Medal of Honor: Frontline

October 03, 2002

Reviewed by: Rock_On

PLOT/STORY:
You are a twenty-four year old Lieutenant in the Air Transport Corps named James Bon... er, Patterson, who was shot down as he was flying his C-47 troop transport through bad weather and enemy fire.

When you and four of your crew survive, they’re soon picked up by a small resistance group called the Maquis, and now he’s heading back to France ala Omaha Beach.

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL: “War is hell”
From the very start of the game, you’re put into the hardest and funnest level there is. Anyone remember the movie Saving Private Ryan?? Well the very first mission in Medal of Honor: Frontline is the scene on Omaha Beach in Normandy on June6, 1944. Only instead of the transport vessel landing on the beach and letting the soldiers out to be fed by millions of bullets, you’re thrown into the water from a blast by a well placed missile. From there you work your way up the beach, taking cover wherever you can find something solid.

When you’re met with a mission like this at the very beginning of the game, surely the rest of the game’s going to be bad ass right? Well, sort of. Not saying this is a bad game, it’s just that the rest of the missions don’t quite have the same impact as the first one.

The controls feel rather nice, although the way you view your gun is at a kind of angle which may throw some people off. Also the sensitivity to looking around is kind of low and might not be easy for some people to do stuff, because by the time you turned around, three different people might have attacked you. But otherwise, shooting, ducking, jumping, is all done with ease, except during some levels where there will be so much action that the screen shakes from bombs dropping so you’ve got to aim your shot just perfectly.

In each mission you'll have a variety of objectives to complete, and as you complete them, more will be given to you. Some include such things as meeting one of your officers somewhere, to giving one of your comrades cover as he goes to plant a bomb or something. No matter what difficulty you’re on, there will always be at least one very challenging level. For example the very first level is hard even on Easy, so imagine how difficult it would be on the HARDEST difficulty.

Of course while you explore every nook and cranny of a level, you’ve got to keep an eye on your health in the bottom left corner of the screen. Down there, you’ve got a compass to help you navigate around, and lining the outside of the compass is your health that changes from green(healthy), to yellow(caution), to red(dangerous) as you take damage. Course, not every man’s cut out to be super man, so if you take damage, you can find different medical packages that will cure a certain percent of your health and put you back into commission for battle.

As you explore different missions, you’re liable to find different items that will allow you to access different pats of a mission you’ve not been yet. Prime example of this would be finding a key that will unlock a door to another area, or deliver something to someone. No matter what you pick-up, whenever you’re near the area where it is to be used, it’ll automatically do whatever it has to do without navigating a host of menus.

The game, set in WWII, feels every so “warrish” that it’s suppose to be. Real scenes such as your comrades being blown up right before your eyes, vehicles being knocked off course, and even the way enemies try to get one last shot as they die. Now if I was in this position and I was dying, I’d let all hell out before I die.

Speaking of the way enemies act while trying to get on last shot, lets discuss the AI(Artificial Intelligence). They’ve got their good times, they’ve had their bad times, but overall I was thoroughly impressed. Since you can probably guess how the AI are good, I’ll speak about the bad. Often times ,they‘ll act just like the AI in Goldeneye(which was slightly good for its time), in that they’ll just stand and let you kill them while they’re reloading, and their definition of avoiding gun-fire is hopping a couple feet to the side(lol).

Now for the weapons. The weapons that are the most popular would be the Colt .45 handgun and the M1 Garrand which is a rifle. These are the weapons you use MOST of the time, but there are other weapons that you'll come across that will be useable for a short time. Weapons such as sniper rifles with different rates of fire and damage qualities, sub-machine guns like a Thompson and MP40, different kinds of grenades, and bazooka’s and shotguns. The bazooka is probably my favorite weapon in this game as it’s explosion is very devastating when practicing on a group of Germans are chatting in the boxers, but my keen interest was in the Shotgun, which isn’t as powerful in this game as other FPS, but still packed a punch. You can shoot different parts of an enemy’s body to get different reactions, meaning they won’t die if you shoot them in the arm or if you shoot them in the legs, the topple over. Of course, one well placed shot to the head or chest is going to do a person in, but experimenting with different body shots in this game is fun. And also aside from regular weapons, you can take control of Gun Emplacements every once in a while that’s good for mowing down multiple enemies at once.

GRAPHICS:
First of all, I give a big pat on the back to the developers of Medal of Honor: Frontline for all the research that was done before making this game. Long hours in libraries, trips to the locations in the game for photographs that the graphics designers looked at to create the missions you see as you play this game. Everywhere from Omaha Beach, to the bridge in Black Hawk Down, the locations were well done.

Now, they had their high points, they had their low points; but overall I was thoroughly pleased with them. The most notable goodness happen on the very first level on the beach where there is a downpour of bullets and missiles flying at you, making splashes in the water, and scattering particles of sand as a stray bullet misses it’s mark or a missile strikes it.

With all the action going on on-screen during the game, there are a ton of slow-downs in places where the game only lost a few frames per second. These fps drops were terrible in various places, and the game played at a ok, but flawed 30 fps.

Character models aren’t the best, but for everything that was crammed into this game, they’re the best they can be. Some characters may seem blocky at the position they stand, while others look nice and smooth. If you look closely enough, you can maybe see the face of the sound coordinator on one of the soldiers.

As I said above, the locations in the missions are what I give props to the developers for, as they are closer to real life as you’d ever be able to get...especially the Omaha Beach location, the space isn't’ as big as the real thing, but hey; you can only hope for so much form a game that is already great in so many ways.

Also, for those who are a little bloody queasy, then fear none because there is no blood in Medal of Honor: Frontline. Although, I sometimes wished that there was some bloody to give the game a little more pizaz, but the blood doesn’t really matter in this game.

SOUND:
“Pow! Pow! I scramble beside a piece of blown up ship, hoping that those bullets were stray until I hear the screaming of my fellow soldiers not less than 5 feet from me. One, Officer Grant, was shot in the lung and was bleeding profusely. His bloody screams sent chills through my body as he struggles for cover and cowers for protection while holding the place where the bullet entered his chest. I start towards him to help him when all of a sudden BOOM!. I hear a ringing in my ear as I feel my body suspended in the air, weightless, with no pain in my body as if I was in...”

The sounds in this game are so real to the real thing that you feel like you’re in the real thing. Bullets flying past you, kicking up dirt, an explosion so close you’d be partially deaf for awhile. I give the audio a 15/10 because of the reality of the sounds, especially combined with surround sound, will blow you out of the water(pun intended). The screams of your fellow soldiers just makes you shiver all over, cause you know what’s happened, and there’s nothing to do.

Rocky’s Corner:
I’m impressed, so impressed I play the first mission over and over and over again. The controls may be a little iffy at first, the frame rate drops ever so-often; but the war sounds and game play more than make up for every fault the game has.