MEDAL OF HONOR: ALLIED ASSAULT

MEDAL OF HONOR: ALLIED ASSAULT
Posted:2006-07-24 By Master Chief Number of View:6228
MEDAL OF HONOR: ALLIED ASSAULT By :Master Chief Posted:2006-07-24 xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Publisher: EA Games Developer: 2015 Genre: Action / FPS ESRB: Teen System Requirements  Minimum: PII 450, 128MB RAM, Win9x/2K/ME/XP, 3D Graphics Accel. Recommended: PIII 700 | Print   Published: March 19, 2002 In the latter part of 2001, a few key top-notch first-person shooters were released, including Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Both received rave reviews. Now Electronic Arts and 2015 have come to the party, following a great deal of hype and eager anticipation, issuing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. In many ways Medal of Honor represents the crest of a wave of interest in the Second World War, and it is no coincidence that the same company responsible for the movie Saving Private Ryan -- Steven Spielberg\'s Dreamworks Interactive -- originally conceived this PC title. The movie and the computer game have many highly similar scenarios, including a detailed replication of the traumatic Omaha Beach invasion. So with this backdrop, is this the cream of the first-person shooter crop?   In the context of European World War II combat, you play the role of Lieutenant Mike Powell, an experienced American Army Ranger working for the Office of Strategic Services. Because you find out little background information about Powell and he never says a word, there is little reason for players to identify in any meaningful way with this character aside from admiration for his physical prowess. As you progress through the many scenarios taking place between 1942 and 1945, you earn a variety of campaign and career medals; hence, the title of the game, named for the highest award bestowed by the United States on members of its armed forces.   The over 30 levels composing the six missions are all sizable and spread out in diverse locales such as France, Germany, Norway, and even Algeria. There is a somewhat discernible connection among the missions despite the variety of tasks to be accomplished. You undertake infiltration, sabotage, search-and-rescue, seek-and-destroy, and even secretive theft operations. Without question, the most impressive mission is the stunning re-creation of the famous landing on Omaha Beach, although the scenario involving a submarine is a close second. In some you have to move fast and avoid foes while in others you have to actually obliterate them. Even without much variety in the kinds of enemies you encounter, the overall level design is high quality.   While stealth often appears, its implementation is problematic. Even when you are hiding behind foliage or making virtually no sound at all, your adversaries have the uncanny knack of spotting you right away. Moreover, they have a decided advantage in this regard, as they can lie down prone and shoot around corners to hide their position, while you have no such option. Nonetheless, attempting to avoid detection by search lights and watchtowers can be truly enjoyable, and the opportunity to use stealth adds depth to the gameplay.     Although you operate solo in many of the single-player missions, the squad-based action is particularly intriguing. Despite the limits on artificial intelligence to be discussed later, your comrades frequently protect you when you are under heavy attack. There are even times when you have to carry out orders issued by your fellow soldiers. The biggest problem is that you have no ability to influence the movement of these allies, as you would in many real-time strategy offerings, and as a result you end up having to react to their movements more than you should have to. This ends up reducing your own ability to come up with innovative tactical approaches to the combat. Medal of Honor sports several historically accurate weapons. The entire arsenal replicates actual American and German World War II munitions, with the frequent need to reload, which was common to arms of that day. The specific Allied weapons include a Colt .45, an OSS Hi-Standard Silenced pistol, an M1 Garand rifle, a Springfield \'03 Sniper rifle (with no adjustable zoom), a Thompson submachine gun, a Browning Automatic rifle, a Mark II Frag grenade, a bazooka, a Winchester shotgun, and a .30 caliber mounted machine gun. The Germans have a Walther P38 semi-automatic pistol, a Mauser KAR 98K repeating rifle, an MP40 submachine gun, an STG44 Sturmgewehr rifle, an MG42 mounted machine gun, a Stielhandgrenate grenade, and the rocket-powered Panzerschrek. Each armament serves a different purpose on the battlefield. While you get to carry more weapons into battle than is realistically possible, most missions do not necessitate your picking up more than a handful of them. The limited yet completely authentic selection of convincing period weaponry serves this title well.   It is evident from the outset that, although Medal of Honor has a ton of violence, there is no bloodshed whatsoever. With my well-known position of being against non-adjustable gore in games, it might be assumed that this decision pleases me; instead, I find it very odd, presenting the artificial image of sanitized killing during wartime. While this design decision has maintained the ESRB rating at "Teen" rather than "Mature," the classification makes little sense in the context of the constant killing of humans present throughout the gameplay. The death animations alone are enough to give sensitive viewers nightmares.   The first and most lasting impression I get when playing Medal of Honor is that I am taking part in an incredibly immersive interactive movie. Scripting is evident everywhere, far more than I am used to in the first-person shooter genre, and if you replay scenarios you will quickly see that many events happen no matter what you do, even if it seems the first time through as if these were directly triggered by your actions. This design decision can in many ways enhance your sense of cinematic involvement, but it does have some downsides. For example, if one of your comrades is destined to be shot and killed, there is nothing you can do to stop it; and if one is destined to survive a skirmish, you can leave him totally exposed to heavy enemy fire and he will survive unscathed. In addition, because the responsiveness to your actions is a bit of an illusion, your fellow soldiers often block you inadvertently from getting a clear shot at the enemy. Nonetheless, the choreography is nothing short of stunning.   Graphics: The visuals in Medal of Honor are really special. Every scenario is beautifully and professionally set up and executed. The background scenery authentically looks like the war torn European front during World War II, and you feel as if you are truly there. The physical environments are very detailed and full of interesting items, with only the ground textures being a bit disappointing. The character animation is exceptionally believable. The numerous special visual effects include bugs flying around searchlights and sparks from these lights when they are shot up; dust flying when you hit specified targets; tree branches that move; thunder and lightning storms; and smoke trails from certain weapons. Medal of Honor demands a fast machine with a lot of RAM, as increasing the graphics settings can lead to choppiness on systems just meeting the minimum system requirements. While the implementation of the Quake III engine is extremely competent, I find the visuals in Return to Castle Wolfenstein to be more spectacular.     Interface: The controls in Medal of Honor are highly intuitive, using the standard mouse-keyboard combination common to most first-person shooters. You may reconfigure them as you see fit if you do not like the default settings. The main menu screen is highly stylized, so much so that it is not that easy at first to identify all the selection options. A fine save system is incorporated also. The gameplay screen is very easy to interpret, with a very useful compass to keep you going in the right direction as well as the opportunity to look at the objectives list for the current assignment whenever you need to.     Gameplay: The gameplay in Medal of Honor is frenetic, immersive, and at times exhilarating. The designers are absolutely successful in totally absorbing you in the action behind enemy lines. Rather than just being a run-and-gun blastfest, you need to develop tactical approaches to secure cover when dealing with many situations when you are pinned down by hidden snipers; running out in the open and just hoping to outrun bullets makes little sense. Because when you get shot, you lose control for a short span of time, you become highly vulnerable to attack during these times, so you have to find ways to recover rather quickly. When you finally finish the single-player campaign, the ending is unfortunately not satisfying.   The realism choices are a bit inconsistent: While the settings, weapons, and even missions are highly authentic, there are key elements of artificiality. For example, you can take an incredible number of hits from bullets without dying and find an instant cure for your wounds just by coming across a medical pack. On top of this, Medal of Honor frequently feels like a rail game, with highly linear action -- requiring tasks to be completed in a fixed predetermined sequence -- and an extremely restrictive inability to deviate from the designated path.     Multiplayer: If the heavy scripting in Medal of Honor bothers you, you should turn to the multiplayer action. While this component offers nothing new, it is quite well done. The multiplayer modes include deathmatch (both individual and team) and objective-oriented gameplay. The settings for the solo missions form the basis of the multiplayer environments. The most exciting option is when you are working with a team to undertake a task. The online action is generally fluid with a decent frame rate and not too severe lag problems. You may enjoy multiplayer action over both a LAN and the Internet through GameSpy Arcade, but there is no in-game browser for looking up available competition, forcing you to leave the game to do so. (This has been resolved since release through a patch).     Sound FX: The sound effects in Medal of Honor match the quality of the visuals. Most important, unlike Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the German soldiers actually speak German, as it should be. The vocal effects in general are convincingly delivered and convey a proper sense of the varying distances between Powell and those who are speaking. The noise of the weapons as they eject projectiles is both authentic and distinctive, as is the sound of the bullets when they hit different surfaces. Explosions and ambient environmental sounds are also right on the mark.     Musical Score: Just as the visuals in Medal of Honor have a movie-like cinematic scope, so does the musical score. The rich, epic, orchestral soundtrack is outstanding, precisely setting the mood and dramatically enhancing the gameplay. Rather than blaring at you all the time, the music is more subtle and occurs just when a scenario needs it the most. The audio quality is top-notch throughout.     Intelligence & Difficulty: There are three levels of difficulty -- easy, medium, and hard -- reflecting the relative availability of health packs and enemy soldiers. The overall challenge is not insuperable, and the difficulty settings will allow players of all levels of ability to experience a measure of success.   Despite the responsiveness of allies and enemies to their surroundings, such as running for cover when appropriate, the artificial intelligence of the computer-controlled enemies is not all that it could be. Your adversaries, particularly unseen snipers, shoot much too frequenly with truly superhuman accuracy -- which is hard to accept given the lighting and distance from the player. Furthermore, on occasion you can shoot at foes repeatedly and have them remain rigid and unaware because their response has not yet been triggered. Finally, enemy troops do not coordinate their attack tactics very proficiently. The designers of this title seem to have had more difficulty determining the sensitivity of its artificial intelligence than the balance in its other facets.     Overall: If you want to feel as if you were actually fighting during World War II in a totally engrossing interactive experience, you cannot do better than playing Medal of Honor. While some might gripe about the omnipresent scripting, tight linearity of the gameplay, inconsistent realism, or the less than stellar artificial intelligence, these deficiencies do not ruin the overwhelming emotional impact of this title. Although no individual element is truly novel, the composite presented offers a completly fresh experience. Every scene literally drips with well-crafted atmosphere, and many are so memorable they will stay with you for days after you finish. In the end, this release deserves a medal of honor for heroic effort. xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source we would be happy to answer for your question . if you have suggestion or comment regarding this review our support would be glad to help just join our forum and ask u will get the best answer to discuss check our forum section :-) RATE THIS REVIEW 1 2 3 4 5    / 5   View Stat

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