Medal of Honor (Modern Era version) revealed

I just got a beta invite. I haven't ordered MoH yet, so it must be due to my BC2 registration on my EA account. It lets me pick a platform (360, PS3, PC).

So check your spam accounts

You'll have to let me know what you think Mannish. I've played a few rounds and so far I'm very underwhelmed. I'm casting aside technical problems for now and looking at some of the larger design choices and without some major changes I'm not sure if I'll be picking this one up.

Sniping so far is probably my biggest grip and I think will ruin multiplayer if it isn't addressed. I was getting one shot-ed by folks I couldn't see who had unlocked the regular sniper scope. No smoke, no prone, and a confined map you end up just being a sitting duck. In one match two snipers who killed me went 54/3 and 31/5 respectively. That's BS.

Ballotechnic wrote:

You'll have to let me know what you think Mannish. I've played a few rounds and so far I'm very underwhelmed. I'm casting aside technical problems for now and looking at some of the larger design choices and without some major changes I'm not sure if I'll be picking this one up.

Sniping so far is probably my biggest grip and I think will ruin multiplayer if it isn't addressed. I was getting one shot-ed by folks I couldn't see who had unlocked the regular sniper scope. No smoke, no prone, and a confined map you end up just being a sitting duck. In one match two snipers who killed me went 54/3 and 31/5 respectively. That's BS.

Its real easy to get behind enemy lines and once you do you're able to just lay waste to everyone.

If they dont announce some patches before launch then i probably will also pass, but if they fix the obvious problems it could be a lot of fun.

Ballotechnic wrote:

You'll have to let me know what you think Mannish. I've played a few rounds and so far I'm very underwhelmed. I'm casting aside technical problems for now and looking at some of the larger design choices and without some major changes I'm not sure if I'll be picking this one up.

Sniping so far is probably my biggest grip and I think will ruin multiplayer if it isn't addressed. I was getting one shot-ed by folks I couldn't see who had unlocked the regular sniper scope. No smoke, no prone, and a confined map you end up just being a sitting duck. In one match two snipers who killed me went 54/3 and 31/5 respectively. That's BS.

I suspect it's not my kind of game from what I've read from you guys here, and in reviews elsewhere. Too far on the MW2 side of things.

I'd probably enjoy the SP, but I don't know that I'd buy it expecting much for me out of the multiplayer.

With the announcement that the beta is closing, here are some of the things they say they're improving for the final in over two months:
* Improved hit detection
* Breath control for all classes
* Crash fixes
* Improved control input mapping
* In-game HUD polished
* All weapon stats are now updated in the spawn menu
* Spawn points tweaked

So they really managed to get through the beta without releasing the much needed PC patch and there were still people playing it at the end? That's... impressive.

Scratched wrote:

With the announcement that the beta is closing, here are some of the things they say they're improving for the final in over two months:
* Improved hit detection
* Breath control for all classes
* Crash fixes
* Improved control input mapping
* In-game HUD polished
* All weapon stats are now updated in the spawn menu
* Spawn points tweaked

:|

That settled it for me. Cancelled my pre-order with Amazon.

The main thing that disappoints about that list is that all those items should be standard. No one should be congratulating a working and functional UI, a game that doesn't crash, etc, as those should be default assumptions for a shipping game.

DICE's games are some I'd love to see copied by someone else, and DICE need to make theirs better to compete.

Maybe it's a European thing; I certainly don't understand it. I think my biggest gripe was map design, the team deathmatch map was pretty uninspired and the objective map had to many choke points were folks could camp.

I'm still torn though and will probably wait for reviews. I constantly gripe about outlandish game scenarios and MoH doesn't get any more modern or relevant. Hopefully the campaign will deliver were the multiplayer falls short.

CptGlanton wrote:
Scratched wrote:

With the announcement that the beta is closing, here are some of the things they say they're improving for the final in over two months:
* Improved hit detection
* Breath control for all classes
* Crash fixes
* Improved control input mapping
* In-game HUD polished
* All weapon stats are now updated in the spawn menu
* Spawn points tweaked

:|

That settled it for me. Cancelled my pre-order with Amazon.

what else are people wanting? This answers all the complaints i had for the game.

There's a new trailer up for Medal of Honor. It's a mix of live action and in game footage and I sometimes had a difficult time telling the difference. Despite my gripes with the multiplayer beta, the single player looks like it could have some excellent moments.

There's a new trailer up for Medal of Honor. It's a mix of live action and in game footage and I sometimes had a difficult time telling the difference. Despite my gripes with the multiplayer beta the single player looks like it could have some excellent moments.

Also, though I like Linkin Park, I'm not a big fan of this song.

So good it had to be said twice.

Bettered watch admitting to liking Linkin Park around here, the old fogies will get all riled up. (I got your back)

The gameplay looked much better than the budget live action shots. I also found those scenes with the kid receiving (his father's?) MOH way too over the top for a game that really isn't about heroism/valor/honor/etc. Come on, it's repackaged Call of Duty, killing terrorists as entertainment, and nothing deeper than that. I wish they'd market these games with less melodrama.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

The gameplay looked much better than the budget live action shots. I also found those scenes with the kid receiving (his father's?) MOH way too over the top for a game that really isn't about heroism/valor/honor/etc. Come on, it's repackaged Call of Duty, killing terrorists as entertainment, and nothing deeper than that. I wish they'd market these games with less melodrama.

I was under the impression that the father part was a flashback was a result of the operator getting his bell rung by the RPG. From what I've read so far the folks putting together the single player are putting a great deal of effort into keeping it authentic. I expect, or hope, that it will be less over the top than CoD since the conflict is an actual one.

Not sure if I agree with your opinion that the game has nothing to do with heroism/valor/honor. I thinks that's precisely the vein that most war based FPSs are trying to hit, and that the MoH folks are after. We'll see.

That's what they are trying to hit, I agree. And that's also the problem. People don't play FPS to experience honor etc., they play because they are fun, violent and require a certain amount of skill and tactical thinking to be good at. Absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it is disingenuous for an FPS where you are holding a gun at all times that is the sole source of your interaction with the enemy to claim it is taking the game play to a deeper level. And authentic? What does that mean here? Does anyone really expect this game to reveal all (or even any?) of the complexities and contradictions of being at war? Not if it's meant to entertain it won't.

Of course it's not fair to judge a product that's not out yet, so I'll happily bite my tongue if I'm wrong, but the precedent set by the COD series doesn't lend me to believe that MOH will be much different.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

. . . it is disingenuous for an FPS where you are holding a gun at all times that is the sole source of your interaction with the enemy to claim it is taking the game play to a deeper level. And authentic? What does that mean here? Does anyone really expect this game to reveal all (or even any?) of the complexities and contradictions of being at war? Not if it's meant to entertain it won't.

QFMFT.

I had some pretty Pollyanna expectations of this game when it was first announced, but those have all been tramped down by the inevitable reality. Like Mao said, I'll be happy to be wrong, but you don't get a piece of CoD's action by being the thinking person's war simulator—you pump out a trailer with Linkin Park.

I'ma get general here.

I've been thinking about this weird self-contradicting state that video games are in right now. For instance, a big thing in games at the moment is the moral choice—we loves us the moral choices in games, the greyer the better. We want real, tough, moral choices in our games! Or to be realistic, we want real, tough, moral choices in our fantastical role-playing games. We want to have to face hard decisions like killing a demon-possessed boy or sacrificing his mother in blood magic ritual.

But God forbid that, in a realistic military shooter, we should have to decide between mortaring a village or letting potential terrorists comingle with civilians. And I guess what I meant by "self-contradicting state" was more that "developers don't have any balls". Maybe MoH will be operationally, tactically, hardware authentic to a T, but how can that be authentic when it's not the whole story of war or combat?

Nina Huntemann said in an interview:

Well, the way that I think about current video games that are focused on militarism and warfare is, they’re sort of like Why We Fight films, except they’ve morphed into ‘how we fight’ video games, which takes away from a lot of the other ‘why’ questions, and all the moral questions that are connected to that.

If MoH is going after CoD, then it will be another gung-ho civilian-less shooting gallery where the player has carte blanche to kill faceless Others until the credits roll. If our only action is 'shoot', then the only decision is 'kill'.

This isn't to say I don't like straight-up military shooters—I do. But like Mao says, you can't say your game is going to be deeper if it fails to give the player broader and more meaningful tools than every other shooter out there.

I would love to be wrong, but I've no confidence that it will be this game.

I think if they were going after 'old' CoD, as in CoD1 which was quite nasty, I remember the Stalingrad missions, and didn't go too far into making it a hollywood style blockbuster keeping it down to earth, MOH would sit better with me. Unfortunately they seem to have the same marketing department as Bioware did for DA:O, and they're going after the new CoD games, with fast cuts, placing a trendy rock band tune in the trailer, lots of explosions, some live acting to show the US patriotism angle, and so on.

I think they're more interested in a sales race with CoD than anything else now. I expect there's a ton of pressure on DICE to get some positive previews for the multiplayer after the dismal beta, was anyone impressed by that?

I think deep down I'm waiting for a game to impress me as much as the first and second SOCOM games did on the PS2. They just did so much right with that: custom load outs, excellent sound sampling,motion capture, fire selector switches, team orders, creating cover by shooting out lights, completing missions undetected, gathering intel, capturing prisoners, etc. You could actually score more points just by getting in an out without killing anyone!

A man can dream can't he? O Modern Warfare, what hath thou wrought?

I love how they make it so that it looks playable.

More multiplayer footage. Similar to the beta in that it is a pretty narrow map, at least at this stage.

Fallen Angel

&

Edit: and multiplayer adjustments from the beta.

Ballotechnic wrote:

I think deep down I'm waiting for a game to impress me as much as the first and second SOCOM games did on the PS2. They just did so much right with that: custom load outs, excellent sound sampling,motion capture, fire selector switches, team orders, creating cover by shooting out lights, completing missions undetected, gathering intel, capturing prisoners, etc. You could actually score more points just by getting in an out without killing anyone!

A man can dream can't he? O Modern Warfare, what hath thou wrought?

I'm one of the biggest Socom fans on the site (Legion is the other) and have been waiting ages for a 3rd-person shooter on par with Socom but up to date with next-gen technology. I'd love a game 100% dedicated to special ops and Navy Seals with a focus on stealth, tactics, loadouts, etc. instead of the over-the-top, balls to the wall, nonsense that we get forcefed every holiday season.

EDIT: Speaking of Socom, here's a new in-game walkthrough or Socom 4.

I've even been thinking of picking up a PS2 to revist the first 3 games. If the PS3 were still backward compatible, it would be even more incentive. So much fun...

That video looks pretty good. I wish it was first person though and ADS.

I came across this great article in the NY Times (via Twitter) regarding realism in war themed video games, something we touched upon earlier in this thread. I found the article very interesting, especially the parts about the now defunct game Six Days in Fallujah. Enjoy.

Video Games That Bring Afghanistan Home - NYTimes.com

liquid wrote:

I love how they make it so that it looks playable.

Thats the way the beta played for me. My biggest issue was with hit boxes and the sight reticules not always lining up. Wasnt an all the time thing, but it was annoying when it did happen.

ranalin wrote:
liquid wrote:

I love how they make it so that it looks playable.

Thats the way the beta played for me. My biggest issue was with hit boxes and the sight reticules not always lining up. Wasnt an all the time thing, but it was annoying when it did happen.

Yeah, my play sessions looked pretty much like the videos they're showing too. I don't know what the heck all the "omg unplayable" stuff is about with this one.

My issues with the multiplayer wasn't that it was unplayable, but that it wasn't really fun, didn't know what it wanted to be (it was somewhere between CoD and BC2 and felt awkward), and the PC interface and controls were a mess. It even had a (non functional) screen to calibrate the game to the display area of your TV.

Have they shown much of the multiplayer since the beta ended?

Thin_J wrote:
ranalin wrote:
liquid wrote:

I love how they make it so that it looks playable.

Thats the way the beta played for me. My biggest issue was with hit boxes and the sight reticules not always lining up. Wasnt an all the time thing, but it was annoying when it did happen.

Yeah, my play sessions looked pretty much like the videos they're showing too. I don't know what the heck all the "omg unplayable" stuff is about with this one.

Did you play it on console? Nothing in that game worked on the PC for me. The game would crash randomly when getting kill streaks, it would crash just for the lolz, if you press the chat button you can't hide the chat window until the game ends, the "avatar" movement was bad, you could hardly strafe and of course no lean, the whole UI was just abysmal, there were bugs that prevented you from doing anything in the menu if you select certain options (don't remember the exact bug anymore).
Not to mention that you don't get a sniper (what they give you doesn't count, that's just a rifle with red-dot sights) until you're some huge level and leveling was super slow.
It took the worst parts from CoD and [b]BC2 and added a bunch of game breaking bugs. And they never fixed them either, not even one patch. All in all, there were only a few games where I played for more than 5 minutes without being kicked back to the desktop.

Like MW2, this looks like a game where I wouldn't mind paying a reduced sum for the singleplayer half of the game for a playthrough and leaving the multiplayer alone unless I'm convinced at a later date. As it stands it'll stay on the store shelf for me.