Game Review: Medal of Honor (Xbox 360 edition)

In between cooking and doing dishes, I am a very avid Gamer. I've been in a gaming clan since 2005 (The clan is called HellonEarth, and hence where I get my name sake as my gamertag used to be IronChef, so when you combine my Cland tag and my gamertag, it turned into HellzIronChef, what it still is today) but as of late I have been reduced to console gaming, not that I am saying its a bad thing, but considering how I was once both a PC and Console gamer, one can see it as a step back. But in any case, I am currently an Xbox gamer for now, and I recently picked up EA's new Medal of Honor. Now many reviewers as of late have been giving the game sub-par scores, but I think that in general it's a decent game, that suffers from a few flaws, but that should not be held against it. If you want to know the back story to the game, all you have to do is pick up a news paper from a few years back, and  look at news stories from the front lines in Afghanistan, though some of the missions would not be even released to the media, sometimes things are just better kept under wraps.

*Spoiler Alert*

You play though the campaign from 4 different perspectives. You play as AFO Wolfpack (aka SFOD-D) AFO Neptune (Aka Navy SEALs), Army Rangers, and for a level you play as an AH-64 Apache gunner. The single player campaign is separated into a two day stretch, and is a bit short for my tastes, though I hope that extra content will be released soon for the game. If you want to know what the rest  play the game! Though many people have complained about the game, I believe that its just the fact that the gaming market has become so jaded by the "modern shooter". For once, in my opinion, The gamer gets to see war from the perspectives of real war-fighters, especially elite warriors from the Special Forces community. I have recently be reading much about the War in Afghanistan especially from the perspective of the Special Operations community, From books like Kill Bin Laden, and The Nightstalkers, some of the scenes from Medal of Honor reminded me of some of the scenes from these books, from the frantic defense of downed Helicopters, to moving about freezing mountain tops in search of insurgents, I believe that Medal of Honor has captured the spirit of the war in Afghanistan from the perspective of the the SF operator. I think the part that I like most of the game is the fact that the game developers worked so closely with members of the SF community. I truly feel that the game pays homage to the SF operator. Now the game is divided in two, Single player and Multiplayer. Multiplayer plays just like a combination of Modern Warfare 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2, and to be honest I like the point-based support system in Medal of Honor a lot better than Modern Warfare's kill-streak system, my only quip with the game is that I wish there were a few more weapon options, maybe some more destructibility in the environments, but besides that the game is a great addition to any shooter fan's collection. In my book, I don't regret my purchase and I don't foresee myself exchanging the game anytime soon!

*Disclaimer* - I have no association to EA in anyway, I was not given the game for free, nor am I trying to hype the sales, I just think that this is an overall fun game to play, and that it should be given a chance instead of just looked over because the reviewers say that its not that great.

*Addendum 2-8-11 * - I wrote this review in October/November when the game came out, I subsequently returned it less than two months after I purchased it, unfortunately, slumping player base, lack of deep customization as well as  numerous minor issues I had with the game made me unfortunately return the game sooner than I had anticipated.