easily noticeable one is your health. You, as the protagonist, get a health meter of 100. This will go down when you get hit, but medical packs can heal you right quick. Your enemies get a very significantly lowered health stat, because there are so many of them.
The second is the fact that you are alone for most of the game. There’s nothing apparently wrong with this at first glance, but when you consider your greatly magnified health stat, and consider how long you would last alone, it is easy to see why the Army likes to send soldiers in groups instead of one at a time.
After this comes your arsenal. There’s nothing really wrong with it, all your weapons are modeled realistically enough, except that you can carry up to six weapons. Holding a pistol, rifle, and a few grenades was all that real soldiers could handle (though I doubt our hero from this game bothers with the niceties such as tents and food), but in Allied Assault, you carry enough small arms with you to take down platoons of infantry…not surprising, because this is exactly what you must do. The weapons don’t slow you down when carried, though some will lower your speed when they are in your hands. There’s also the issue of ammo, which is the same one facing your repertoire of weapons-you can carry a lot of ammo.
Other than that, there aren’t too many realism concerns, other than the lack of blood that I already mentioned (this game is rated T, after all).
Once you get past all that, though, Allied Assault is a very fun game to play. It is fast paced, for the most part, with practically no puzzles. I’m very glad that absolutely no attempt was made to include jumping puzzles of any sort. Jumping puzzles don’t belong in World War II. Can you tell that I don’t like jumping puzzles? A compass, which guides you towards your objectives and tells you how far from them you are, is a very handy thing, ensuring that you won’t get lost too badly. These two elements help keep the focus on combat, which is where the game is at its best.
Much of a shooter’s enjoyment comes from its “feel”. Any gaming veteran will tell you that the “feel” of a game comes from a collection of rather intangible touches. I will do my best to nail them down, but that is often difficult to do. Well, here goes nothing…
The first thing you will notice is the way the guns look and sound when fired. They all pass this with flying colors. The semi-automatic M1 will kick back slightly, (indicating the player’s alter-ego is very good with weapons) then return to it’s original position. An ejected cartridge case will fly out of the action. If you look really closely, you can see that the chamber is open-another nice touch. When an automatic weapon is fired, it will “kick” substantially, pushing the view upwards and causing the crosshairs to jitter about. Shells fly out of the chamber. And when the clip is empty, your virtual hand will pull out the empty clip, insert a new one, and chamber a new round--all of this with very satisfying sound effects. Grenades, when thrown, will bounce around a bit, but not too much, and give a nice thudding sound when they hit the ground, then the even better sound of an explosion. I hope you get what I’m trying to tell you. These guns are all fun to shoot.
Of course, shooting at nothing gets old fast. That’s what the bad guys are put in for. A big element of the “feel” is how the enemies react to bullets when shot. A note, first: The damage in this game is semi-realistic. Your adversaries can take more punishment than in real life, though not nearly as much as you. The damage is location-based, so shooting someone in the head will be far more destructive than a shot to the leg.
As I was saying, if enemies don’t react convincingly to bullets, it takes a lot away from a game. Fortunately, most of the weapons give a convincing enough show against the antagonists—and I don’t mean that they’ll simply drop dead. Shooting an enemy will usually cause him to reel back in pain. A good shot will cause him to kneel and try to recuperate for a moment. A better shot will result in the enemy dropping dead.
There are lots of nice touches. Shooting someone’s helmet will make it fall off. Bullets give a very convincing “thud” sound when they strike flesh. One realistic element of the game is that weapons do variable damage. A Submachine gun firing pistol-caliber rounds won’t do as much damage as rifle rounds. It’s great fun to empty the clip of a submachine gun into someone’s chest and watch them being driven back.
So, what other elements are there to a game’s feel? Well, there’s control responsiveness. Allied Assault does a good job of giving the feel that you’re an infantryman slogging through Europe, loaded down with equipment, and not a rocket jumping maniac blasting through alien worlds. You can’t run at breakneck speeds, nor can you dodge tracer bullets. You aren’t an armored machine either, able to charge into machine-gun fire, because the view will kick back substantially whenever you are hit, meaning that you must use cover effectively (more on that a little later).
Before I finish up the Gameplay section, I will hark on one more topic—your enemies. First of all, the AI in this game is good…pretty good. Sometimes, when involved in a heated indoors firefight, dodging between desks and lockers while at the same time trading fire with the enemies, I would marvel at the AI, because German troops would be doing the same dodge-fire-duck routine that I was. Other times, like when a soldier almost walked within 3 feet of me without noticing, I marveled at the AI’s incompetence. On a side note, they all speak German, and shout plenty of meaningful phrases to their buddies.
Graphics: 4
Now that I’ve bored you to death with my Gameplay section, I will try to keep the rest down to a smaller size.
Graphics got a 4.5 instead of a 5 because of their heavy system requirements. I have a P4 1.6 Ghz with 128 MB of RAM and 16 MB of video RAM, and I have to run the game in safe mode. Even so, it looks pretty good, particularly the models. The graphics lose much “flash” and shininess when turned down, but the models for characters and weapons still look very good. I already mentioned the graphical touches of the game, so I won’t go over that again.
Sound: 5
You don’t need much fancy equipment to enjoy the sounds in this game, just a decent (not insanely expensive) set of speakers.
The first sound you are greeted to upon playing the first mission is the noise of a truck’s motor. Then comes the voice of your Captain, followed by comments from your squad mates. Finally comes the noise of weapons fire. All of these sounds are excellent. You really get the feel that you are there. German troops will often talk among themselves a bit if you sneak up on them. There are very excellent sound effects throughout the whole game.
Also, a nice musical score pervades most of the missions, and it fits the mood nicely. There is gung-ho, fast-paced music in the first mission, while the stealth sequences have mysterious, slower music, and the last dash at the end of the game features a somewhat frenetic score. All the songs follow the same basic theme, and I liked most of them.
Learning Curve: 5
It is very easy to pick up and play if you’ve ever played an FPS before, and if you haven’t, there is a well-done tutorial to get you started. (I would recommend taking the tutorial even if you are well versed in shooters, though. It quickly familiarizes you with how to fire weapons effectively and how to plant explosives, open doors, etc.)
All items are context-sensitive, which means that you can’t accidentally place explosives in the wrong spot. This makes the game relatively simple. (Though some might not like it this way.)
Replay value: 4
The replay value in this game is nothing exceptional, but not bad either. Really, there's not too much to say about that.
One final note—I couldn’t write a review for this without mentioning the D-Day mission. Suffice it to say that just this one mission makes the game worth playing. Enough has been written about that elsewhere, though, and I’ve used up plenty of room already, so I won’t go into further detail.
Overall: As I said in the beginning, a very worthy game. If you want something to do for a week or two, or maybe even for a month, then shell out the money and buy this.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
c_squared_smm
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Member: Joe Schoneman
Location: Wisconsin
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 10 members
About Me:
The mathematics are fundamental!
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