The demonstration ends with a standoff in a burning Afghan village, where 'Rabbit' is caught off-guard and beaten by a hidden enemy. The camera blurs, and refocuses on the Taliban fighter who has his rifle aimed at your face. He's just about to pull the trigger before a gunshot noise is heard, and the enemy falls to the floor next to you, dead. “I just saved your ass,” grunts the fellow soldier that helps 'Rabbit' back on his feet.
Tense. There's the obvious sense of teamwork, but it's underlined with an expectation of these soldiers to not make dumb mistakes and bugger it all up. Dialogue like that serves as a reminder that if you're going to make rookie mistakes, you're better off lying on the ground with a bullet in the head.
Medal of Honor mostly features first-person shooting like the one above, but I was told that there will be different kinds of gameplay thrown in that will cover multiple experiences from the Afghanistan front lines. One of these allows you to play as a helicopter fighter pilot, zooming through the mountains and firing sweet bullet rain upon the enemy below.
I was able to play this particular stage, and it served as a nice little distraction – I can see it being used mostly as a way to break up the main ground gameplay more than anything else. Flying through the Shahikot Valley is automatic, while you have control of the aiming and weaponry on the vehicle. To that end, it's a little bit like a 3D, on-rails version of
Desert Strike, as you target buildings and enemy units and attack with limitless ammo.
After giving the helicopter gameplay a good go, I played a few matches on the game's multiplayer mode. Now naturally, this has caused some controversy. Not because I was able to pump bullets into the faces of rebels who didn't want my American presence in their country, but because I could do it the other way round.
The ability to play as the Taliban appears to have offended many, but in terms of gameplay there's nothing fantastically controversial or different about it. You're simply playing as another opposing side. And the multiplayer itself is based on team-based base capture mechanics that have been seen in other modern warfare games.
As either an insurgent or a coalition soldier, you get to customise your weaponry and toolset before you spawn into the field, along with a choice of military class – Rifleman, Special Ops or Sniper. The Taliban has several camps that the enemy players have to defend from incoming coalition players. And that's it. Just pure gameplay. And it works – nobody really thought about who they were playing as, all we were thinking about was the objective and how to win. There goes that racket, then.
Medal of Honor isn't out until October, and there's still quite a lot that needs to be seen before it can be said that the work has all been worth it. It stands to be a modern, ambitious affair but altogether familiar amongst fellow war shooters in the market. That may work to its benefit or disdvantage, but ultimately EA is on track to deliver a truly visceral delight in terms of visuals and audio either way. We'll look to its release in earnest.
