Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault
Plain and simple, this game is fun. Far be it from any person to deny that fact, for this is a great adventure, and so far the best in the series. Again returns the World War II homage title, with more life, promise, and detail than the last. Medal of Honor made its mark on the gaming industry beginning with the PS1. Those titles were praised for bringing a new level of innovation to the console gaming screen by allowing its player to experience a 'First Person Shooter' with a story, so to speak. They took the industry by slight surprise, for no one expected a title such as this to be so well executed. Now comes Allied Assault, and for the lack of better word this game is awesome.
You begin Allied Assault with a notion that its going to be something new, for anticipation of the title has been building for quite some while, and well it delivers. All the basic aesthetic upgrades have been made, as expected. Allied Assault runs on the Quake 3 engine, which arguably, has never looked better. If you take a gander at any of the screen shots, you can clearly see how great it looks. Better sound, graphics, and detail, well yes of course, but the experience goes far beyond just these features. MoH goes beyond the goals of any typical shooter. In terms of realism, MoH pulls you into a world of fighting those nasty germen soldiers; the costume design and the environment definition set the mood, making you begin to believe that the time period is really 1942 (the time on which the game is based, WWII).
Medal of Honor sure has an epic feel, sort of like the first time you saw Saving Private Ryan, it was just an incredible experience - from the shocking opening scene (which you actually get to play in this game) to the end - you got a feeling that the movie was going to be something different, the same goes for this game. The basics of the game are fairly direct, in that you play a Lieutenant, Mike Powell, who is an American soldier working for the Office of Strategic Services. For the most part your playtime is based solely in Europe, though you venture outside on route for a few levels. Allied Assault is based on about 6 total missions, taking up about 34 levels in the game.
The missions and levels range over a wide variety of tasks, actually, just about every task I could think of for this game has been incorporated. You do everything from reconnaissance, to snipering, to having a ball with tanks and mass destruction, to just about any warlike activity you'd think of. You start every mission with the usual assortment of weapons; handguns, rifles, machine guns, etc. All of which were real weapons used in the battles against the germen. Just as you'd typically expect, close combat requires faster paced weapons (machine guns), while generally you'll want to go as unnoticed as possible, pushing you towards using your sniper rifle to avoid those particularly nasty situations when getting caught red handed. You don't actually have to find and collect weapons throughout the game like in most titles, which is nice. You begin as an equipped soldier and with each new level you get a new set of weapons. In addition to weapons, depending on the mission, you will be equipped with 'special' items which are to be used to help accomplish certain things, such as compasses, binoculars, radios, etc. Not only are these at your disposal, but at certain times, vehicles become available as well, for oh say, that occasional plane that needs to be shot down. If you're looking to do some 'real' damage however, look for the mission with the tank, where you get to reek havoc through down town France, never liked those people anyway right? Now's your chance to show them just how much you appreciate them. There's a good deal of variety involved in MoH, especially when it comes to the use of items.
An equally diverse use of innovation however, is the use of AI, or better yet the placement of it. MoH:AA makes an attempt to keep your experience as real as possible by showing you that a one man army isn't what its all about. In fact if you try to run through an enemy camp like you would a quake game; once your body was found by your buddies, it would be almost unrecognizable, for it would have been ripped to shreds by the cross fire of your enemy. Allied Assault is a very unforgiving game for those who attempt to conquer it with brute force. While the AI are dumb at times, they sure as hell can destroy your character if sighted in a spotlight (damn those watchtowers all to hell and back! DIE! DIE!!). The most helpful thing on your side here is stealth, while the killing of enemies is often required, the longer the distance this can be accomplished at, the better off you will be. Like real life action, when your character is shot, he jerks, and you are yanked from his control for a second, by the time you recover, another bullet has most likely hit you, in this case, you basically have lost, unless you've pulled a miraculous escape act, which can happen on occasion. This kind of 'jerking' movement makes that whole Run 'N Gun idea pretty much suck, and not a viable possibility, which is why your sniper rifle becomes your best friend. Someone once said patience is a virtue, and boy they weren't kidding.
For sure this game is a challenge, but the kind that hurts you bad, and at the same time gives you an adrenaline rush you can find no place else, so it has you crawling back begging for more. Its realistic details are quite an impressive feat, 2015 has combined a great stylistic gameplay with enough scripting to make it almost like a movie. When I say scripting, I mean predetermined and basically acted out scenes by the game that you're playing in. And boy let me tell you, it's something to remember, they've been integrated in a perfect way, they happen fairly sporadically throughout the title, and boy is it impressive. Such action that feels real time, but continues to adhere to a certain script. Time after time, playing through this game, a true sense of realism is imposed upon the player.
With such a terrific one player campaign, one would surely expect the multiplayer section of MoH to have a less intuitive multiplayer option. But alas with a title such as this, everything has had a certain amount of effort put into it, which includes multi-player features. There are 11 different maps that have been made for MoH:AA, 7 of which are death match, the other 4 of which are team based objectives. This makes for a fairly good spread of variety, as it combines the fun levels of both say quake and ghost recon (in that axis v allies sort of way). Not the most revolutionary modes you've ever scene, but for having such and involved single player game, I'm thoroughly impressed with the strength of Allied Assaults multiplayer efforts.
The people at 2015 have surely done an exceptional job with this action/fps. The gameplay is great, but what of the typical graphics and sound. Well I can't say that the graphics are as revolutionary as some of the rest of the game, but it certainly has its moments. The graphics and animation, are well what you would expect from a refined Q3 system, TERRIFIC! BEAUTIFUL! AMAZING! It ran so smoothly on my 850 P3, and geforce2 I fell in love, and then wanted to play forever; not only with the spectacular visual quality, but with the awesome sound. I played this game with my stereo, computer speakers, and my headphones (Sony DJ MDR-V700's) and I must say it sounded fantastic with each medium. It felt as if this game truly had a movie's production, for the sounds are as real as say that of Saving Private Ryan. Everything from the gun clings and clacks, to the clicks of grenades, to the fitting voice-overs, I just loved everything about the sound is this game and for good reason. 2015 did an impressively professional job, not to mention that the sound track is wonderful, built in that sort of WWII kind of way that it has an epic sense and feeling about it. It entices you to always fight on, for it was the right thing to do for your country, they've incorporated the perfect combination of audio effect and music. Surely, you will be hard pressed to find any kind of production equaling that of the work put into Allied Assault.
All in all Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, has raised the bar for the production of PC games. Not only in terms of gameplay, and graphical impressiveness, but in cinematic presentation and in amount of action -- MoH:AA has it for days. Done in such an impressive and innovative manner, I hope a lot of game developers take notice of this magnificent title, for it's surely a feat to be admired. There is something here for everyone, war 'buff' or not, you'll be able to appreciate this game in all its glory. To kind of show homage to those unsung hero's of days gone past, and give you a more patriotic effect. This game has impressed me in just about everyway, I urge you all to get your hands on it, and get through it a couple of times, for once isn't enough. EA Games, and 2015 make a lethal combination, I hope they keep up the work, and I'll be looking forward to the PS2 and possible XBOX versions of a new MoH if their going to be anything like this title. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assaults is already a contender for game of the year, if you couldn't already tell yet, the gaming industry is going to be more prosperous than ever this year, mostly because of the simple fact that it started of with a bang.