Medal of Honor: Warfighter Review – ZGR, 6.2 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

Medal of Honor: Warfighter is the story of a gunshooter in the fightingplace. He has wifelady and daughterchild, but is torn between his familylove and the need to bulletkill badguys. The tale of this soldierman is a tragic one, not because of all the saddeath and bombsplosions, but because there are just too many doorkicks. Good God, the doorkicks.

By now we are all familiar with the yearly parade of gritty, brown, realistic shooters. It’s a fact of the industry, but one that seems to have the sales numbers to support a few key titles. Personally, I try not to judge a book by its cover. The campaign for Battlefield 3 may have been underwhelming, but the multiplayer was a beautiful ballet of chaos on a high-end PC. Likewise, for every disappointing Call of Duty we were gifted a Black Ops, which took risks in storytelling and setting. I approached Warfigher with this mindset, resolving to look beyond the corny name and critique the title on its own merits. I think my introductory paragraph should give you a general understanding of how that turned out.

The newest Medal of Honor lives up to its moniker. It delivers a war and some fighters, but little else of note. I actually considered populating this review entirely with screenshots from other modern military shooters just to see if anyone noticed, but ultimately decided against it–Warfighter is unremarkable, but not truly worthy of that level of mockery.

It’s not as though the game attempts nothing new. The single-player campaign is interspersed with cutscenes involving the main character, Preacher, and his family, as they deal with the difficulties of his military service. This is actually a solid idea. Spec Ops: The Line recently set itself apart by diving into the emotional toll of war, and was all the better for it. Warfighter‘s problem doesn’t lie with that concept, but with the execution. The game never gives you a reason to care about Preacher or his “uncanny valley” family, besides the fact that the disintegration of a relationship is inherently sad. That’s to say nothing of the story’s assertion that its women are always in the wrong–Preacher’s wife just can’t understand how much America needs him, while another soldier casually degrades an ex-wife. The machismo is expected, but not particularly enlightening.

From a gameplay perspective, Warfighter is predictable. The added ability to peek out from cover provides a small tweak to your standard FPS experience, but beyond that the short, linear campaign is boilerplate. The few exceptions to the shooting gallery are scripted sniper sequences and car chases. The former exposes the game’s uneven approach to “realism,” while the latter is an interesting diversion developed by an entirely different studio.

But by far the strangest thing about the whole experience is the game’s ludicrous fascination with doors. Breaching doorways is a necessary military tactic and a time-honored tradition in recent FPS’s, but the frequency with which you do so in Warfighter borders on parody. Just like in Call of Duty, kicking in a door slows down time in order to allow for you to clear a room (Realism!), but Medal of Honor takes it one step further. There is an entire progression of door breaching unlocks, which you earn by scoring headshots on enemies during a breach. Adding to the ridiculousness, every new upgrade seems to slow down the process, making the whole thing more resemble a Monty Python sketch than Black Hawk Down.

The Ministry of Silly Door Kicks is probably the most egregiously misconceived aspect of the title, but it’s far from the only objective flaw. The Frostbite 2 Engine is an absolute behemoth, but it is clear that the game needed more time in the oven. Textures, frame-rate consistency, and load times are all unacceptable, even with the enormous Day 1 patch. I also managed to find some hilarious glitches, including one which found my character trapped in an inescapable land of floating debris. My attempts to reproduce and record the bug are probably the most fun I had with the single-player.

Of course, the multiplayer is where this genre lives or dies, and I can say that Warfighter makes a solid attempt. To be fair though, I actually enjoyed the online component of the 2010 reboot, which may put me in the minority. The key difference here is the addition of the “Fire Team” mechanic, which pairs you with another player in addition to your larger overall squad. The result is something akin to thatgamecompany’s Journey: There is an inexplicable joy in teaming up with a stranger. The rest of the multiplayer offering is stereotypical, right down to the cluttered menus. While the MP might have been Warfighter‘s saving grace during another release period, Halo 4 and Black Ops II‘s impending launches are already sounding the death knell for the community.

Although Medal of Honor: Warfighter tries an interesting narrative approach, it is clear that that the series is the off-year Battlefield. Just as the mediocre World at War buffered the release of the superior Modern Warfare 2, Warfighter is a title that was sent out to die. On the bright side, Limited Editions come with a code for the Battlefield 4 beta. Maybe the game will live on in our memories the same way we look back on Zone of the Enders and its infamous Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. I always thought Jehuty should have kicked more doors.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes and played to completion in about 5 hours, with an additional 5 hours spent with the multiplayer modes. The title was played on PS3, but is also available for Xbox 360 and PC.

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