By Michael Jordan
When you think of a great multiplayer experience, what do you think of? As multiplayer evolves it is important to not over complicate or gimmick up the experience just to try to add bullet point on a box, and when you get it in your hand you want to feel like you know what your doing, and that you can play it for hours with out major gripes.
You might be asking why I am leading-off on such a standard note of reference, when I should be breaking down my impression of Medal of Honor? Because this is where Medal of Honor delightfully surprised me and might surprise you.
With the millions of mouth breathers out there dragging there knuckles over Modern Warfare 2, I think it is extremely importation to look at the basic facts of First Person Shooter multiplayer as a whole, over the last 10 years. As Activition has made Call of Duty “Annualizable” as they have done with most of their other franchises not under the Blizzard name, we must admit that things have become stagnant. Most games have no depth of realism to there original roots of their origin that first made the games exciting in the first place. Does that mean I want to see a flood of World War 2 shooters again, NO. What it does mean is I want some, at least a sliver of, the world we live in.
Now enters Metal of Honor and while it shares the name of old, it not a rehash or sequel. Now I myself could not get in to Modern Warfare. Playing Modern Warfare, to me felt like talking to a guy with a really small dick but was trying to compensate for it in almost every aspect, and ultimately had me trading it in. With Metal of Honor, the first thing you will notice is it’s look. It knows what it does well and knows it’s style, and it is a game that know that it’s style is note for everyone and it’s not trying to be. From every movement of character to gun fired, it lets you know this is what it wants to be. Metal of Honor feels like it has the confidence of the guy at the party with a girlfriend that already knows he is getting laid at the end of the night, and presents himself accordingly.
Controls feel tight and refined, even in its beta form. It took me a total time of one minute to go, ok this is what I am going to do and how I am going to do it.
One problem that I could see was the balancing of the weapons, but as it is a beta build of the game, it would seem silly to state this as a problem just yet, as the game still needs some tweaking before its final release.
The objective system was simple and not over complicating, we had a goal, we completed the goal, we moved on to the next goal. This is what I like to see, there is no overcomplicating of something that does not need to be overcomplicated. Simple to the point fast paced action that moves well is the name of the game here, but there is a cost to having this simplicity, and that is a slight suffering of the point system for objective or action that should be deemed credible and point worthy, for example, I managed to sneak in to the enemy base area and started to secure the objective point, allowing for the other players on my team to spawn where I was to help take over that point. This action, which lead to us winning the match, did not reflect this on the point system. Making an enemy team member hold the most points at the end of the game, while losing because they got more point from killing with a missile launcher, and in fact had all 3 members of our team lower in points then the losing team. Once again I will state that this is just a beta build but it should be noted, as when talking to other games journalists they felt they had the same problem.
All in all, I can safely say that this is a solid product so far and that I have high hopes for this game and can’t wait to get my hand on the single player experience.
The full beta start tomorrow and I will be posting a “week in beta review” coming next Friday with more in-depth details of game mods, weapons and maps, but as for now enjoy the images and trailer for this highly anticipated title.
Tags: Metal of Honor
