How can Medal of Honor possibly follow in the footsteps of the great Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Well let’s cut right to the chase shall we? No mucking around with an in depth and lengthy comparison. Medal of Honor, in my opinion, is better than Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Now before all you RtCW fans uproar claiming sacrilege don’t forget that I gave RtCW a good score too! Continue reading to find why I love MOH so much.
Story wise MOH is more down to Earth and realistic. Unlike RtCW there is no overall goal, no super mad scientist creating some zombie armies. It’s just a set of six exciting and different missions (over around 30 levels) through the European Campaign of WW2. There is no underlying tale throughout of which the game is based, no big bad guy bosses, no hidden plots etc. This may appeal to you, it may not. It solely boils down to your own personal tastes, if you like the more Fantasy style approach RtCW is more suitable, but if you want more realism then MOH is the one.
Realism in mind?
However it must be noted quickly that although MOH is designed with realism in mind, at times that theme does go right out the window, adding humour and a sense of over-the-top action that we see in Hollywood films (i.e. ‘one man verses the world’ type films). Don’t get me wrong, the humour is a great addition, but sometimes you find the game is trying hard to be taken seriously, then the following few seconds we are back to silliness in the blink of an eye. It just doesn’t like staying in one place for long, and at times the mix of realism and humour together just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps feeling similar to the ‘James Bond’ style action films?
Overall the game is like any other good First Person shooter. Easy and non-confusing controls we are all familiar with weapons we have used before, blasting in a way all familiar to us now. The biggest difference being that, at times, you can feel like you’re in the Second World War era fighting the Axis forces. Combat goes from the extremes of long range combat, to quick close quarter’s gunfights in a matter of moments. Guns of the era are generally inaccurate at long range, but highly damaging up close. Grenades can be a soldier’s best weapon, or their worse nightmare etc. It is really good fun!
The only way to survive often being to run and take cover before opening fire, rather than run out into the open blasting ala Quake Arena. You often have to think a little before, even if it is on your feet, before you can defeat the equally determined Axis forces.
The thing is Return to Castle Wolfenstein had these features too. I listed them in that review too as well as it having interesting A.I., such as troops laying suppressive fire, duck, hanging around in groups etc. The difference is that overall Medal of Honor is even slightly better than that! As in my eyes the A.I. is just a little more in tune to the style of combat during the war than RtCW is. And additionally thanks to the German banter in the game, it just adds to the feel of the atmosphere you’re fighting. Throw a grenade and they will scream and panic before detonation, enter a confrontation and they will shout amongst them selves almost like they are giving each other commands on how to get you. Very clever and far better than the useless random enemy banter of other games such as “I’m going to get you” and “DIE MINER!”
A.I.
You see if you catch a guard off balance he can panic and struggle to get his stuff together to kill you, get too close and they may resort to bashing you with there guns in a wild frenzy, shoot them and they will limp and flee, face them in the open and they may lay on the floor to restrict your target, face them in a building and they can hang around the corners of corridors for cover etc. There are just so many actions you will face along the way, rather than just a defined amount of limited moves that you soon can often predict. In MOH every soldier can act differently, whether it is offensive, defensive or even cowardly, just like real life. It’s very refreshing and very fun.
However, before the critics start gathering, yes the A.I. is not perfect. For starters sometimes actions are scripted (meaning they are predefined and will always occur every time you play a certain level), and also the intelligence of some soldiers can seem, at times, a little dumb. For instance, in the game you often face a stationary machine gun called the MG42. Now if you were an Axis soldier and you saw 5 bodies of your comrades lying besides that gun, your instinct would NOT be to go and man the gun again. Yet, your player can sit quite happily and pick them off as lots of Axis troops races aimlessly towards the MG42. You also get waves of troops, that all follow the same routes as their fallen comrades beforehand. I thought these were the tactics of the First World War in the trenches, not in WW2!
On the other end of the A.I. scale over accurate Snipers can be VERY annoying. A certain level has around 23 snipers crawling over it. They can see you for miles, under thick impossible vision foliage, that it’s stupidly hard. That level is beyond frustrating and quick saves and reloads every 5 seconds is not exciting.
Deploy those troops!
Another problem which I’ll mention because it is in some ways linked with the A.I. is the way enemies are deployed. You see in Single Player there are enemy ‘generation zones’ (areas where enemies are created by the computer to add to their forces). Ok so most games have them, but for this they don’t feel right because they are not used properly. Having 20 enemies all coming from one area, only for when you investigate all you find is an empty featureless room. To me that just doesn’t feel right. You mean to tell me 20 soldiers were standing in a confined room just waiting for me to come along? It isn’t also that either, sometimes the zones are clearly visible, with hordes of enemies appearing out of thin air to hunt you down! Shame, for it would be obvious even to amateur gamers not looking out for mistakes.
Multiplayer
Now moving onto some more good points again, multiplayer is brilliant, and despite my good words about RtCW’s this is FAR better. Not only does it have objective play, but also Free-for-all games which RtCW lacks. Okay, so it sacrifices Capture the Flag in the process, but so what? The types of play you do get and the excellent maps associated with each map are truly brilliant. Each map (in exception to about two which I don’t like) is wonderfully detailed, with multiple routes to transverse, explore and battle in. Despite their detailed nature they also run wonderfully with little slowdown. The only gripe I have is that there aren’t enough official maps released for the Objective matches, as the ones the public have made are fairly poor in quality or run slowly even on fast systems. But then sadly Return to Castle Wolfenstein had that problem too. With MOH I have no problems in saying that this is the “Best multiplayer experience” to date.
