The Medal of Honor series was a pioneer in the FPS genre during the last two console generations. The franchise went on hiatus during this current console war, and IPs such as EA's other war franchise (Battlefield) and Activision's Call of Duty series stepped up to fill the void Medal of Honor left behind.
The series is now back with a more modern setting, developed by both EA Los Angeles and EA DICE. DICE is working on the multiplayer with their Frostbite engine, and that side of the game is still being kept under wraps. EA did want to show off some more of the single-player though, and EALA Creative Director Richard Farrelly came up to the San Francisco area to show off another side of the campaign.
Hit the break for an early look at Medal of Honor and for my unique thoughts on the game coming from an Afghan perspective.
Medal of Honor (PlayStation 3 [previewed], Xbox 360, PC)
Developer: EA Los Angeles (single-player) / EA DICE (multiplayer)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
To be released: October 12, 2010
The Medal of Honor reboot takes place in early 2002, during the war in Afghanistan, and it sees players controlling characters between Tier 1 Operators and Army Rangers. The Tier 1 guys are the “scalpel” of the military. They go in first, blend in and gather intel that aids the big military. You can read more about the Tier 1 perspective in Samit Sarkar's preview.
My look at the game put us halfway into the story and focused on the “sledgehammer” of the military, the Army Rangers. Whereas the “scalpel” missions are about being clean and quick, the “sledgehammer” missions will feel like large-scale battles. The two groups are nothing alike, but neither can succeed without support from the other.
The particular area Richard was running through saw a squad of four Rangers on a mission to destroy a weapon emplacement. The first thing that stuck out to me as Richard moved through the mountainous terrain of the Shah-i-Kot valley was that there was no HUD on display. Vital information -- such as objectives and your squad's location -- is displayed with the press of a button and then fades away after a few seconds. Information such as your ammo counter will appear only while weapons are being fired.
Hiding the HUD provides a more immersive cinematic experience, and it's greatly appreciated, as it lets the player really take in the level of detail in the environment. Military consultants worked closely with EA, providing all sorts of information about Afghanistan that EA captured with the Unreal engine.
Fans of the Medal of Honor series will be happy to hear that features from previous Medal of Honor titles will remain, like the peek and lean. There will be new additions, too, such as a slide to cover -- also known as the “oh shit button,” as Richard put it. Players can ask for ammo from their squadmates if needed, but it's a limited amount based on the level. Squadmates will also move about accordingly -- they'll cover one direction as you cover the other.
As this was a controlled, hands-off demo, I can't say what the weapons feel like. Richard was plowing through the level with an M249 SAW, a light machine gun that looked pretty powerful but is balanced out by its long reload time. Still, you can't treat Medal of Honor with a one-man-army mindset. You want to move cautiously and hide behind the destructible cover as you engage enemies.
After a few skirmishes, the Rangers reached their target, tossed a smoke grenade marking the gun emplacement and watched as an air strike took out the target. Smoke then filled up the view and dirt rained down as the Rangers moved to the next area. The demo ended with the Rangers about to breach a house right before a bomb went off.
It still remains to be seen just how EA is going to take on the powerhouse that is Modern Warfare 2, but what I saw holds promise. This war is real, and EA is trying to approach the ongoing conflict with sensitivity and respect toward all parties.
Being of Afghan descent, Medal of Honor offers me a kind of nerdy way at revenge. I've never been to Afghanistan, but I do have family there, and I've seen how my family's been affected by the injustices committed by the Taliban. While the country is far from sunshine and rainbows, the American invasion did help make the country better.
Medal of Honor is an outlet for someone like me. I'll never pick up a gun against someone in real life, but I play shooters like there's no tomorrow. First-person shooters are my favorite genre, and getting to shoot at representations of people who have tormented my home country for decades offers me a way to vent my frustrations.
Contest:
4:00 AM on 05.14.2010
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This game sounds really promising. I'm actually looking forward to a hands-on preview. Also, am I the only one who's not excited about the multiplayer? I personally hated BC1 and didn't even want to give BC2 a try solely on how much I disliked the first.
very classy
Maybe there'll be an epilogue ranger mission where you have to cover up Pat Tillman's death.
Whatever happened to slaughtering virtual people for shits and giggles and not worrying about Moral Guardians who rail against video games?
Yeah, and snipers shooting you through bushes, while you can't see them... Never ever finished that "infiltrate the rocket base" mission, as i remember.
Sooooo many questions...
How cool!
When you say 'Afghan descent', do you mean that your family emigrated from Afghanistan to the US or something more complex?
My family comes from North India, Rohilla Pashtuns that originally migrated from Afghanistan some 400 years ago. It's funny because even Indians never know that I am Indian. They think I'm Greek or something.
There are other games for that.
@Hamza:
Your ancestry is pretty awesome. My old man traveled from Iran to Afghanistan twice when he was young, and he said the Iranian officials were always dorks and kicked him out of Iran each time for being a westerner. When he left and went to Afghanistan, he found the people incredibly hospitable and admirable.
Don't be so sensitive. Evidently Hamza's family is experiencing a better quality of life since they're no longer under Taliban rule. It's a simple honest statement.
BWWAAAHAHHAHAHA! Better than what? It's been nonstop war there for 30 fucking years. Poverty is still Poverty even if a nice foreign soldier gives you a few pieces of candy and rebuilds the road from your goat pasture to your poppy fields.
Listen, stop talking our of your fuckin asses. You don't have firsthand experience, so shut up.
The game looks great, but I'm curious about multiplayer.
I wonder if you apply that same train of thought to everything else in life that you hear about. You probably need to go to the moon too to believe it is real. Amirite?
rofl
I am a United States Marine with currently 3 pumps to the sandbox under my belt.
I cannot wait to see how John Wayne this game is and how probably inaccurate it is.
Modern Warfare makes my head hurt enough as is, BUT it does not mean to say the story lines aren't good at all, just way over the top.
Watching The Hurt Locker on DVD could only make me chuckle at the movie-making portraying the US Army....
Same goes with video games, they go way over the top.
Just saying.
fuck the haters.
It is fair in the sense that it showed everything how it went down, without any of the Hollywood fluff, but the things that a single Battalion went through and saw are specific to that Battatlion.
I was in the intial push into Afghanistan along with Iraq. I have seen and experienced alot of things that games nowadays and from way back when that games glorify. Not to say that I would like a movie or game made out my experiences, but if something is going to get made in either medium, it at leasts needs to be real and not full of Hollywood bullshit.
I can't imagine any fps game being able to convey anything as interesting as that about conflict. And however much rhetoric they spew about respecting the war and the people in it, it's just going to be another shooter which can't help being gung ho about the subject matter as that's the nature of the genre and the way people like to play their games.
Let's not bring politics onto this board. I'd appreciate that at least on this site. I don't come here to read someones opinion on world events, only their opinions on video games.
It is hard not to think about it though, especially considering the pro American slant this game will have when it's Americas fault that islamist fundamentalists are in power and subsequently the nutjob pseudo religious group the Taliban was created. I respect their decision to honour the soldiers or whatever and leave out the politics, the situation is far too messy and America has far too much blood on their hands to be playing with the politics of this war in a video game.
No way I'm buying this
As for the game based real war thing, it's really a meh for me as I'm not politics at all, despite my job is highly related to it. But maybe because of that, war makes my disgusted. And unlike other media which can use different angles to portray it, when it comes to video game, especially FPS, it will eventually boil down to shooting each other in the face without brain activities. EA is just trying to hard to make it gimmicky.