Medal of Honor Beta Impressions

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (BFBC2) may not have been the most technically sound game on the PC but it had a lot of things going for it. The sheer size and scope of battles compounded with destructive environments made this one of the most intense shooters since Modern Warfare 2.

DICE, the Swedish company behind that very same game are back with Medal of Honor, yet another first person shooter set in modern times. They aren’t working on the single player campaign but everything multiplayer is coming out of their camp which is why I’m pretty disappointed with the step child treatment they’ve dished out on this game.

The Beta offers players two maps and two game modes one of which feels like an old school deathmatch where you spawn and then proceed to kill or be killed. Repeat ad nauseum. The other one is basically a variant of the Rush mode from BFBC2 where one team has to capture various capture points spread out through the map while the other team defends those points. Even though this mode offered a tad more strategy than just running and gunning, it really felt pretty underwhelming.

The size and scope of battle has been significantly reduced and unlike BFBC2 maps are a lot more linear. Environmental destruction, something the Bad Company series has done really well feels very tame over here restricted to trivial stuff like rubble being chipped off from walls and so on. I understand DICE wanting to retain the destruction for the Battlefield series but after spoiling us senseless, it’s just sad that my mortar strike cannot bring down an entire building on its occupants.

There are three classes to choose from in the beta – Rifleman, Special Ops and Sniper. The first two classes feel pretty similar to each other initially but as you unlock cooler weapons you streamline those classes to your liking. Yes there are persistent unlocks in this game but once again, they feels pretty underwhelming when stacked up against BFBC2 or the Modern Warfare series.

Visually the game looks pretty out dated and even at maximum setting it fails to impress. Had the game been chaotic as hell compromising visuals for performance I would have been content but as of now we have neither. Also for some reason weapon handling feels pretty clunky. Now this clunkiness is synonymous to a certain extent with the Battlefield series but it just feels weird in this game.

I admit I may have made one too many MW2 or BFBC2 comparisons but when you enter the modern day first person shooter space you’re bound to be compared against the best. With less than three months to release, DICE better improve this game drastically if they expect it to enjoy the same reception their previous games did. It’s not a bad game per say and had they come out with this game before BFBC2 it would have been a different story. Now it just feels like a dumbed down love child of MW2 and BFBC2.