Medal of Honor – The Best and the Worst

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.

The section of the single player campaign that worked best for me was the defense mission at the foot of the mountain, where a small squad of Rangers needing to defend against a much larger number of enemy combatants who come down the sides of the slope and fire RPG (rocket propelled grenades not role playing games) in order to demolish the structures where the soldiers are trying to get some cover.

It's an intense ten minutes defending that piece of land and a sense of desperation is creeping in slowly, with team mates screaming about being low on ammo, although, and here Medal of Honor against fails, triggering a prompt which delivers a new batch of ammo in exchange for the push of the button.

And finally a couple of Apache gun ships come in, blast the area and drive the Taliban away and the game manages to transmit the relief of the four man fire team via a bit of banter and a few love declarations to the female pilot of one chopper.

Unfortunately Medal of Honor then delivers which might just be it's worst section, a segment where you need to handle the weapons of the Apache in order to kill mortar teams, RPG armed troops and some other low level grunts which stomp around mountains and one village.

The problem is with the soundtrack, which is Linkin Park and much too no metal for the sober military experience that is on offer and with the pretty indiscriminate way in which you need to pound houses which are unlikely to house only bad guys.

The cause of this piece of Medal of Honor is not helped by the fact that it's all on rails and the player can only fire weapons and see the rather clumsy particle effects of the game.