Medal Of Honor Multiplayer Beta Impressions

War….what’s it good for? Well for us XBOX LIVE warriors we are in no short supply of great war themed FPS. What is Dice’s Medal Of Honor going to bring to the battle? Well, at the very minimum it is a fresh new way to bust a cap in your online buddies’ arses. But I also think this game adds a few more strategy elements than most FPS we have played have recently.

Overview

In the beta, we had 3 classes to chose from: Rifleman, Spec Ops, and Sniper. Each class has their respective loadouts. Riflemen start with an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, Spec Ops start with a more compact type rifles and submachine guns. Their secondary was a anti tank/armor launchers. Snipers start with a single shot rifle and a red dot site! But you unlock more rifles and actual scopes later. Snipers also have C4 for a secondary. I think all classes had their respective sidearm, 1 frag, and 1 smoke. As you played your respective class you progressed levels where you unlocked more weapons, scopes, ammo types. You received your leveling points from kills and match wins.

We had 2 maps, one for each game type. Helmand Valley for Mission and Kabul City for Team Assault. A mission game was an attack and defend a base type. If the attackers win all the bases it’s GAME OVER. If the defenders can hold out for the time limit, they win. Once you lose a base as a defender you can not win it back.

Team Assault is your team deathmatch game type in MoH. The only objective is to eliminate the opposing forces. It has a score limit and a time limit that we are familiar with from past FPS.

Weapons

All the weapons felt good and seemed to magnify that classes role in the overall mission. Not all the mix and match we have in other games. Your rifleman can take out guys from greater distance but your Spec Op seemed better suited for the close in combat, as it should be. I still got kills across the map with a Spec Op, but I was better suited to get up close and personal. Sniping is not my thing but I gave it a whirl. I was not very good at it. But there were some good snipers in the beta. Both maps actually had great vantage points for snipers to cover choke points on both sides of the maps.

Impressions

For me it seems like you die really fast. I just don’t think you can take as many hits in MoH as opposed to MW2. My type of play is always geared toward rushing. And I found I had to dial it back some here. On the flip side I had a few instances where I thought I was getting good hits on a player only for him to turn around and bust me in the mouth for the kill. In MW2 I’m one of those guys you see and take a few shots at hitting me in the back, and I just try to run away for cover since I have no Idea where you were shooting from. In this game it was harder to do. It happens, but most times for me if I got hit, I was not getting away.

The game looked great, and from the videos on their main site, it will look even better on final release. For beta, it seems pretty good in the graphics department with a few minor hitches in animation here and there.

Overall it was kind of like they mixed Bad company with MW in a blender and poured out a MoH milkshake. And I think I like that flavor. It has some strategy in there that makes the game a little more interesting. You actually can see the difference when your team uses their classes’ strengths to attack/defend an objective. And that small strategy element made it a little more fun for me. Overall I think it will be a good game and a nice break for those guys who have not played anything but MW2 since it’s release. And with the final product, you may find you like it better. We will see October 12.