Medal of Honor Beta Impressions

Once the announcement of the revitalisation of the Medal of Honor series hit, First Person Shooter fans waited with baited breath to see how the veteran would hold up against the young pretenders of the modern shooter genre. Here, we get a sneak peak at what the team at DICE are offering to compliment the highly-hyped single player campaign of the tier one operators. The beta has you picking which mode you want to play, you can stick with the more traditional team deathmatch, now known here as Team Assault, or the objective-based mode known as Mission. Team Assault is played on the brilliantly designed map Kabul City Ruins, offering a variety of gameplay styles for any player style. Windows to hide in if you're a sniper, lots of flank routes and shortcuts for the run and gunners and plenty of cover for the more defensive style of player. The Mission mode offers a more objective orientated mode. Much like Bad Company 2's Rush mode, an attacking team has to destroy or capture a number of objectives while the defending team has to defend them. Playing on the attacking side feels like you're a part of a massive tidal wave, flooding over any defences that may stand in your way. This is due to how the spawning works. On the attacking side you can spawn on any one of your team mates providing they're alive, whereas on defence you have to make do with a spawn delay, as well as spawning a fair distance from your main objective. While fun on the offensive side, the defence side was difficult to play; feeling like you're constantly dying and running backwards is not a fun way to play an FPS and I certainly hope this gets addressed later in the beta/full game. While doing all this respawning, you're going to get the option to choose from one of three classes: your Assault class, which gives you an M16 or an Ak-47 (dependent on your faction) with a pistol and an underbarrelled grenade launcher; the Spec Ops class, giving you an M4 or an AK-74u with a pistol and a rocket launcher; and finally the Sniper class, giving you a M21 or a Dragunov with a pistol and C4. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, however, from my play time a large majority of players stuck with the Spec Ops or Assault classes. I can see why though, as someone who greatly enjoys sniping at all ranges in FPSs, the sniper rifles are hard to use with such a small dot sight attached to them. While it may help in closer situations, trying to aim at range is extremely difficult, especially when you're getting shot at or the target is moving. With successful use of this red dot sight though, you will unlock better sights to use. This is true of all of the classes, allowing you to pick scopes and sights to customise your gun to your leisure. So now we have set out what you play and what you play it with, how do you play it? Well, the movement feels great. Slow enough to make running around like a headless chicken suicide, but fast enough to quickly aquire targets whether aiming down your sights or not. The controls, too, are basically copied straight out of the CoD playbook, meaning players of both CoD and the similarly-controlled Bad Company 2 will be able to convert their skills straight into this game once they've adjusted to the slowdown/speed up of their movement and aiming. Shooting is often a series of spray and pray events or hiding and being defensive to ensure you build up a healthy KDR (Kill Death Ratio, n00b). Now, as this is a beta, it would not be complete without a series of bugs and glitches. There are two major ones that I experienced though; the first being when you get shot, your game instantly freezes meaning any attempts to adjust your aim to counter-fire, or any attempt to avoid the fire is thwarted because you're frozen in place. It's highly frustrating to have such concise controls and then for them to instantly freeze up on you. The second glitch is the highly common PS3 insta-freeze while in-game. I was lucky enough to only have two during my time playing up until now, but one of them was during a six kill streak so heaven knows what other people have had freeze on them during their playtime. To finish on an upside while we're on the subject of killstreaks; rather than unleashing a barrage of death from above like in MW2, Medal of Honor gives you the choice to use an offensive reward, like a mortar strike, or a a more team based award, such as a UAV. These aren't merely limited to obtaining kills though, as assists, headshots, objective completion/defence will help raise your meter until you can choose what you want to do with the power. Do you go greedy and unleash all artillery-based hell on your enemy or play as a team and supply your allies with the ability to find their enemy, ultimately leading to a victory shared amongst your compatriots? The choice is a masterful one combining lone-wolves and team players into one system where they can fully choose their options. That's another example of how you can choose between a gung-ho, lone-wolf style or a team-based squadmate style. Much like Call of Duty and Battlefield, right? Ultimately, if you squint real hard, Medal of Honor shows the potential to bridge the gap between the two warring mainstream FPS franchises, finding a happy medium. It removes the niggles of Call of Duty but retains enough of the lightness to the controls to keep the action quick and fast paced, alongside including the team work and tactical play of Battlefield which ultimately deepens the gameplay. Whatever allegiance you fight for on the internet, you should be excited about Medal of Honor. That is, if they iron a few niggles left in there.