Medal of Honor – Sniper Rules and Quad Buggies

Medal of Honor is the new first person shooter from developers Danger Close and DICE and publisher Electronic Arts, taking the player to the battlefields of Afghanistan and putting him in the dessert combat boots of a variety of characters that engage the Taliban after the events of September 11, 2001.

Apparently every major first person shooter from the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor series need to have a vehicle section disguised as something else.

Modern Warfare 2 pulled off a sequence based around snowmobiles that felt pretty epic on the first play through, with its quick pace, tree dodging, the need to take out enemy vehicles and the final jump to rescue.

Medal of Honor aims to surprise the player by putting him on a quad and making him drive through the Afghan countryside as he tracks enemy forces, gathers intelligence and then plans a course of action for taking the fight to the Taliban.

The problem is that the sequence lacks excitement and that the quads feel wholly unnecessary and discordant when compared to mission that the Tier 1 Operators need to complete.

Sure your partner Dusty will tell you about when the enemy is near sections and about the need to go silent at some points to avoid detection but the quads are just a sort of bus replacement with a long range sniper rifle attached to the front.

The sniper action is very well done in Medal of Honor, especially when it involves moving targets and the view is partially obscured.

And, for a game which aims to be close to the conflict it depicts in terms of hardware and background if not in terms of politics, the quads are completely out of place.

The characters you play seem to be pretty concerned with blending into the population of the areas they are operating in, as seen in their face covering beards and their fashion choices and such a vehicle would only make them easy to spot as foreigners and get targeted.

It would have been better to stick to the Toyota pickups form the first missions for transportation and look to innovate rather than imitate in terms of shock sections.