Medal of Honor Review: Ugh...

      So it really hurts me to have to say this, but damn was this over-hyped. We have all seen the trailers and videos, we have felt the hype and if you are like me you fell victim to the excitement. So upon Medal of Honor's release I wad really excited to see what new turn the game had taken to make it seem like such an awesome addition to the FPS genre. Well, I must bare bad news, and inform you that... nothing as changed.
     Alright, where to begin. My first impression was hopeful. The beginning was pretty intense and it's starts you off pretty fast. Well that's pretty much where the cool ends. As soon as I gain control of my character I immediately start trying to change the control scheme, because the default just felt... clumsy. Even after setting my buttons to something I was comfortable with, it never felt fluid. I never really had that, "one-with-the-controller" feel. I never felt completely in-tune with the game. No special feature or new design, very typical FPS controls. Expected, not much of an issue, save for the awkwardness.
     My next issue is that the graphics are deceptive. During the cinematic moments, it looks pretty, but its a cinematic. once the game fires up it looks like Medal of Honor has always looked, one step below what we want. The blood animation is mediocre at best, the explosions are fast and are lacking detail, the environment is uninteresting. Just looks like another boring FPS.

     Finally, the biggest issue is the over-all game play. The missions and objective are so ridiculously mundane. I didn't want to compare this game to Modern Warfare, because I initially thought that wasn't fair, but the more I thought about it, CoD has set the new bar for realistically styled war games, and if Medal of Honor wanted to be a stressful game, it needed to be new and innovative, comparable to CoD. Infinity Ward changed the way people think about the FPS genre. The missions felt so much more involved the characters were people you could relate to and were character you wanted to protect, it made the mundane mission scheme feel more interesting and exciting. Those are the types of things that new FPS need to accomplish in order to be successful. Medal of Honor, sadly, did not meet this condition. It was boring, repetitive, just another unexciting FPS.

     To be fair, the multiplayer is pretty fun, the maps are fairly involved, and the it is really hard to mess up general FPS matchmaking game play. Towards the end of the game, things get more interesting, but not enough to validate the entire game. There are some pretty neat control features, for instance you can sprint and then slide, in order to reach cover faster. Once behind cover, you can lean out to get better shots and what-not, pretty neat. So what does all this mean to you? Don't buy it. If you don't believe me, and you must play it, rent it. Then after experiencing it for yourself, decide if you want it. The matchmaking may be worth $70 to you, maybe you absolutely love old-style FPS, and this is right up your ally, great. Please rent it first if you must play it.

Score: 6 out of 10 uninteresting games.