Preview | Medal of Honor (Multiplayer Beta)
EA will soon be releasing the multiplayer beta for their upcoming franchise reboot of Medal of Honor on PS3, Xbox360 and PC. We sat down with the beta and got a taste of the multiplayer that is to come this October.
Alas, Medal of Honor is no longer set in World War II. The game leaves World War II – a setting that had defined the series as well as the genre for far too long. Instead of having war torn Europe as the backdrop and Nazis as the again, Medal of Honor sets itself in the modern conflicts in Afghanistan. In doing so, the game competes with other series that are also set in modern day: namely Modern Warfare and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In order to stand out and be relevant in a market that is fatigued by modern day military shooters, the Medal of Honor multiplayer tries to use different design philosophies and melt them into one online experience. While on paper, the idea of blending Call of Duty with Bad Company sounds great. In practice however, the multiplayer in Medal of Honor has more problems than it has strengths.
EA has split the development of Medal of Honor into two halves. The single player is being designed by an internal EA studio based in Los Angeles while DICE is designed the multiplayer portion. DICE just shipped Battlefield: Bad Company 2 this past March and is set on releasing their Vietnam expansion later this winter. In many ways, Medal of Honor is hoping on capitalizing on the equity that a DICE multiplayer game has built and is known for in an online space. Unfortunately, the legacy and design values of DICE are not utilized to their fullest potential – either because of the reduced scale of map encounters or because of the engine being used.
While it would be reductive to say that Medal of Honor is a Call of Duty clone from the studio that made Battlefield, it speaks to the clash of multiplayer design in Medal of Honor. The beta features two maps, Helmand Valley and Kabul City Ruins with two game types, Team Assault and Combat Mission. Team Assault is very similar to Bad Company’s Gold Rush mode in which the offensive team must destroy a point of interest – be it a roadblock, bunker or weapons stash. Helmand Valley, the map that hosts the game type in the beta, has a host of problems that stem from its design. The gamespace is map is limited and narrow. Both teams essentially fight over a linear pathway with very little tactical space to maneuver or counter. The result is an experience that has no real resonance. I never felt that I outsmarted or out outmaneuvered the opposing team. Rather, I felt that I simply shot and killed more enemies faster than they could. Combat Mission mode in the Kabul City Ruins is most reminiscent of a close quarter Call of Duty deathmatch map. Despite being an objective based shooter developer, DICE was able to create a map that offers great tactical spaces that utilize verticality to drive combat forward. There is great encounter balance between choke points and high ground firefights.
Just as the map design of Medal of Honor is mixed, so are the mechanics. The game takes the killstreak system of Call of Duty and tries to expand it. Instead of earning a combat bonus for earning 3 kills, the game awards bonuses for points scored. Points may be earned if you kill, headshot, revenge kill, make an assist, etc. Once enough points are accumulated, the player earns the right to choice one of two rewards – each mapped the right or left function of the d-pad. The rewards are essentially a reward for yourself, or a reward for the team. The self rewarding kill bonus comes in the shape of giving you the ability to call in a mortar or artillery strike, while the team reward gives the whole allied team extra ammo or armor. Medal of Honor’s reward mechanic is interesting take on the killstreak mechanic, but it does not feel all that substantial or of consequence. I never felt getting a mortar strike did make for a notable impact on the battlefield.
Despite a few design problems, the presentation of the game is its greatest weakness. Every time I am killed in a match, there is a noticeable pause from when I get hit with the final bullet to having the camera switch the perspective to see my avatar’s corpse. The technical hiccups are inexplicable as DICE is using the Frostbite engine for Medal of Honor multiplayer – the same engine used for Bad Company 2. The performance may be the primitive nature of the beta, but the PS3 version of the beta crashes at an alarming frequency. In one sitting alone, my console locked up mid-match 29 times.
Once the game is behaving, the game does very little on a visual level to make it stand out. The particle effects and character models are not nearly as good as they were in Bad Company 2 – nor is the sound design as good as BC2. While there are destructible objects in the game, it is disappointedly not on the scale seen in the Battlefield franchise. Having fully destructible surfaces would dramatically change the design of maps. In so much that DICE would need to rethink their maps and playmodes to accommodate modifiable geometry of gamespaces. In presenting limited destructible environments, the game keep to its design goals of creating smaller and more intimate encounters.
Medal of Honor is in a tough situation. The game tries to be bits of Call of Duty and bits of Battlefield. It tries to take what players are accustomed to from a shooter and does very little to make it its own or drive the mechanics for shooters forward. Medal of Honor tries to be many things, but it does one thing very well: being average.
- Adrian Perez
