[ Review ] Medal of Honor: Warfighter

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Game Informations : 

Developer: DICE Los Angeles

Publishers: Electronic Arts

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

Initial release date: Oct 5, 2012

 

Unlike the macho military shooters that inspired it, Medal of Honor Warfighter wants you to consider the effects of violence on those responsible for it. Such appeals to a player’s humanity are bold but risky moves in a military shooter, where countless corpses of faceless terrorists pile up at your feet.Warfighter strives for this by giving you a genuine impression of what it’s like to live as a Tier 1 operator, the elite operatives at the center of the modernized Medal of Honor series. It’s clear from the first cutscene all the way to the end credits that developer Danger Close has the utmost respect for the extraordinary skills and bravery of these soldiers. If Medal of Honor extended the same level of respect to its players, Warfighter might have accomplished more than its numerous significant failures and lack of player agency has allowed.

 

 

The landscape of the first-person shooter is not the same as it once was. The 2010 series reboot was a competent mimicry of what had worked previously, and its sequel continues to ignore innovation. For the entirety of its brief five-hour campaign, Warfighter spotlights one tired design idea after the other. Each linear action sequence boils down to whack-a-mole with firearms: AI enemies mindlessly pop out from the same cover spots or stand out in the open just waiting to die. When they’ve all been killed, your squad kicks down a door, kills a handful of evil terrorists in slow motion, and moves onto the next section of the predictable pattern. Warfighter leaves little room for strategic thinking, too, since it funnels your team down narrow paths by blocking alternative routes with rocks, bushes, or invisible walls.

 

Much of Medal of Honor is out of your hands, stripping you of the satisfaction that comes with making a difference or any impact on the world in a meaningful way. Many doors don’t open until allies let you through. Suspects you chase on foot conveniently wait when you fall behind. Choppers fly in to finish the job you couldn’t, airstrikes level buildings in your way, and an entire two-minute mission consists of taking a single shot you can’t miss. Hey, at least the weapons feel terrific, with bullets biting through enemies at an almost uncomfortable level of efficiency. Great firefights are par for the course in Frostbite Engine-powered games, and Medal of Honor feels as good as it looks. Warfighter’s incredible attention to atmospheric environmental detail gives Battlefield 3 a run for its money, and establishes a sense of place where the level design can't.

 

 

The bare-bones mission design of Warfighter is entirely in service of its mantra, not its players. That is, Medal of Honor’s campaign wants to throw you into situations “ripped from the headlines” – and it’s devastating to whatever story Warfighter fails to tell. The primary objective is buried by disjointed jumps from one character or country to the next – as it has been in Battlefield and Call of Duty as well. It’s hard to keep the dots connected, too, because the timeline follows no discernible order and features flashbacks within flashbacks. The narrative of Warfighter’s core revolves around the dissolution and rebuilding of an operator’s family, but the characters and in-game events compromise pathos. How can anyone empathize with a broken man who spends the next few hours plunging a hatchet into hearts, snapping necks, and generally slaughtering hundreds of other people?

 

There’s a massive disconnect between the story Danger Close wants to to tell and the game it’s made, and both suffer because of each other. All of this leaves Warfighter as uninteresting as it is disengaged, and none of its promises pay off.
This is equally true in the hollow multiplayer. Abysmal map design cripples the already uninspired objective-based modes, creating obstacles cutting off paths to a bomb site or a flag return point. Shrubbery and impassable rubble obscure routes, creating a dense clutter even in the biggest maps, while spawn camping is an intensely frustrating problem in nearly all modes.

 

 

 

A few variables on existing formulas make those multiplayer game types different from its contemporaries, but not in a substantial enough way to stand out above them. Hotspot constantly changes bomb-planting locations and Home Run forbids respawns during Capture the Flag – interesting twists, but other shooters, including Medal of Honor’s sister series, Battlefield, have explored similar conventions better.

 

Even Warfighter’s class system is outdone by better multiplayer games. Each specialty has its own unique skills, such as the heavy’s armor boost or the scout’s ability to see through walls, but the customization of those characters is limited to their weapons. Streak bonuses unlock as you score points, giving you the choice between aggressive/defensive tactical devices, such as chopper support or smokescreens. The constant calling of support items adds an unpredictable flair to each match, but the moment-to-moment gunplay simply isn’t on the same level of the campaign. That brief moment of tremendous satisfaction when you score a headshot flat-out does not exist online. The lower lethality of weapons on the adversarial side contradicts the “authenticity” EA and Danger Close have been so vocal about – lethal shots to your foes’ heads and hearts often don’t drop them dead, utterly ruining the pace of an already wounded multiplayer experience.

 

 

Medal of Honor Warfighter’s core design is deeply problematic, and technical issues only cut into it deeper. In both the campaign and online modes, character models vanish from existence, sound drops in and out, the frame rate tanks, and textures sometimes look washed-out and low-res on consoles, even after applying a 2GB HD update in the Xbox 360 version. This is the first time we’ve seen a Frostbite Engine game failing to function at a basic level, and it’s a real shame.

 

 

Verdict:

Gorgeous visuals and high production values can only carry a poor experience so far. Expect to spend a lot of time waiting, watching, and wondering why you’re bothering to play at all during Medal of Honor Warfighter’s disappointing, confusing campaign. At its core, Warfighter is a functional shooter built on trite design ideas, but significant technical problems knock it below the realm of mediocrity. This isn’t just an upsetting sequel or me-too military shooter – Warfighter is disrespectful of your time and unwilling or unable to adapt to what’s been done better elsewhere.

 

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System Requirements

Minimum:

OS: Win Vista 32

Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2.0GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+

Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 3800 series or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS

System Memory: 2 GB RAM

Storage: 20 GB Hard drive space

DirectX 10 Compatible Graphics Card

 

Recommended:

OS: Win 7 64

Processor: Intel Core i5-670 3.46GHz / AMD APU A6-3650 Quad Core

Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6950 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560

System Memory: 4 GB RAM

Storage: 20 GB Hard drive space

 

Quote

Official Trailer