In short
Being from our part of the word, reviewing titles that have already scored poorly can be a disconcerting task. By now you’ve read all the Metacritic reviews and are probably thinking the game is atrocious. So I loathe the possibility of actually enjoying it – thinking someone might think that I was dropped on the head as a child; making my parents seem like they were carefree, irresponsible hippies – I was born in the seventies after all. Then if I hate the game, I fear of repeating more of the same.
Medal of Honor Warfighter is a tale of two sides for me – on the one hand, the campaign is generic, somewhat convoluted and could have been any other war shooter. On the other hand, I did enjoy the campaign despite the shortcomings, and I actually think the multiplayer is solid. The multiplayer portion also lacks overall polish and offers more of the same, but I was definitely taken by the solid offerings.
Developer: Danger Close
Publisher: EA
Distributor: EA South Africa
For fans of: Online-shooters
Reviewed on: Xbox 360
Also available on: Playstation 3, PC
If we had to give it a numerical score: 7.5/10
What we loved
- Multiplayer
- Built with Frostbite 2 engine
- Shooting mechanics
- Abundance of classes
- Abundance of weapons
Not so much
- Generic, forgettable campaign
- Feels a little underdeveloped
- Level-design in multiplayer is a bit claustrophobic
Singleplayer
I found the narrative, which takes us into a soldier’s war-tarnished psyche, quite intriguing. The story is driven by some great set-pieces, and you go through the motions from set-piece to set-piece. The campaign, like most of the war shooters out there, is very much on rails and so the motivation to strive forward depends on how much you enjoy that sort of thing. In all honesty, I found the narrative interesting enough, and while this could have been many shooters before it, the only proper criticism I have of the campaign is that it lacked overall refinement – there’s some visual glitches here and there, and some production issues.
Other than that, the mechanics are solid, there are tons of weapons to keep you interested and Warfighter even offers a few tricks of its own. The cover-system for example, while it’s nothing new, works wonderfully. You go into cover and can then hold a bumper-button and direction to peer around and over objects. This gave a nice stealthy twist to the game, which separate Warfighter a little from the series’ it will be compared to.
Then there’s the ‘breach’ option, totally pointless, but adds a little diversity nonetheless. When breaching doors for example, you engage the breach by hitting a face button and then a sub-menu pops up with a few choices to break down the door. At first you can only order a kicking breach, but as you progress you can unlock other ways – an axe being the most entertaining.
The rest of the formula that makes up Warfighter could, again, be the same formula used to make other shooters. What I don’t understand is why Warfighter is criticized for doing exactly what others do. Perhaps the day-one patch provided me with a better experience, but I cannot say I did not enjoy the campaign, even though it’s not the most refined of campaigns. With that said, I would still recommend Warfighter more for its online offerings.
Multiplayer
Like the campaign, the multiplayer portion of Warfighter lends from other shooters. The mechanics will be familiar to Battlefield players, which is a good thing. The game modes and progression systems are re-skinned version of those from Battlefield, and there are a few other elements that were borrowed from other shooters. Warfighter’s only real distinction is the ‘class systems’ or Nations that players can choose from. There’s twelve nation’s special-forces which you can choose from, each with their own set of variables – some will be more accurate from long ranges for example, or will have a higher stealth levels. The various forces are equipped with different weapons and while we have seen all this before, there is more to choose from here.
The multiplayer modes are renamed versions of modes we’ve seen – from a ‘capture a flag’ type mode, to an ‘arm and disarm bombs’ mode, ‘capture areas’ mode and the ‘team deathmatch’ mode. There are no real surprises here, but I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing. I remember the last Halo for example, there were so many modes – a “capture this person while wearing a pink shirt” and a whole lot more, that in the end would be fun for a night, and then it’s back to what we know. There are only really a few types of modes on the multiplayer front that actually work with shooters, so I’m not going to be punitive to a game that offers exactly that.
The online code works, it has a little of its own flavour and the modes are entertaining. The overall quality is a little unrefined though and my biggest criticism of the online design is the level-design. Players can’t go anywhere and everywhere on the maps, making the level-design feel cramped. For example, if there are some war-ravished stairs hanging off a building and they were not intended for you to climb – you can’t just jump on to the remaining stairs and climb up, even when it looks like it would be manageable. So finding where you can and can’t go is a little frustrating until you learn.
Warfighter’s biggest Achilles heel though is the fact that there are some major online-shooters just on the horizon that are traditionally refined, posing an imminent threat to Warfighter’s lasting appeal.
Sound and Visuals
Medal of Honor: Warfighter was built with the Frostbite 2 engine, so you know the overall production quality is going to be decent. The multiplayer levels feel underdeveloped – could have used more code and texture, but still of an apt quality. The singleplayer world is impressive for the most part, and the cinematic sequences are actually pretty stunning. There are some frame-rate issues though, and a few visual shortfalls here and there.
The sound quality is absolutely superb, crafted with great care, and re-create such a brilliant ‘war’ atmosphere. There’s plenty special effects with the camera work and audio, intensifying the experince. Warfighter really gives you a sense of the realities of war, depicted well with the audio and visual effects.
Despite Warfighter being built with the Frostbite 2 engine, it just looks less impressive than the sibling its shares technology with. And while for the most part everything looks pretty impressive, there are areas that feel a little underdeveloped.
Closing Comments
In the end I will definitely conceit that the campaign did feel somewhat generic and a little unrefined, but I did enjoy though. I find most war shooters’ campaigns to be more of the same, so it would probably be a little hypocritical of me to single out this one alone. While the production quality was noticeably a little rough around the edges for me, the solid mechanics were enough for me to move past the flaws. The multiplayer is definitely where I found the most joy, and will continue to do so, but I do hope that Danger Close manage to patch it up a little.
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