Fabulous WW2 FPS game - MoHAA!
Written: Jul 10 '02 (Updated Jul 10 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Incredible graphics and sound. Very realistic.
Cons: Some logical flaws. Too short.
The Bottom Line: If you like wartime FPS games, buy MoHAA for your collection!
|
|
|
| felix004's Full Review: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault For Windows |
"Medal of Honor represents the absolute best that action-packed, event-driven shooters have to offer. - Erik Wolpaw"
It's always good that a game that receives an unbelievable amount of hype actually delivers. Fortunately for everyone that's been following the progress of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (myself included) this is one of those times. I can honestly say this game made my list of top five best FPS's ever made.
I know not all of you have been following MoHAA's development, so I'll give a brief recap here. The Medal of Honor series started out on the Playstation, and Allied Assault is its first venture into the PC world. The game strives for historical accuracy in its events and settings, but not necessarily in combat and tactics. The player engages in fairly wide variety of missions all over Europe and a bit of Northern Africa.
Graphically, this newest edition to the Medal of Honor line is downright gorgeous. This is the best use of the Quake 3 engine to date, no doubt about it. The textures look great, there is tons of detail in every level, and the use of volumetric smoke is very nice, even if it will bring some systems to their knees. I could go on and on about how great this game looks. If you want to show of a brand new GeForce 3, this is the game to do it with.
Although things look pretty in MoHAA, it's the sounds that truly deserve recognition. I know I gave the graphics high praise, but holy sh|t this game sounds fantastic. Every little detail has a distinct and believable sound. Bullets sound very convincing when they strike nearby, and each type of surface has more than one sound, so things are always varied. I never got tired of the sounds, not even after playing for ten hours straight. Get a good pair of headphones for this one, folks.
Though not without its flaws, the level design and scripted events capture a feeling of "being there" that is rarely found in games today. As far as sheer immersiveness goes, most levels in MoHAA are on par with the Marine levels of AvP 2 or Half-Life. There are a few that stand out as particularly excellent, such as Omaha Beach (the first part was way too hard, though), driving the tank, and sniping the bridge (think the end of Saving Private Ryan, only trying to take the bridge instead of hold it). The levels have a very authentic, complete feel to them, and the little details throughout the game are simply fantastic. On the winter levels, dying soldiers let out one final plume of breath after they've been fatally shot. Dust shakes off the ceiling of a bunker whilst its' being bombarded. Germans speak german (Deutsch sprechen Deutsch) :)
As I mentioned earlier, some levels contain a few flaws. For one thing, they are all very linear, some to the point where I found myself running into invisible walls when I tried to find an alternate path through. This flaw comes to a head in the dreaded "sniper level", a level that is hated by almost ANYONE that plays the game. The objective is to escort a tank crew through a sniper infested town. This proves to be one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I can remember. The snipers are located OUTSIDE of the physical level, and are completely unreachable except by shooting them with (you guessed it) your own sniper rifle. Some of them are even hidden behind trees. Trees that the player cannot see through, but the enemies miraculously can. The level eventually devolves down to load savegame, come out from cover to try to find sniper,get shot 3 times and die,reload save game,try to find sniper again, with possibly a slightly better idea where he's at,die,reload. I sh|t you not; I must have done this part at least fifty times. Normally, stuff like this would cause me to uninstall the game and complain about it bitterly for years later (like I still do with Black and White) but the rest of this game is so goddamn good, I'll let it slide this time.
There are a few other flaws that drag MoHAA down from being the best game ever to just "one of" the best games ever. The most important of these is the game's length. I beat it in just under ten hours on the medium difficulty. Although each stage was fun and rewarding (excepting the above), I found myself let down at the end.
The last major flaw was how the game will cheat at times. The worst example of this is the guard towers on some levels. The towers have spotlights in them, which when they spot you, open up with a heavy machine gun which really kicks your @$$. While I don't really have a problem with this, it's the fact that said machine guns are UNMANNED until the player is spotted. Then, POOF, a nazi shows up to man it. The same thing happens when the spotlights are shot out. Even while hiding in a dark corner, if one spotlight is shot out, every other guard tower INSTANTLY knows where the shot comes from and you get riddled with bullets. Does anybody else think this is backwards? I mean, if the light is shot out, how exactly are they finding the sniper? There are other instances of the teleporting German. Some parts of some levels contain a continual flood of enemies, which can get really old. Fortunately, this only happens at a few spots.
Although I didn't spend as much time with multiplayer as I did the demo, but I enjoyed what I played. The maps are excellent as is expected, and offer a lot more choices to the player than their single player counterparts. Some maps are modified versions of single player levels, except fleshed out a bit more to offer several routes of attack and defense. I almost wish they had used these levels for the single player parts; they would have been an interesting tactical challenge. The weapons feel a lot like those from Counter-Strike, but are easier to handle and aren't as frustratingly random. As far as weapon balance goes, things tend to lean towards the sniper rifle and the bazooka. These weapons make killing easy enough to lure in most of the cheap bastard players, and things can get frustrating. Still, multiplayer is good stuff, and should extend the life of the game by a few months at least.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a solid game worthy of any FPS fan's collection. Although it's short and frustrating at a few points, it kept me so enraptured that I played through it in two sittings, one of which was an eight hour marathon run. Any game that can keep my attention for that long, especially one that can be as frustrating as this one, is a great game.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
felix004
|
|
Location: Heaven
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
R.I.P Albert Einstein
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.