Preview: Medal of Honor Multiplayer

Before I get into Medal of Honor’s multiplayer – which we had full access to – here is a quick look behind the scenes. Usually when we get invited to an industry event there is a bit of a fight for who will get to go. This time, there wasn’t. Is it possible that gamers are already getting burnt out on modern military shooters? If that is the case, it is an ironic and cruel twist for Danger Close and Dice, the pair of developers who are responsible for the reboot of the new Medal of Honor.

Every game in the MoH series to date has been a World War II shooter; and WWII shooters had a nice long run before Halo came along and then Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare put a nail in the coffin. Now, EA is stuck with a historically popular franchise trying to jump back into the heat of things with a game meant to stack up against this falls crop of shooters.

The question for gamers should be exactly that: does Medal of Honor stack up to Black Ops and/or Reach.

This preview is dealing strictly with the multiplayer, but it is obvious that MoH‘s single player campaign wants to be the antithesis to Call of Duty. MoH is the sober, more serious older brother as opposed to the less serious, much louder CoD. However, the serious sentiment of MoH’s campaign doesn’t carry over to the multiplayer, but that may be a good thing.

It makes sense that the multiplayer and single player feel so different. The former is the equivalent of sport and the latter is attempting to tell a story. In MoH‘s case the difference should be even more profound considering that Danger Close is responsible for the campaign and Dice is behind the multiplayer game.

As a sport, MoH isn’t much different than CoD or Dice’s other shooters (Battlefield series). Really, the best shorthand description is to take Bad Company 2 and cut it down as close to Call of Duty as possible, but we hate shorthand descriptions so let’s get into the details.

The basics elements will be familiar to most people. There are four modes for multiplayer and several maps. The modes include the basic team deathmatch, but also has something called “Objective Raid,” which is a quick mode where the Taliban has five minutes to assault two Tier 1 Operator strongholds. It is usually a very quick game and breaks up the pacing of the longer modes nicely.

The other two modes will be familiar to DICE fans. One places four objectives around the map and gives tickets to whoever owns those points. The team that holds three or four the longest will get more points. This is straight from Battlefield 1942. The other familiar mode is a miniaturized version of the Bad company 2 multiplayer mode “Rush”. It is called “Combat Objective” in MoH and gives a defending team a single point to defend. If that point is destroyed they must fall back and defend a new point.

The modes are nothing extravagant, but they are solid and fun.

Since this is a modern multiplayer shooter players will also be able to level up. Leveling up unlocks more weapons and add-on to weapons. The M16 can have a scope or a red-dot sight, extra mags or open-tipped amunition, all of which causes the stats of the gun to change depending on what the player chooses. In the end I was happy with a fully-automatic M16 with a red-dot, standard barrel (opposed to a suppresor), and open-tipped bullets. It was my killing stick.

This is all very Modern Warfare-esque. Of course, you can’t be Modern Warfare-esque without killstreak bonuses as well. Here they are named “Tactical Support Actions” (TSA) and they are fun, but they come with a twist. Yes, after three kills players can call in a mortar strike. Pressing left on the d-pad will cause the player-character to put on a helmet with a targeting reticule allowing for precision targeting. However, after the same three kills, if the player presses right on the d-pad instead of left, then they can activate a defensive bonus for all the players on their team.

This provides a little more strategy to the use of TSAs than CoD‘s killstreaks required. Sure, using that mortar strike on landmark that you just saw an enemy at may get you a kill – or maybe enough to bump you up to the next TSA – but if your team is losing, it may be more beneficial to give them that defensive boost.

The game’s controls feel like a DICE game tuned to play at CoD‘s pace. There is aim assist and the sensitivity is turned way down by default (I adjusted it and found a “just-right” zone). Like with any shooter you will get used to it.

Graphically, the game loos fine in multiplayer. The animations are a bit stiff at times, but that is an admittedly nitpicky complaint. It isn’t as sharp as Black Ops, but it is better looking than Bad Company 2 which was already a great looking multiplayer game.

In the end, Medal of Honor is walking a tough path. It knows what is popular “with the kids,” and it has this property in MoH that can do good sales numbers. However, the game isn’t doing enough to stand on its own. As an avid shooter fan I can see the ways in which it zigs where the other shooters zag, but it does nothing to branch out on its own.

The time I had with it was fun. After three hours and a 2:1 kill/death ratio it is clear this game has the potential to gain an audience, but will it be a substantial audience? It can. If the single player pans out, and a lot of people buy it for that and stick around for the multiplayer, then a lot of players are going to get addicted to EA’s big Fall shooter.

The games biggest downfall is pretty plain. As Call of Duty and Halo enter their third or fourth installments of this generation, Medal of Honor feels like it would have stacked up better against Modern Warfare 2 as opposed to Black Ops.