Creative Outlet - a blog full of stories and personal musings

Medal of Honor Multiplayer PC Beta Verdict/Preview

The Unrealistic Hopes of a Nerdgasm

Let me step right up there and say that I love both the Call of Duty series as well as the Battlefield franchise. I have played both to death and still enjoy a game every now and then, despite the lack of new content to both the latest installments (Yes, I know there will be more map packs to Modern Warfare 2 - but it's too little, too late). So when I heard about Medal of Honor, I immediatly had hoped for a spiritual successor to Call of Duty now that it had turned into somewhat of a media circus and a horribly overused teat of a cow, which have turned a weird shade of grey. Then when it was announced that the cool, suave dudes from Swedish DICE (Guys behind Battlefield) were behind the multiplayer, I immediately  had some nerdgasms of joy. A mix of Battlefield and Call of Duty? This is like the freaking Holy Grail for me. While both games happened to have mostly been aimed for the console, sadly, they played relatively well on the PC.

Enter Anger

When they announced a beta at E3, starting right away, I just knew I had to conquer (read: own) this Jesus of FPS games. This Saviour of a time long gone.  I had to have it. I found out that if I owned Bad Company 2 on Steam, I'd be able to get into the beta earlier by preordering it. It sounded so amazing, it couldn't be true! I did just that - and with a few hiccups from EA (Gun Club still isn't working? Really?!) - the beta started.

Offering 2 modes with 2 maps, 1 for each mode, the beta isn't exactly offering a lot of content to play around with - but I am going to assume that the core gameplay is what they have considered will be the in released version. Which is just dreadful. The game offers absolutely nothing new. The gunplay feels mediocre and boring at best. There is no recoil or spread, except with the sniper, lending the idea that the PC beta is just a 1:1 port from the consoles. There is really nothing to it. It can quickly become quite a clusterfuck, especially because grenades, grenade launchers and rocket launchers doesn't have any kind of splash damage. Spawns are weird in team deathmatch, but mostly follows that of later CoD games, where you'd suddenly spawn behind enemy lines with no one nearby.

Despite a run and gun kind of gameplay, the game offers not much else. It gives you a sort of "killstreak" called "team actions", which is either a UAV or a mortar strike. In the form of customizations, you have the choice between 3 "classes". Soldier, spec ops and sniper. Within these classes, you can change/unlock weapons, sights, magazine and barrel.

Yes. That is it. There is nothing else to the game. I've played it for about 2 hours and it is just so mind numbingly boring. No sense of progression, no "umph" from the gameplay. No awesome moves or episodes, where you just sit back and think "Wow.. that was intense". The gameplay seems very calculated as well, with you being able to endure a specific amount of shots anywhere on the body (except the head) before falling on your face in the respawn menu, which was just made to taunt you for dying. The only episode I found "fun" was when I saw a corpse fly over a wall. That was it.

The game have been compared to the awesome Insurgency mod for Half-Life 2. In which it fails. It fails against a mod.

Changes I hope to See

Obviously I'd love to see a change in the gameplay itself. It is just lackluster - there is nothing to it. Maybe it can satisfy the console, but I like to think that we are more sophisticated on the PC and require just a bit more for it to keep our attention. It needs to be PC-ified, just like Bad Company 2 was.

Minor issues:

• Animations look stiff and bland.
• Menus handle like they would on a console. It even boasts several console-only settings, such as D-Pad settings and adjusting your TV-screen.
• Chat system is broke. It just shows a bar, which you can't type into and won't disappear before you die. During that time, you can't move. All you can do is aim and shoot.
• Server browser kicks you back to login screen. They also decided to have forgotten everything they learnt with Bad Company 2.
• Spawning system: Either add more spawn points or think of something else.
• Hit boxes have issues.

Suggestions:

• Respawns are too rapid in TDM, especially for the size of  the map. Add a respawn delay.
• Tune up the destruction possible in the game. You have an engine that is capable of so much, yet decide that a rocket shot or a grenade can't move concrete or bricks. Turning it up will change the game and how it's played totally, camping spots come and go, making the game more interesting and varied. Who wouldn't have wished for destructible environments in Modern Warfare 2?
• More and varied game modes.
• Take a look at BC2. The infantry gameplay in that game is a lot more fun than it is in MoH, which is strictly infantry based. Why is that?

I will keep playing the game - but it does not bode well for now, sadly.

Preorder Medal of Honor (Amazon.com)

Preorder Medal of Honor (PC DVD) (Amazon.co.uk)