Medal of Honor video game fails to shine

Medal of Honor: No Call of Duty, critics say

EA’s storied franchise Medal of Honor is a familiar name to old-school shooter fans, but in recent years it’s taken a backseat to the massive success of Activision’s Call of Duty games. This week, however, it storms back into action for the first time in three years -- and it’s facing hot competition from the next Call of Duty game, Black Ops, due in about a month.

Though Medal of Honor is releasing today, it’s been making headlines for several months. EA’s decision to allow gamers to play as the Taliban in multiplayer matches proved a lightning rod for controversy. Ultimately, the game found itself banned from sale on US military bases, and facing harsh criticism from the British government.

But the Taliban are gone -- or, to be more precise, they were renamed “Opposing Force” in a widely criticized decision. So now that that's settled, does Medal of Honor achieve its goals of producing a tribute to American special forces troops, or is it a poor second to the all-conquering Call of Duty series?

Broadly, the consensus is the latter. As of the time of writing, review aggregation site Metacritic puts the game’s various versions around the 75% mark, a very far cry from last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which wound up averaging in the mid-90s. Combine that with a couple of standout low marks from respected outlets Giant Bomb and IGN -- both of whom give it a disappointing 6/10 -- and it’s clear EA has wound up off-target.

Still, there’s significant praise from some quarters. Eurogamer was impressed by its multiplayer balance, its tight class system, its weapon customization (“complex and rewarding”), and its level playing field for pros and novices alike.

Over in the game’s solo campaign -- a different game from the multiplayer, really, with its own graphics engine and even a separate developer -- things aren’t so strong. Harking back to the game’s Taliban controversy, Eurogamer says the game “does little to advance the theory that videogames are responsible enough to tell stories within sensitive contexts ...a shame it lacks the creative bravery to match the courage of the heroes it so reveres.”

“Medal of Honor is one of the bigger disappointments of 2010,” says IGN. With “cliched shooting-gallery levels,” “no real investment” in characters, and an interface that “seems to deliberately lead you in the wrong direction,” says Arthur Gies, “Medal of Honor walks into a quagmire it never really escapes from.”

Again, though, its multiplayer comes in for qualified praise: it’s “an interesting gray area between the twitchy shooting of Modern Warfare and the more strategic use of terrain and positioning of Bad Company 2.” The maps are boring, however, says Gies, who expects the game to lack the remarkable staying power of its competition.

Several critics also raised concerns over technical issues: IGN called it “one of the most unstable console releases [they’ve] seen so far this year,” citing bugs with graphics, sound, and gameplay progression. Even Gaming Trend, despite an overall overall positive tone, wonders if competition from a certain other game might have lead to a rushed release. Our advice: wait until November, when we’ll see how the Call of Duty half of this head-to-head plays out.