Preview: Medal of Honor Warfighter
First person shooters, we’ve had a lot of them in recent years. With Call of Duty and Battlefield carving the market pretty much right down the middle, leaving comparative scraps for ‘also ran’ niche titles like sniper 2: ghost warrior.
And so Medal of Honor returns once again. After the luke warm reception of Medal of Honor 2010, EA studio Danger Close have refocussed their efforts on single player, bringing in the multi Academy Award winning film giants Digital Domain to help create realistic cinematics to bolster the narrative. On top of that they’ve brought the multiplayer in-house (DICE, the makers of Battlefield 3 made the multiplayer for the last game), in order to better play to the strengths of MoH, differentiating it from the rest of the genre. So how’s it looking?
In order for an FPS to have longevity in today’s market, it’s generally accepted that a robust multiplayer experience is a must. Medal of Honor Warfighter throws its hat into the ring by taking a different tack with a focus of fire teams. Here, players are paired together and encouraged to work together within their larger team to complete objectives.
The mode we played last week was called hot spot. Multiple combustible bases littered the Sarajevo stadium map. The attacking team must attach a bomb to the bases as they light up, whilst the defending team must stop them. Added complexity comes with the fact that the defending team can see which base will be the next target some time before the attackers.
It wasn’t long before decoy tactics were employed as I chased after the defenders, who I presumed were heading to defend the next base, only to find their teammates lying in wait for me. Also whether intentionally or not, they ran in directly the opposite direction to the base they should have been defending, a pretty sneaky tactic if you’re trying to buy time for the rest of your team to find defensible positions around the base.
Fire Teams look to add a fantastic amount of variation to multiplayer
Multiplayer allows you to play as one of 12 elite units from 10 different nations, all of whom have been chosen by Tier 1 operators who have acted as advisors on the game. If you’re concerned that the nation you want to represent won’t be in the game then worry no more, behind this choice of 12 sits a meta game that pits 193 nations worldwide against each other. Post launch online leader boards will show which countries have the best players. My advice: it’s unlikely the game will ship to every nation contained in the 193, so I’ll be representing Chad as a one man army.
Medal of Honor warfighter is available on Xbox 360, ps3 and PC from October 26th in Europe and 25th in the US. Come and join me fighting for Chad…
- Tom Wallis
