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- Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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Drawing on the vast technical resources that they gathered for Saving Private Ryan, Dreamworks has developed Saving Private Ryan: the game. Medal of Honor places you squarely in the middle of the battlefield and asks you to serve your country, defeat the enemy, and come home alive.
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Mein Herr Club for Men
You play James Patterson, a special agent recruited for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a World War II version of the CIA. The OSS sends you on twenty-four grueling multiple-objective missions behind enemy lines, taking out U-Boats, destroying railguns, and blasting pillboxes. Because authenticity's the name of the game in Medal of Honor, you'll find yourself equipped with realistic weapons like the Tommy gun, the Steilhandgranate, and the M1 Garand rifle. But all that weaponry won't help you if you don't learn the basics of stealth missions - the objective is not to blast your way to the end, but to make it out alive without stirring up too much scheisen.
Dreamworks made sure to add authentic AI as well. When you move through the levels, most enemies don't just gun you down - many will perform evasive manuevers, like dropping to their bellies to make themselves harder to target, or duck behind a wall while sticking their gun around the corner and firing at you. And forget video game bravado, like tossing a grenade at an infantryman - most enemies will pick the grenade up and lob it right back at you! The AI even extends to the German Shepherd guard dogs. If you toss a grenade at Fido, he'll pick it up in his mouth and run towards you!
War?What Is It Good For?
With a ton of different enemies ranging from Wehrmacht Light Infantry to the Gestapo, you'll find yourself gunning down tons of Nazis without a lot of repetition. The graphics aren't as crisp and detailed as some PlayStation games, but they do a great job of conveying emotion through body language. An officer's face may not look as lifelike as you want, but when he starts fidgeting around and screaming for your papers, you'll know you're in for it. The background environments are all faithful representations of real European arenas, and are recreated with a sense of realism unseen in war games.
The sounds make an excellent showing in MOH. Ambient noises, like the footsteps of the Wehrmacht soldiers in the Maquis sewers, or the constant chatter aboard the U-Boat send chills down your spine. Even the guard dogs and endless questions about your identity aboard the gun ships all sound real - probably too real if you served in WWII. And you won't soon forget the massive rumbling of a machine gun nest when you're on the right side of the turret. This is definitely a game that requires play in the Dolby Surround environment.
For a game long on authenticity, they made it surprisingly easy to control your character. The analog or directional pad moves Patterson, and one button fires weapons, while another selects your weapon, and yet another activates doors and switches. Aiming is simple and effective, and the gun centers itself with every footstep, so you won't be flailing your weapon everywhere trying to get off a good head shot.
Saving Dying Privates
No one who didn't serve could possibly know how real this game is, and many of us would never want to find out. But taken as a fast shooter with smarts and style, Medal of Honor should certainly be a training mission for those who think that freedom doesn't come with a price tag. This game honors those who paid that price.
