Medal of Honor: Beta

Forget Medal of Honor of the old days, the WW2 days are over. EA has moved on with the times and is reviving their old series in a modern war, set in 2001 in Afghanistan. A select few have been allowed access to the early beta, so if you haven't gotten in for yourself, take a look at NoobFeed's first impressions of the new Medal of Honor. Now, since this is an unfinished product, I'm going to refrain from nitpicking at the little bugs (like the screen freezing before you die, and other glitches) and focus on the overall look and feel of the game so far.

With the multiplayer being developed by EA DICE, it's no surprise to see the similarities to their Battlefield franchise. But it does feel distinct enough to stand as its own brand. One of the most noticeable is the environments. While Battlefield is known for having wide-open, colorful maps, Medal of Honor has a much grittier look, and your movements are more confined to the battle on hand with a more linear structure.

 

If nothing else, this game is a great showcase for legendary beards.

The beta offers two game modes: Team Assault and Mission. Team Assault is just another naming for the classic Team Deathmatch mode. Mission mode is similar to Battlefield: Bad Company 2's Rush, with one team attacking and the other defending. The attacking team is given objectives to complete while the defenders have to try and stop them from completing the task. Both of the modes were fine for showcasing what Medal of Honor is.

 The multiplayer is class based, and as of the beta there are three classes available to choose. These include assault, special ops, and sniper. I'm sure you can guess what assault and sniper are like, and spec ops gets a submachine gun or rifle with a rocket launcher for the secondary weapon. As you rank up and earn XP, you can work through a weapons tree for new weapons. We don't really get a chance to see how much depth Medal of Honor's online system may have to it as of now.

But the beta is all about the gameplay. As things stand, Medal of Honor doesn't do much to distance itself from the field. The mechanics are everything you will see in the standard first-person shooter, with nothing to improve on other games on the market. The biggest complaint with the gunplay may be how weak the guns feel. They don't seem to carry the same weight as, say, in the Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Killzone franchises, and lack realistic recoil.

 

Look familiar?

It may be a little early to jump the gun, but we aren't exactly blown away by what the Medal of Honor beta has to offer. It feels like DICE has tried to merge their own Battlefield games with ideas from Modern Warfare (new MoH even has killstreaks), but hasn't done anything to dethrone the other kings of the genre. It would be nice to see Medal of Honor make a return to its glory days, but what we've seen so far won't cut it for anything more than an average FPS. We still have a few months before the full game will be released, plus we have no idea what the single player game from EA Los Angeles is going to be like. There is still hope for the new Medal of Honor, but it is going to need some work.

Be on the look out for more news regarding Medal of Honor as the release date gets closer. It is currently scheduled to be released on October 12, 2010 for PS3, 360, and PC.

Logan Smithson, NoobFeed