 |
| Also on PC & PS3 |
|
|
Upon completing Medal of Honor: Warfighter's campaign, you are met with a
heartfelt dedication impressing upon you the heroism of the men in
uniform the game depicts. The attempt at sincere emotion is
commendable--but it rings hollow, coming as it does at the end of a
bog-standard military shooter that celebrates the killing of hundreds.
The battlefield fantasy itself offers a few surprises, but they're
crowded out of your psyche by the indifferent hours of shooting and
military chatter that surround them.
"Linear." The word is commonly used to identify any number of shooters
that usher you along a narrow path, interrupting your progress with a
bit of sniping, the shooting of a turret, or an explosion-heavy
cutscene. Warfighter's issue isn't that it fits this common modern-day
shooter template, but that developer Danger Close doesn't use the
linearity to the game's benefit. By directing the experience so tightly,
a developer can build momentum, giving the action an arc that develops
tension and ultimately reaches a zenith. When a game intends to be a
playable action film, as so many do, managing that arc is key to
delivering a memorable experience.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter doesn't craft such an arc, and thus feels
more like a pastiche of shooter tropes than a self-contained experience
with its own identity. Yet there's something worthy here--the glimmer of
a Medal of Honor that might yet hew its own path if the right elements
are cultivated. The basic shooting and movement models are a good start,
not because the guns are that remarkable, but because there's a sense
of weight to your sprints and your leaps. You're given the ability to
take cover and lean or peek before taking aim, lest you get pelted with
lead; at times, this encourages you to consider your surroundings and
preserve your own well-being rather than rush forward, spraying the room
with bullets.
The shooting is occasionally put to good use, too, such as in a noisy
showdown during a raging rainstorm, the palm trees waving and bending in
response to the heaving winds. Other levels are just as visually
impressive, like an on-rails boat shootout during which fires rage and
floating debris threatens to ram you. Elsewhere, you use the blazing
shine of your enemies' flashlights as beacons for your violence in
various locales. The Frostbite 2 engine that gave
Battlefield 3
life is used well enough here, occasional visual glitches and
distracting screen grime notwithstanding. These visuals are much more
effective on the PC than consoles, but on any platform, Medal of Honor:
Warfighter isn't always just a sea of brown, though you can still expect
plenty of dusty roads and crumbling hovels to fill your field of view.
If only the gameplay could consistently uphold the promise of the most
atmospheric levels. To Warfighter's benefit, it's not as much of a
turkey shoot as its 2010 predecessor, though enemies still pop up in the
most predictable places, inviting you to gun them down. The excitement
is also undercut by your AI teammates' unlimited supply of ammo; there's
never any need to scrounge the ground for enemy weapons, which
diminishes the sense that you are in imminent danger. (A little
improvisational spirit could have gone a long way.) But it's the moments
you most expect to deliver the brightest sparks that are most devoid of
them. The aforementioned boat chase requires no skill, neither from a
driving nor from a shooting perspective. Ditto for the obligatory
helicopter gunner segment, in which you mow down nameless grunts from
above. Without challenge, there needs to be something else to keep
excitement levels high--but there aren't enough foes to shoot or other
sources of thrills to compensate.
Warfighter checks other paradigms off its list, too. There are the parts
where you sneak up on enemies from behind and gruesomely stab them, and
the parts where you snipe the baddies lurking in distant windows. There
are the parts where you call in airstrikes to annihilate entire
buildings, and there's the bit where you shoot down a helicopter with a
rocket launcher. There are seemingly endless door breaches, in which
time slows to a crawl while you and your AI teammates charge into a room
and litter the floor with corpses. Things explode real nice, but these
sequences are all segmented sharply from the surrounding gameplay. The
game signals "hey, here's the part with the sniper rifle," and you
dutifully perform the necessary actions so you can continue.
There are several scripted set-piece sections that stand above the rest,
however--and in fact, stand above the campaign in general. All of them
involve vehicles. Some of these driving sections are ridiculous and
entertaining, directing you to incite crashes, and then showcasing the
destruction in slow motion, Burnout-style. The camera that so lovingly
caresses the chaos flies in the face of Warfighter's meager attempts to
identify the drivers as everyday heroes, but the tension of avoiding
oncoming traffic and the joy of watching your four-wheeled victims flip
with abandon are both guilty pleasures. The game's most surprising turn
of events is a vehicular stealth sequence in which you must slip into
designated safe spots to avoid prowling enemy drivers. It's a neat idea,
executed well, that generates tension and has you fearing your possible
discovery. It's not difficult to succeed, but even so, this portion is
elegant and imaginative.
