Danger Close serves up its sophomore effort in EA’s war against the Call of Duty juggernaut with Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Does this volley in the FPS war hit home, or is it just a shot in the dark? Find out right here!
Medal of Honor: Warfighter disappoints on every level, with its mundane and disappointing campaign and little in the way of any reason to stick with a bare-bones multi-player.
Visuals
As this is a Frostbite 2 game, there is some very solid lighting and particle effect work here, even as the lackluster texture work almost uniformly belies that. The wood, stone, and fabric textures are notably bland, unfortunate in a title where cover-fire is a necessity. The environments are every bit as uniform, brown, and sandy as Danger Close’s freshman effort, and it still seems to lack the polish of Call of Duty and the grand scale of the Battlefield Franchise.
While the detail work with character and gun models smacks of authenticity, the character work and set-piece action sequences could have been cut-and-pasted from virtually every modern FPS of the last five years. The animation work is far from the best out there, and the frame-rate tends to spike at odd moments on a PC rig with specs well above the recommended settings.
There’s also poor execution between the title and Origin’s cloud save system, as I have yet to boot the title without an error notification, but this is no surprise for anyone with even a brief experience with Origin. Woes associated with EA’s proprietary PC service doesn’t end there, with constant endgame multi-player crashes and Origin’s trademark instability.
Audio
The audio is functional at best, with far less punch than what the Frostbite 2 engine has already proven capable of. The guns have adequate punch, but it’s nowhere near the depth that Medal of Honor’s engine-sister title possesses. Virtually every aspect of the audio is simply adequate, with the exception of the voice-over work. The vocal cast manage the same quiet simplicity, weight, and heft that the previous Danger Close Medal of Honor had, but the lack of truly distinctive characters gives this solid cast little to work with.
Gameplay
The default keybinding in this title seems strange, given its close relation to another PC shooter of more-than-average heft, but the customization renders this complaint irrelevant within ten minutes of minor effort, with the exception of one notable caveat. The mouse sensitivity is a universal with no ADS customization for vehicles, turrets, etc. In a genre where split-second reaction is of great concern, that is a massive oversight. The lean functionality that the Medal of Honor franchise seems to have married itself to since 2007’s Medal of Honor: Airborne is still virtually useless, and its inclusion still baffles. There were, however, a surprisingly effective pair of vehicle sequences that were incredibly well-executed, with a neat tip of the hat to EA’s Burnout franchise.
The small-squad based action of the Campaign mode would seem to be a logical place for Co-Op, yet it is absent without explanation. The multi-player is a real let-down here, with just 4 distinct multi-player modes on a mere 8 maps. While the sheer number of un-lockable characters, weapons, weapon modifications, and weapon skins are far from disappointing, the actual effect these have on game-play is minimal. Medal of Honor: Warfighter doesn’t have the legs to win the hearts of the die-hard FPS fanatics, and the casual players will be run off by its hardcore mechanics and unfriendly UI.
Presentation:
The series of well-executed CG cut-scenes are easily the single best part of the package. While somewhat obvious and stereotypical in nature, they actually do a relatively good job of presenting a more adult and personally immerse tone than your standard faceless and silent hero first-person action title. The authenticity and simplicity is much more in line with what I prefer in a military shooter, but it lacks a clarity of narrative that would much better suit the tonal nature of the work as a whole. There’s effort here at odds with the slipshod nature of how the story is told to really get at the heart of what it’s actually like to be one of these men. But this title never achieves that. You cannot tell a story about the horrors of war while simultaneously creating a narrative that propels you, on rails, through the wholesale slaughter of hundreds upon hundreds of the same character model without a better and deeper explanation of why and when.
The presentation in the multi-player portion of the title is worse. There’s also a baffling disconnect between search options available through DICE’s Battlelog (pioneered-for and much-better executed in Battlefield 3) and those inside the actual application itself. I cannot wrap my head around the need for two separate interfaces, especially when one is far inferior to the other. Origin also rears its ugly head as part of the package, and that speaks for itself. Nothing about this title will set the world on fire.
Value
The missions of Medal of Honor: Warfighter are acceptable, perhaps 6-8 hours on a higher difficulty setting, but none are entertaining enough to replay. The driving sequences are an unexpected highlight of the entire experience. Blisteringly paced and directly reminiscent of Burnout, it’s creatively handled and just plain fun. To a lesser degree, there is a moderately tense escape sequence that works rather well, but like a great deal of the title, it is bogged down by pacing and poor enemy AI.
The multi-player adds little in the way of interest, its deep weapon customization system and direct appeal to the international community through its character selection and Warfigher Nations system gives insufficient reason to combat the mediocre gun-play. Medal of Honor: Warfighter just doesn’t seem to back up the potential that those well-reasoned concepts deserve.
At launch retail pricing being what it is, the campaign simplicity certainly does not live up to the expectations. The multi-player is workmanlike, but a lot of comparisons can be drawn to Danger Close’s reboot. It’s a stale effort in an overcrowded genre with little to nothing in the way of argument in its favor.
Lasting Impact
Medal of Honor: Warfighter simply possesses no market or technological significance to speak of. As a member of a family with several serving or retired military officers, I wanted very desperately to like this title. There is a side of war that has until lately been rarely displayed in entertainment mediums of any form, and is itself totally absent in interactive entertainment, and that is the emotional damage done as a result of the necessity of a standing army. Let me be clear, I am in NO way trying to make a political statement here. The fact is we have a military, and serving in that military entails certain risks, and when those serving are hurt or killed, there is a rippling damage pattern that extends a great distance from its point of origin. The violence entailed in titles like this have largely ignored that fact. Medal of Honor: Warfighter actually touches upon it at points, and those points are when the title reaches its highest, and simultaneously shows that it could have been great, it could have been important, but is in fact very, very far from it. I am very disappointed in this title, not because it was purely awful, but because of its unrealized potential.
Intangibles
As a competitor of Activision’s giant Call of Duty franchise, and a part of EA’s effort towards dominance in this market, I think this is an important title, but not in the way its developer or publisher would wish. It proves that Danger Close’s Medal of Honor efforts do NOT have what it takes to break Activision’s Call of Duty juggernaut, not without significant overhauls, better design choices, and a better understanding of what the series needs to be. And that is truly the issue here: we have a fascinating potential concept married with poor execution that simply fails to impress on any vital level.
Review Score:
5.1