Posted By Micah C. about 2 years, 6 months ago
I’m not really the type of reviewer to have a look around at what other critics are saying about games I review unless it’s an online show (such as Zero Punctuation or The Angry Joe Show). However, I found myself in a different spot with Medal of Honor. For the first time in a while, I was genuinely curious as to what other members of the press thought. I was utterly shocked to see that people actually liked this piece of trash. In fact, some were giving it higher praise than other good games that have come out lately, like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Fallout: New Vegas. One particular “critic” who will remain nameless actually said the game felt fresh and exciting. Oh, so shooting brown people in the middle of the desert is new and exciting? Because, you know, Army of Two, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and other modern shooters certainly haven’t done that. Since I’m on the track of lying, Uncharted 2 pales in comparison to Greg Hastings Paintball 2, and I just made love to Gina Carano.
So, since I’m a critic with a level of credibility, I decided to take a look back at a game from 2009 that wasn’t terrible, but at the same time wasn’t game of the year material, and compare it to Medal of Honor to show how the two stack up. That particular game is Bionic Commando. No, not Bionic Commando: Rearmed, the 2008 remake. I’m talking about the profanity laced, M rated Bionic Commando. I know for a fact that many critics hated it, and rightly so for certain reasons. The storyline was idiotic, and the swing mechanic had a steep learning curve, but the rest of the game is worth comparing to Medal of Honor to see if these claims of newness and enjoyment have any validity. Let’s have a look at the five things that make Bionic Commando a better game than Medal of Honor.
Reason number one – Bionic Commando had better level design
For all intents and purposes, the single player portion of Medal of Honor could have been a rail shooter and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. What you essentially do is move from one spot to the next, lean out of cover, and pop someone in the head. Each level is a linear track with no room for exploration or ingenuity. Saying that this is a boring approach to a shooter is obvious. I spent so much time hiding behind a door frame that “Rabbit” probably should have proposed to one. However, in Bionic Commando, I’ve got a little more room to stretch my legs. Give me a sniper rifle, and a big level, and you can see me go to town. Though Bionic Commando was also a linear game, it still gave you enough breathing room to approach your objectives in any manner you could take with your current resources. Heck, even other shooters like Gears of War and Uncharted at least give you room to flank and such. Why couldn’t Medal of Honor? Well, could have, should have, would have isn’t enough. Bionic Commando had better level design.
Reason number two – Bionic Commando had much better visuals
Though I know it’s a little petty to pick on the visual side of things, I really don’t care. Were you given an option to stare at a photo of Eva Mendez or a Donkey for an hour, which would you pick? Whether people realize it or not, we enjoy being stimulated visually, and at the very least Bionic Commando realized that gamers don’t just want to see brown all day. Many of the levels were colored beautifully, the water effects were very good, and the place looked like people lived there once. Though I would agree with the argument that it isn’t easy to make a place like Afghanistan look visually arresting, there are ways around that. Heck, the mountain levels found a way around that. Though the visuals still looked dated, some of the mountain levels when you were fighting in the snow looked like they could have been fantastic if the development team had done more polishing work. However, potential is only as good as its execution. It’s why Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva are the two best fighters in the world, and guys like B.J. Penn are falling down the mountain. Either do everything you can to make your game look polished, or don’t come to work.
Reason number three – Bionic Commando had varied gameplay
The extent of Medal of Honor’s variation essentially is “go there, shoot something.” You might get to mark a target for someone else having fun, or you might get a five minute helicopter ride that you can’t pilot. Though I criticize Halo for many reasons, in Reach you at least got to pilot the ship! So, as I’ve said before, Medal of Honor isn’t offering you anything fresh, new, or fun. However, when I go over to Bionic Commando, GRIN is telling me, “Here’s a level. We want you to take your arm, gun, and go bananas from start to exit.” Oh, I went bananas. In one battle alone, I swung from a lamp post, landed on a guard’s head, shot his buddy in the head, punched a car into the air and kicked it toward his lover, and then grabbed the final soldier with my bionic arm and used him as a human dart for a Pepsi logo. Later on, I was swinging on a busted up rooftop, shooting down helicopters with a rocket launcher while narrowly dodging missiles coming at me, all while some downright epic music played. I don’t think that we need to discuss which game is more varied. Bionic Commando wins here.
Reason number four – Bionic Commando had an appropriate length
During a video game, the player should never, ever, ever finish a campaign and go “that’s it?” That’s the way it was with Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, and it’s the same thing with Medal of Honor. The game is only three hours long, and is actually worse than the game I mentioned beforehand. In Kane and Lynch 2, at least the characters have motivations. Anyway, there’s no excuse for a game being so short. I was given little to no time to know anything about the characters, motivations, or anything of the sort. Though some “special” people might say, “But these are our boys over in Afghanistan!” No, they’re not. They’re a bunch of pixels to me. Give me a reason to care. Bionic Commando, on the other hand, gives us the details and has a long enough campaign for everything to be realized. The entire story has an appropriate arc to it. A video game’s campaign should be like good sex. There should be foreplay, a climax, and then a resolute end that leaves everyone involved fulfilled. Medal of Honor’s campaign is like bad sex. It’s incredibly short, and it tries to apologize for being short and underwhelming by saying “My friend Multiplayer is waiting in the next room!” Unfortunately for you, multiplayer is a girl you’ve already had named Battlefield: Bad Company 2, but with Freddie Crueger’s head.
Reason number five – Bionic Commando was fun
As I said in my review of Medal of Honor, it commits the number one sin against the Ten Commandments of Video Game Design. It is not fun. It has some points that might resemble fun, but certain aspects of those situations bodyslam it down into a sea of boredom so hard that it creates tidal waves that are so big they reveal the hidden city of Ryleh. Now Cthulhu is pissed you woke him up early. Great job. The game has no redeeming qualities to the gameplay, and doesn’t do anything to set it apart from any other game within the genre. You can easily get a much better experience from far superior games like Call of Duty 4 or Battlefield: Bad Company. In Bionic Commando, you will get a much more fresh experience. It’s a lot of fun to swing from spot to spot, having to carefully pick the placement of your arm, judge angles and distance, and find many ways to dispatch your enemies. Should I want to drop a family sedan on a Robot’s head, I can do that. If I want to dropkick a helicopter, I can do that. If I want to climb to a high ledge to use a sniper rifle, I can do that. Are you seeing a pattern? Though not everything has to be a sandbox, gamers like to have options. It’s not fun to just go around and shoot the same foreign guys. Give me options so I can have fun.
Stuff like this is fun. Why is fun a foreign concept?
Micah’s Musings
You, the reader, may be asking yourself, “Why didn’t Micah pick a game like Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, or Planescape Torment to compare Medal of Honor to?” Well, the answer is pretty easy. It’s pretty obvious that the games in questions are far superior, and most critics would agree with me on the spot. However, that’s like pointing out that a Chicago style pizza that was made from scratch is better than a Jack’s frozen pizza. Comparing Medal of Honor to Bionic Commando, however, drives the point home much further. Sometimes, you don’t want to simply use a bullet to win. Every once in a while, you need to use a nuclear missile strike do drive the point home.
I could go out and say that game journalists are incompetent and such, but there’s a site already dedicated to that. Fact of the matter is that I can’t stand it when people try to say that something is new and exciting when it is neither the former nor the latter. Now, maybe the reviews that I read were in the minority, or maybe there was some other factor in the high scores, but the fact of the matter is that this game does less than nothing for gaming, gamers, or for EA. It’s not even a truly solid effort. Shooters set in the modern day can be lots of fun and enjoyable, but a lot of work would have been needed for Medal of Honor to be considered good. The fact that it is obviously inferior to a poorly written game with a steep learning curve like Bionic Commando is evidence enough. At least we can say that if you want a review you can count on, you can always come to me.
Your garbage game is Oscar Mike, douchebags.
-Micah C
Oh, so shooting brown people in the middle of the desert is new and exciting? Because, you know, Army of Two, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and other modern shooters certainly haven’t done that. No siree.
Does it enter the upper echelon of FPS games like System Shock 2 and Half-Life 2, or will it sink into the territory of Daikatana?
Angry Joe’s Epic Beard Reviews the Reboot of EA’s Medal of Honor Franchise. Is it really up to Tier 1 standards?
If you have been following Ice-T on twitter you’d know the man is serious about
Posted By Micah C. about 2 years, 7 months ago
Medal of Honor Review
For a long time, the Medal of Honor series was essentially responsible for making most gamers completely and totally sick of the Second World War. However, that does not mean that those games were bad by any stretch of the word. In fact, Medal of Honor: Frontline was one of the most fun and challenging shooters of the last generation. However, EA did realize how stale the franchise had become, and decided to reboot it by taking it into the modern day. So, what does the new Medal of Honor have to offer gamers? Does it enter the upper echelon of FPS games like System Shock 2 and Half-Life 2, or will it sink into the territory of Daikatana?
| PROS | Solid sound design, Campaign has some fun moments |
| CONS | Multiplayer is a watered down Bad Company Clone, graphics need to be tuned up, the story is horrible |
| WTF | THREE HOURS?! |
Beginning with Medal of Honor’s storyline is essentially beginning this review by throwing feces at the reader. Fact of the matter is that Medal of Honor falls into the exact same problem that every other shooter set in the modern day has. There is not a single relatable character in the entire game. Any character that you play as is nothing more than someone with a camera for a face. You never speak, you never have any emotion, and you essentially have no invested emotion in the world around you. Thus, you are nothing but a lens.
What drives the nail further in is the fact that Medal of Honor doesn’t even completely realize the sins that it’s committing. Essentially, this particular game pulls the exact same punches as every other modern shooter out there. You consistently switch between perspectives of nameless soldiers. There’s a moment where you’re in “last stand” and a squadmate is dragging you out while you fire away with a pistol. There’s a moment where you hold out for extraction while running low on ammo and enemies are closing in. Honestly, this game is the parallel of the Mime Pokemon. The only thing it knows how to do is mimic.
However, the worst insult of the storyline is the fact that the setting would have been ripe for solid storytelling. The losses and sacrifices made in Afghanistan are very much relevant to this day and age. It’s an area of the world with a long history of brutal war, and could have made for some great drama. However, you can’t have drama in a video game with no reason to care about the people involved in it. Aside from the main character, each member of the cast is interchangeable from one another. Every character is simply a soldier with a call sign, a beard, and only knows how to be gruff. It gets very boring, very fast.
Talk about overcompensating.
As for the presentation, it has its ups and downs. The visuals of the game really aren’t worth writing home about. Though the game looks a little bit dated, it’s not to the degree of something like Greg Hastings Paintball 2 or something along those lines. However, what does need to be mentioned here is the texture pop-in. Now, as we all know, the Unreal Engine 3 does have an inherent issue with this, but competent studios have been able to reduce it, figure a way around it, or eliminate it altogether. It seems that Danger Close studios simply does not belong in that number.
wow… I kinda had some high hopes for this one (as did everyone else Im sure)… I hear its still selling though. Not Black Ops numbers but still its selling…
I cant believe game companies can make half ass games like this and make you pay $60 for it…
Its robbery I tell you…. Very disappointed in this game….
MoH used to be really good, too bad that were passed by MW and Bad Company.
For $30 it’s a good game. The single player is just too short and doesn’t narrate itself well. At least with CoD it’s really exciting… even if short and unbelievable. The multi player is surprisingly good, better than SP (I thought it’d be the other way around). I just wish it had more guns. Amazing graphics on PC.
i still will buy this game it not all that bad i jsut wait till it 30$
if you guys pre-ordered medal of honor you get invite to beta multiplayer of Battlefield 3 which it comes out next year
i still enjoyed this game and still play it there are just less people since black ops came out
game looks so good the first time i saw it but know it does not look as good as it did during E3
I’m actually surprised, you gave this a lower score then Jim Sterling over at Destructoid. He had the same complaints pretty much as you. This makes me glad I passed this out. So far, love a lot of your reviews.
Good review. I had high hopes for Medal of Honor. Even though the game never really showed much originality, I thought it was going to be a solid mix between COD4 and Bad Company 2. The beta impressions I read were a bit discouraging, but I eventually managed to get into the Ps3 beta and I enjoyed it. Now that the game is out and I’ve read the reviews, I don’t want to get it anymore. It’s just way too standard to spend 60$ on, especially around this time with a far superior FPS experiance right around the corner.
i wish i just rented this game. it was great for about a day of online till every one figured out the camping spots for sniping and then you end up with about 5 guys in each spot spawn killing you. now saying that i am guilty of sitting in one spot on a map and racking in a 21 to 1 kill streak, just because no one new i was there.
I was just hoping for more from my 60 bucks.
Only spent under two hours on the SP game but tbh, I got this for some MP action and for that I’m not too dissapointed by it. It does suffer from spawn kill syndrome but theres always and element of that (doesnt excuse it however!) but its decent mindless fun before the juggernaught of Black Ops arrives.
I saw this coing, and that was maybe why i didnt care much for this game. The only medal of honor game ive ever played was rising sun. And that was so frieakin good. Damn!
i actually thought the multiplayer in this game is extremely fun, but yes, the single player is absolute shit. but thats not why i bought the game. i bought it for its awesome multiplayer 
I already own the original Bad Company, so I’ve been playing the multiplayer for a while now. 
Angry Joe’s Epic Beard Reviews the Reboot of EA’s Medal of Honor Franchise. Is it really up to Tier 1 standards?
Oh, so shooting brown people in the middle of the desert is new and exciting? Because, you know, Army of Two, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and other modern shooters certainly haven’t done that. No siree.
Music Mondays revisits the band that brought us tunes from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Bit.Trip Runner.
good for u buddy 
im actually going to try out bionic commando
Going against the grain I kind of liked kane and lynch number one. The characters were a bit darker and slightly amoral, and the storyline seemed like something quentin tarantino would write. Also the shooting mechanics were much more accurate to real life (you try hitting a target w/ pinpoint precision 300 yards out, no scope.).
I enjoyed Bionic Commando alot, I kinda don’t like Medal of Honor, eh.
3 Hours?! Thats it?
Very funny review and I loved reading it. Keep up the good work! Oh and I agree with completely with what you had to say. MoH is a mediocre game. Not bad, just incredibly boring and unimpressive in every aspect.
True, the game didn’t bring anything new to the genre. But do you see anyone saying that about Modern Warfare 2 or Halo? No because people were fans and posting 10′s before the games were even released. Call of Duty 4 was great and memorable because it displayed game qualities never seen before. Are you going to post an article for Black Ops saying, “nothing new”? I’m a big CoD fan myself, but I liked the Medal of Honor campaign more then MW2. But I enjoyed them both. Maybe you should take up cards. Play Go Fish or something that will match your level of review.
Congratulations on your relationship with Gina Carano! Kidding aside, I thought BC was a mediocre game, but the gameplay did have some great moments. I haven’t played the new MOH (I did really enjoy the PS1 originals though), but it sounds mediocre as well. Wouldn’t the comparison be more valid with another FPS though?
In reason four, “Freddie Crueger’s head” should be “Freddy Krueger’s head”.
Ok, there are numerous things wrong with this and before i start i would like to state that i have not played bionic commando, however, i am an avid gamer of MOH. i am not try to offend anyone i am just trying to bring some perspective. i would like to begin by saying that i do agree that the SIGNAL play option was extremely short. your article fails to mention that MOH had the close oversight of actual special/black ops personnel. this give the game a sense of reality not just some flashy graphics. Moh was a felt like actual combat, sure it did not allow you to check all the nooks, but it dose not allow you to sit back and snipe your way through the level. with MOH there were more tactics involved than just run through the level and blow it up or crush it or blow it apart. this review doesn’t go into the depth on the development of the games, what went into the making the design and who, if anyone, consulted on the game. this review also does not even mention the multiplayer side of MOH. it dose little more than state the obvious. any person can sit down play the signal player campaigns and make a judgment.
so i would like to offer a bit of advise for the next time. do some research outside of the game look at news reals, and other content offered on the game by the developer. it may give more insight into the actual game.
I agree with you but my only disagreement is that maybe you could have picked an FPS to compare MoH too. Otherwise I liked it.
Bionic Commando was an awesome game, but it tried really hard to look as unappealing as possible.
The story and setting were way too grim for the premise, the checkpoint system was horrendous and the demo was badly chosen.
Medal of Honor has much worse issues than BC, but it at least marketed itself properly.
Damn, Micah, you really hate Medal of Honor. I don’t blame you, just saying
You know me, Max. I have some of the meanest editorials in the business. Then again, it wouldn’t be me if it weren’t.
Well, you’re Marcus the Cynic for a reason. Speaking of which, do you know if those videos are being transferred here?