Accurate weapons, great ambiance, poor AI, no surround sound
Written: May 13 '08 (Updated May 13 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Historically-accurate weapons, great ambiance, 32 players via network
Cons: Poor AI, no surround sound, very linear missions
The Bottom Line: Even though you will conquer the game pretty quickly in single player mode, it is a fun experience thanks to its excellent support for the Wii's controllers.
towwang's Full Review: Medal of Honour: Heroes 2 for Nintendo Wii
Hordes of Wehrmacht soldiers coming at you, brandishing Maschinenpistole 40 and Sturmgewehr 44 automatic guns with infinite ammo. pinning you down behind thin cover. Sniper fire from Gewehr 41 rifles, aimed at your temple with deadly accuracy using Zielfernrohr 43 telesscopic sights. Grenades, mortars and Panzerschreck rockets that can penetrate 200 mm of armor, flying at you out of nowhere. That's what you have to survive, to earn your Medal of Honor. That's what you have to contend with, to earn a place among the Heroes of World War II.
"Medal of Honor: Heroes 2" is a 1st-person shooter with a linear-progress story line, the newest installment in the "Medal of honor" series by Electronic Arts. Its key selling point is its support for innovative control schemes that take advantage of the motion-sensing capabilities of the Nintendo Wii's remote control. You play the role of Lieutenant John Berg, an American commando who is given the mission of sabotaging a German base producing weapons of mass destruction. You will have to progress through different areas (levels) to accomplish various intermediate goals, such as sinking vessels, destroying artillery emplacements, rescuing an undercover agent trapped in the battlefield, and of course take out an enemy base. I will say no more, so as to spoil no more.
[Game modes]
For the single player, "Heroes 2" on the Wii offers two game modes: campaign and arcade. In arcade mode, the game is basically a rail shooter like "House of the dead" or "Time crisis". You use your Wii remote to aim and fire at the enemies on the screen, and at pre-determined time points, the computer will move you (rather, your perspective) along a pre-determined route towards the end of the level you are playing. You have unlimited ammo, but you have to reload your sub-machine gun whenever your magazine is depleted. A health gauge indicates how wounded you are. As you take gunfire and/or explosions from grenades and other explosives, your health decreases. If it reaches zero, you die (of course!). Fortunately, scattered along the route you will find health-replenishing boxes that you shoot in order to replenish your health.
The campaign mode is probably the more challenging way to play "Heroes 2". In this mode, you also use the Wii remote to aim, select weapons, use special items, and fire. However your other hand will be busy operating the Nunchuck, to control your movement, perspective, and operate some special items, sometimes in concert with the Wii remote. In campaign mode, you have greater freedom of movement along the route of the area/level you play. You can hide behind cover and exchange prolonged fire with the enemy, or charge forward and assault the enemy head-on, including engaging in hand-to-hand combat. There is no time limit (for the most part) on how long you can stay in the area before accomplishing mission objectives, but you have to pay more attention to on-screen instructions indicating where you need to go or what you need to do to finish the level.
"Heroes 2" also offers an impressive multiplayer mode, where up to 32 players can battle each other, in teams, or in "every soldier for himself" combat. I have not played this mode yet, and will review it later.
[Graphics and visual elements: 9/10]
The different areas that you will battle through are nicely drawn and detailed. Effects such as lighting from the sun or over-head lamps, haze, and clouded skies give each area a very distinct ambiance. The embattled city with tattered buildings, broken doors and windows, and barricades set ablaze, provide an excellent setting for urban warfare. Both you and your enemies have plenty of places to take cover at (and jump out from), and you have little chance of success trying to rush forward too fast along narrow streets where you can't dodge enemy fire. By contrast, the dimly lit sewers with damp walls, winding tunnels, steam vents partially hazing your line of sight, is a superb place for close-quarter ambushes.
The look and feel of the various weapons you can pick up in this game is realistic and historically accurate. As an example, you can pick up a MP40 submachine gun from a fallen enemy soldier, and use it in favor of your Thompson M1. While the MP40 has a faster rate of fire, its body is less sturdy, so when you engage in hand-to-hand combat, you are depicted as using your fist to punch the enemy, rather than using the butt of your weapon (as is the case with other weapons) to knock down your enemy. The Thompson M1, being of greater caliber, has greater recoil and drifts when you fire a long barrage, and has a realistically meager 20-bullet magazine.
One other visual aspect that is especially noteworthy, is the sniper mode. Scattered along the areas are long-range rifles with telescopic sights. When you pick these up and engage the aiming mode, you will be able to scan vast portions of a mission area (if you have a good vantage point), and zoom in and out of any object in your line of sight. This is an especially taxing task for computers, but is implemented superbly by this game. Panning and zooming are both extremely smooth, and the former is adequately stunted by the inertia of your body movements for added realism.
On the downside, both enemy and allied soldiers are somewhat un-animated. Their motions are limited to running, taking cover, peeking, shooting and reloading, over and over, and their countenances are expression-less. Some inanimate objects such as furniture and containers look great from a few (simulated) feet away, but are dull upon a closer look.
Allied soldiers become transparent if you get too close to them; in fact, you can walk right through them. This solves the classic problem of allied characters getting in the way of the player, but detracts from their realism. I would much prefer being able to shoot soldiers who refuse to charge forward. :)
[Audio: 7/10]
Gunfire, explosions and other mechanical sounds are very detailed and realistic. Inside big spacious buildings, the sound of your boots stepping on metal stairs and planks is especially well done; you can hear the distant echoes of your footsteps. When you walk outside into wide open spaces, footsteps become appropriately more dull as you run on paved walkways.
Speech effects are great. I was especially fond of the enemy soldiers yelling in German things like "Amerikaner!" or "Das feind ist hier!" (pardon my spelling) upon having me in their sights. It was particularly amusing that they would always gallantly announce "Granaten!", stand up, wind up (and if by then I had not had a chance to shoot them), hurl a grenade in my direction.
One commendation about the attention to historic detail that this game adheres to: when you fire off the last bullet in a magazine of an M1 Garand rifle, you can hear the distinct "boing" of the magazine being ejected. There was some speculation that during WWII, enemies would charge at allied soldiers upon hearing this sound for this particular weapon, assuming that the rifleman would not be able to fire back while reloading. "Fortunately" this game's limited AI enemies could not take advantage of this detail.
This game has minimal surround-sound encoding, and therefore is void of directional sound effects. Using Dolby ProLogic II for games in my receiver, I could rarely hear anything out of my rear speakers, except for non-descript ambiental sounds like the chirps of distant birds. You would not know that a bazooka rocket was fired at you from behind until you are suddenly blown into thin air, and this I consider a significant flaw in this day and age. You can only tell if a sound is coming from your left or your right. The only nod to spatiality is that this game manages to produce sound effects such as radio static and gun-reloading on the remote's internal speaker, to distinguish them from other sounds coming from further in front of you.
[Gameplay]
Fun and challenge: 9/10. Heroes 2 is well designed in this regard, with its distinct ways of limiting the player's health and power. In arcade mode, you have unlimited ammo, but have to collect health bonuses in order to survive. In campaign mode, you have unrestricted movement, so you have to move intelligently to avoid excessive damage and replenish ammo. There is no health meter in campaign mode; merely sitting behind cover will replenish your (non-visible) health level. Before you think this makes the game too easy, be aware that on the higher difficulty settings, enemies can riddle you with bullets from automatic weapons very accurately and very quickly!
The fact that you can resume a game from either the last checkpoint (particular locations along the progress route of a level), or restart the current level, reduces frustration when dying at particularly challenging points of the game. On the other hand, if you walk past a certain bonus item and don't grab it right away, the room could quickly become inaccessible.
Artificial intelligence: 4/10. This is the major shortcoming of the game. Enemy soldiers move along preset routes, some times oblivious of your presence. In one instance, I eliminated a few soldiers guarding a safe, I stole its contents, and began walking away from it. Suddenly another enemy came walking towards me (I did not shoot him, thinking he must be an ally), walked right past me, crouched next to the empty safe, turned around, and finally began to shoot at me. Hilarious.
Allied soldiers will treat you like cannon fodder. When under heavy gunfire, or before a particularly dangerous area, they will take cover and move no further. They will non-chalantly say: "We will secure this area. You go ahead!". If however I do shoot all enemies from behind cover, the allies run forward as soon as enemy fire stops, leaving me in the dust.
Replay value: 7/10 (estimate). The 7 areas of the game feel very linear, even with the freedom of movement of the campaign mode. You have to go there first, pick that up next, destroy that next, and reach that place to finish. Goals have to be accomplished in order, and the enemies always appear or come out of the same locations. There is therefore very little replay value in the single-player modes.
I suspect there is good replay value in the online multiplayer mode (which I have not reviewed yet), but reportedly there are only six areas for this mode, and even though the human element will make each battle different, I think people will eventually tire of trudging along the same few battlefields over and over.
Game controls: 9/10. This game supports the capabilities of the Wii remote and Nunchuck combination superbly. It produces good sound effects on the remote's internal speaker. You can also put the remote and Nunchuck in the Wii Zapper gun accessory, and really feel like you are holding a gun. The only flaw here is that, in arcade mode, if you try to reload ammo in a hurry by waving the remote too quickly away from the screen, the software will force you to point the remote back at the screen, and SLOWLY wave it away again to actuate the reload. And in the mean time, your Wehrmacht colleagues will be making sure your intake of lead exceeds 10,000% of the USDA recommended daily allowance.
[Overall]
Graphics: realistic environments drawn by an excellent rendering engine, but close-ups of objects are less detailed.
Audio: individual and particular sounds are highly detailed, but no support for spatiality and direction.
Gameplay: good balanced between fun and challenge, dismal artificial intelligence, mediocre replay value.
"Medal of honor: Heroes 2" packs plenty of action and audio/video effects. It feels more like a rail shooter than a 1st-person shooter in the spirit of Quake or Unreal. Even though you will conquer the game pretty quickly in single player mode, it is a fun experience thanks to its excellent support for the Wii's controllers.
[Revision history]
2008 05 13: Copyright 2008 by Tow Wang
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