Reviews// Medal of Honor: Warfighter

Driving force

Posted 26 Oct 2012 17:25 by Gareth Edwards

Varying things further, there are sections involving car chases and escapes, along with piloting a boat through a flooded city. Driving in shooters is often an excruciating ordeal, so it’s both a joy and relief that the handling of both cars and boats is really pretty good - better than some dedicated driving games to be honest.

However, neither boat or car sections ultimately amount to much more than basically following a prescribed path either chasing a target or following checkpoints.

The most involved takes place in Dubai, where you’re tasked with evading capture. It employs a magical radar (yes, one of those) showing the other car’s line of sight, and defined zones where you can stop your car and, obscured by trees and unseen, wait for them to pass. On the other hand, there’s a car chase section where you feel that, with good driving skills, you’ll complete the mission sooner.

However, it’s soon clear that we’re just being led around town for the sake of it - a game of follow-the-leader, if you like. No matter whether your driving is impeccable or utterly average, you never really make it any closer until the script says so. At that point you're told to ram the car, and it’s end of level. Mistime it and, oh, it’s back to the checkpoint because he got away thanks to some neatly arranged explosion blocking you from following.

At this point, I felt totally cheated and would have rather just watched a cut scene. At least with a cutscene I could have focused on the visuals, which are indeed very slick. I’m not only referring to the pre-rendered segments, but the in-game scenes too.

The Frostbite engine is being driven to its fullest, with spectacular use of lighting, shadowing and effects such as dust and water. The level of detail on the Teir 1 characters is astonishing for in-game visuals on the aging PS3, whether it’s the weave on their jackets or wiry facial hair, it’s a level of detail that has to applauded.

The environment is similarly intricate, whether racing over dusty roads, busy with traffic, through cluttered marketplaces, or amid the towering spires of Dubai, the cities feel very much like living locations rather than a collection of static set-piece.

In combat, going on foot in the torrential rain of a flooded Filipino city or sweeping through mountaintop villages, it delivers an atmosphere perfectly suited to the environment.

Audio isn’t quite so delightful. Voice acting and general sounds effects are all fine, but the in-game radio comms from your comrades has a weird echo - almost a hall effect - that can make it difficult to figure out what’s being said. As instruction and direction are regularly issued over radio, this makes it difficult to fathom where you’re going or what you’re meant to do.

Gluing this all together is the tale of Preacher, one of our Tier 1 guys, who’s dropped out of active duty so he can try to fix his relationship with his wife and child, only to be lured back into service following a suicide bombing.

The story is delivered in that arse-about-face manner which sees the action jump between “X weeks ago”, to “now” and then back to past, each intercut with section of gameplay where you may take control of Preacher, or Stump, or one of the other operators. What you get is a disjointed narrative that, if I’m honest, left me wondering what the hell this mission in the Phillipines or (insert other location here) had to do with the overall story.

E3 2012

I had no connection with these characters, who clearly were as interchangeable in play as they seemed in the story. Naturally, I felt far from compelled by this, until one scene, a good hour into play, where Preacher tells his wife “it’s all changed”. This piqued my interest, thinking we were going to depart from the standard “war on terror” fayre, but alas I’ve yet to see it materialise.

So how do I feel about the game now? Well, it’s a perfectly accomplished shooter, and I’m not damning with faint praise there. It plays really well, does more globe trotting than your average Bond movie, looking moody, gritty and slick whenever the occasion demands, and checks off all the boxes when it comes to the features and gameplay elements a modern shooter is expected to deliver.

Moreover, I’m enjoying playing it. Yet you’ll note a lack of gushing enthusiasm, and that’s simply that it fails to introduce anything special or new. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad - it’s just not outstanding. The narrative is uncompelling, but I’d wag the same finger at a certain other “X of Y” shooter series.

The attempts to mix it up are a varied bag. Breach is repetitive and the driving/boating fails to deliver, which is disappointing given that they both handle well enough to have been used for so much more than very basic chase, evade and checkpoint following.