MY ENTIRE REVIEW

I didn't notice the little warning that said reviews can be 1000 words at most. Mine surpassed 2000 when I was still not done writing it, so here's the whole thing (with markup and everything, HOORAY!).



ATTENTION: The users Deckto and mdsmith101 have really good (and much shorter than mine) reviews for this game and are definitely worth a read, but I’m going to go a lot more in depth.

***THERE MAY BE SPOILERS*** … Though I’m not sure what there is to spoil.

Ever since I gained an interest in WWII when I saw Saving Private Ryan, I’ve also been involved in playing WWII first person shooter games, especially in the Medal of Honor series.

The first game I played was on the PC (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault). It and its expansion packs (Spearhead and Breakthrough) are probably the best pre-2005 WWII FPS story-based games. Mods like Day of Defeat are good, but they are multi-player only games with no storyline/single player stuff. Also, I haven’t played Call of Duty: Big Red One nor the Brothers in Arms games all the way through, so I can’t comment on how good they may be in comparison.

That said, Medal of Honor: European Assault brought a lot to the table, even if some was blatantly stolen (from such games as Call of Duty: Finest Hour). Even so, it has many drawbacks not faced by the other games in the series. While Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is undoubtedly the worst in the series, it fails for different reasons, though MOH:EA is definitely a better game.

THE GOOD

-Though a rip from Call of Duty, it is nice to see them learning from other games of the genre. You get a small squad (really more like a third of a squad) to command and tell what to do.

-You can pick up health packs and use them to raise your own health or the health of your squad mates.

-Unlike Medal of Honor: Frontline, another console version of the famous series, you (realistically) have to use explosives to take out tanks. No more MG-42s taking out Panzers.

-You can earn and pick up “revives”. Much like a health pack, this keeps you alive. Once you “die”, you are healed and come back to life with about 50% health. Presumably, this is like your squad mates healing you just like you heal them.

-EXCELLENT GRAPHICS AND SOUND! They are awesome and very realistic. Such effects as:
*Difficulty seeing when going into the dark from very bright place and vice versa (this is the most obvious in the North Africa missions).
*Shell shock. Though you can turn it off, I think this effect is awesome. If an explosion occurs near you, even if you don’t get wounded, everything goes blurry and slows down. You experience hearing loss, much like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan.
*Great sound taken from the actual period weapons (as usual).
*Crisp and clear lighting in game-play. Sometimes it can be confusing, but this makes combat more realistic.

-“Open Map”. Basically, you are given a set of objectives, many of which you discover by wandering around (hint: try to listen to your commanding officers when they tell you what directions certain things are, they are usually objectives). If you complete all objectives, you get a gold on the mission. Get all gold in a campaign, you get a medal.

-You can aim down the iron sights of your gun. This is a great and realistic feature.

-You can now go prone in addition to standing and crouching. This can be very useful.

-You can kick grenades! I hated that the Germans always seemed to have one up on me in the other games, able to pick up grenades and throw them or kick them back. If your grenade fails and bounces back at you, or an enemy throws one at you, a little icon pops up and says “Press ‘A’ to kick grenade”, you punt the grenade, and it lands about ten feet away from you (hopefully) before it goes off. As usual, you can cook grenades as well.

-You don’t get to do under cover/covert spy stuff (If you don’t like that kind of stuff). It’s more of a combat-only game.

-Sometimes hard to find, but incredibly useful (especially on the “Farmhouse Rescue” mission), there are useable parts of the map. Mostly they are Nebelwerfer rockets and pre-set explosives used for taking out tanks. This is pretty cool.

-Adrenaline. This is nice, though I’m not sure if I actually like it or not. Think “Matrix bullet time” plus invincibility and unlimited ammo, that’s really all it is. Not realistic, but sort of good.

-Scripted stuff is fun to watch as usual.

THE BAD

-Even though you have a squad, they don’t get replaced when they die like in Call of Duty. If you keep them alive, you get extra revives (in easier settings).

-Your squad AI is absolutely non-existent. It’s like leading a special ed class through a mine field, and you are forced to give up a LOT of health packs on them if you want them to live. My advice: have fun, play on easy setting, and try to kill off your squad before they do any real damage.

This is the biggest point of actual in-game frustration for most people. Do not expect your guys to have enough sense to:
*Not stand in front of Machine gun nests.
*Not kick a grenade away toward a wall (where it then deflects back at you) or toward you.
*Not duck and cover right next to one of your grenades that you’ve thrown.
*Attack the enemy when they see them.
*Give you enough space to see what the hell you are supposed to be doing (I’m totally serious, they are in your way ALL THE TIME).
*Actually stay or go where you tell them.
*Take cover or any other safety precautions when going into combat.
*Any possible other stupid thing that I haven’t listed or haven’t witnessed.

-You don’t get to do under cover/covert spy stuff (If you like that kind of stuff).

-The tank turrets move too fast sometimes. I'm totally serious. This is not a baseless complaint, they seriously move faster than realistically possible.

-This game is VERY rigid in construction. Even though there are open levels, each of them is the same, especially where you have to kill a certain Nazi leader and collect documents in every level to get gold. The fact that these “Nemesis” objectives are the equivalent of killing a platoon of soldiers (they won’t die even after several point-blank head shots) is absolutely ridiculous. Having a high-ranking German to kill is a good idea (especially if it was a series of missions in a particular field that led up to it, including covert stuff. That would be awesome). What isn’t awesome is making you do it on every level, and making them very difficult to kill.

Besides the rigidity in mission set instruction, the multi-player game becomes quickly uninteresting. You can be either Axis or Allies. Once there, you can choose from one of four (that’s right, only four on each side, for a total of eight) skins. Once there, you can choose your weapons. You can be infantry (armed with sub-machine gun), heavy weapons (read BAR and STG/MP-43/44), rifle man (with rifle, obviously), or sniper. That’s about it. There are variations (such as between countries, which is more varied for allies) about which weapons you are issued, and there are upgrades, which I’ll talk about in a couple of paragraphs from now.

I like that this game is like its contemporaries in only allowing you to have (realistically) one main arm, one side arm, and grenades. The ability to pick up a one-time-use bazooka is pretty cool too, though not pulled off well (I’ll get into the whole icon/arcade look later).

With weapons, the problem I have is the upgrade (and lack there-of). If you are on Axis team, for example, and you choose infantry, you are given the side-loading prewar German submachine gun, the MP/18-1 machinepistol I believe, which is considered by some to be better than its cheaper successor (MP-38/40). When you walk over the upgrade icon in the map, you drop it and change to the MP-40 which made more powerful (all upgrades allow you to have more powerful/faster firing weapons). The Mauser upgrades to the G-43, the sniper rifle to a better sniper rifle (I could never tell what model these were supposed to be, but it looks like every sniper starts with the same rifle and upgrades to the rifle used by their country (Mauser, Springfield, Mosin/Nagat, Enfield, etc.). The dumb thing is, the heavy weapons don’t upgrade at all. It would have been nice to upgrade the STG-44 to maybe the MG-34, or the BAR to the M1919 browning .30 caliber, but it doesn’t happen.

Most of the Russian stuff is also American stuff too (You get issued the BAR for heavy, and the Mosin/Nagat upgrades to M1 Garand.

Basically, I don’t like it because you can’t pick out whatever weapon you want like you can with other games. The only way you can switch weapons is to go to a certain part of the map that allows you to restock health and grenades and change weapons (this, of course, allowing for even MORE camping by those who want to, and making it difficult to get a good weapon as you have to upgrade whenever you die). There are no drop weapon/ pick up weapon commands like in the PC expansion packs.

Also, concerning rigidity, you only have two (not very different) controller setup options with NO option to create a custom controller layout. You’ll get used to it, but it really does suck.

-While entertaining and full of spectacle, the single player game is very short compared to its predecessors. You finish it saying, “That’s it?!?”

-The game also is very arcade-style, which is annoying. Little floating boxes that often obstruct your view tell you where you can pick up ammo and health and when you can perform actions (“Press ‘A’ to pop smoke grenades”,” Press ‘A’ to trigger rocket launcher”, etc.). Sometimes it helps to tell you that some weapons you see are just parts of the map (so don’t bother trying to pick them up), but it is much more annoying than useful (and some may even consider it like a sort of cheat). It also is very unrealistic, which is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t like it.


SUGGESTIONS
-Even though you have to blow up tanks to take them out, I would like to see it even more realistically. I must point out, I’m not a programmer or developer and have little understanding of how difficult it is to make these games, but if it’s possible, this is what I’d like to see about improving tanks in the game.
*Treat the tank like what it is: a big metal vehicle with people inside of it. It would be cool to hear them yelling at each other inside with a little echo off the metal (“Where is he?” “Look, over there!” “Fire at that wall!” etc.)
*In this same line, you should be able to disable a tank by knocking off the treads, but the guys inside should still be alive. Therefore, they should be able to shoot at you and move the turret.
*In order to completely take the tank out of commission, you should have to kill the guys inside. Even if you don’t actually map the tank to provide animation/clipping to make people come out (which would be cool), you could at least make it an option to jump onto the back of the tank and then have a “Press ‘A’ to drop grenade” option when you approach the turret. Have a little first-person perspective of yourself popping the hatch open and dropping a grenade into the tank and then jump off. (PLEASE NOTE: It is not realistic to do what Cpt. Miller did in Saving Private Ryan and shoot into the view port. These had several layers of bulletproof glass.

It would also be cool if the guys inside would come out of the hatch to escape their vehicle or try to kill you. Maybe even have a tank commander sticking out the top and you have to snipe him in a level or something. There are similarities to having people in tanks in Call of Duty, so I doubt it’s that hard to do something like this.

-Please improve AI, or make the games more squad-tactic intensive.

-There’s a reason the Allies won the war; squad tactics is one reason, weapons are another. I’m sick of seeing these games even out the guns, especially in multiplayer. I shouldn’t have to empty half of my Thompson magazine into a guy to kill him when, in real life, two rounds would be enough. German stick grenades should (realistically) deal less damage when used as an anti-personnel device than the American and British pineapple grenades. The Panzerschreck should be more powerful than the Bazooka, and the BAR should be one of the most powerful weapons in the game (if not simply for the fact that it has such a small magazine). If a level is post- D-Day, the M1 Thompson SMG should have a 30 round stick magazine. The M1 Garand, K98 Mauser, Springfield, and all the equivalent sniper rifles should deal the same amount of damage. Enough of this “sniper rifle delivers 90%-100% damage and other rifles deal 40%-50% damage, except headshots” crap. Stop evening out the weapons; some should be favored, and some should be more powerful.

It would also be nice to see the M1 and M1A1 Carbines, M3 “Grease gun”, MG-34, and the M2 .50 caliber included, as I don’t recall the MOH games ever recognizing their existence.

Being able to shoot through some types of weaker walls would be nice. The M2 could shoot through most anything, including light armor.

-There have been improvements, but not quite enough, in the area of ammo pickups. They need to be recognized by caliber and size. If I pick up .30-06 rifle ammo, it should be used in the M1 Garand or BAR ONLY. If I run out of Thompson ammo, I shouldn’t have any .45 cal. Pistol ammo left either (same with the MP-40 and the Walther P-38) as they use the same ammo. I shouldn’t be able to use rifle ammo for the Garand in a Mauser, but I should be allowed to load BAR ammo into the Garand. Do you see where I’m going with this?

-As far as plot: do more research into the seldom told or untold stories of the war. Do a mission about the Malmedy Massacre or do a mission centered around a well known event that isn’t often depicted, such as fighting the SS Hitler Youth near Caen.

This game didn’t have as much of the first-person perspective plot stuff as others in the series (I really enjoyed the Glider crash in Italy and Parachuting into Normandy, and the boat ride to Omaha Beach on the PC version, and I want more of that). The movies are nice, but impersonal.

-Speaking of borrowing from Call of Duty: Finest Hour, make it possible to drive tanks, jeeps, etc. It would be nice to do this sort of Battlefield 1942 / Halo stuff, even if it was just PC platform stuff. COD pulled it off well and I thought that would be fun.

Overall, I give this a 7/10. It makes good with spectacle and needed improvements (even if they were borrowed from other WWII games), but some of the added (and hopefully experimental) features fail miserably. I’d rather play Call of Duty, and in fact, I traded in my copy of MOH:EA for COD: Finest Hour.


If there's anything I can remember, I'll edit and add later.

"Every man dies, not every man really lives."