Publisher: EA Games |
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![]() When Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MOHAA) first came out, it was the start of several WWII based games. The game itself had amazing graphics and a singleplayer that had flow and feel. You moved through several different scenarios and thus it never got stale or boring. The game also included some great multiplayer maps. The first expansion pack "Spearhead" continued in this tradition with great single- and multiplayer. Then the time changed when the majority of the "2015" team, who developed MOHAA, left and started their own company: Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward later released Call of Duty, which has the same great qualities as MOHAA and Spearhead. Then the second expansion pack to MOHAA "Breakthrough" was released and it was clear that the people that had made MOHAA great had left the development team and instead made Call of Duty. The expansion pack was stale and boring. Now we look at Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault…will EA deliver in the same way they did before Breakthrough?
The game has some very good graphics, even though its not Half-Life 2 level, but then again what is? There are some nice features included, like the graphics smear when you use the large caliber guns. You also become deaf for a short while if a grenade explodes too close.
From the Dairy of Tom Conlin: "…I find myself in a landing craft approaching a beach. I look around and see other men like me, but still so different. Even though we are not that many years apart, they look so young. The difference is that they are fresh out of bootcamp.
It looks like an inferno, where the twisted pieces of metal and cracked piles of wood tell the tale of what kind of hell I have to look forward to...."
Singleplayer
This game starts of with some cut scenes with you and your men and it almost feels like the PC game "Mafia" which really made you feel like you were a part of a story and not just shooting at stuff. This makes for a great start.
Bootcamp
After bootcamp you are shipped off to
Pearl Harbor. It starts out like a fine morning. You are escorted around
the place. Sailors pass by and it feels like easy duty. All of the sudden,
all hell breaks loose and you are thrown into a situation not far from the
main characters in the movie "Pearl Harbor". You make
After a short while you pass a ship for some cover when it suddenly tip over from its wounds. At some point you stop next to a crippled ship where you make your way in to rescue several seamen. When the smoke settles you are shipped off to the jungle.
The Jungle
The enemy AI is rather good, but so is yours! Don’t you dare ignore your team when they shout that the enemy is flanking! It gives you lots of tips that help you through the game and lines like "Nice shooting, Tommy" when you kill an enemy with a difficult shot, further adding to the team feeling. The AI will throw grenades at you and take effective cover. I've seen a enemy run across a camp while I tore up the ground around him with my gun. He hits the dirt behind cover the first chance he gets. Even better, as you are reloading the enemy will charge in with the bayonet aiming at you. Your own team will respond to orders like "Move forward", "Rally up", "Covery fire" and "Retreat".
The single player missions range from easy to very hard. There's nothing wrong with some variation if it wasn’t for the very long load times. It gets rather annoying when you get to missions that are very hard and it takes several tries to get it right, when you have to spend half the time waiting for the game to load (and my PC isn’t the slowest one in the delta).
The game contains several difficulty levels where the number of ammo and impact on health will make a difference. In the Realistic mode you don’t have any indication of how much ammo you have left. This is very unrealistic since men in combat always have an idea of at least how many clips they have left.
Pacific Assault adds a couple of interesting twists on the first-person shooter. You can take concussion damage, which doesn't injure you much but makes you "dizzy" and disoriented. Your movements and responses are slowed way down, sounds blur, and you recover slowly. Another neat feature is the Hero Moment, where you can boost your standing by blowing up ammo dumps, rescuing POWs, and saving injured officers. Hero Moments are scattered throughout the game and really reward the player who branches off the main objective path. Also, there's something called the "deathcam"--when you are critically injured, your view points up at the sky, you will hear flashes of past memories, voices, and if your medic doesn't get to you soon, you're dead.
Multiplayer
Final words The many cutscenes and dialogues in the beginning of the game decrease later in the game and that’s a real shame. You started off getting a feel for your character and your team, is replaced by moving through the jungle and shooting. You can play the singleplayer again its the multiplayer part, that will ensure this game's value. All in all, it’s a really good game and thus gets a good score in my book, but still it’s unfortunate that the great potential shown in the first part of the game was not used as much in the later part of the game. That puts it in the "Not ground-breaking" category. Really nice sounds, really nice graphics – but adds little new.
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© 2005 SUBSIM Review