3.5 Stars: Good, but needs some kick
If you click back and re-read my Red Faction II review, you might notice a section
that loosely states the following: "A bad game is one where you get thrown into chaos right at the beginning."
While that may hold true for some games, let it be known that this style is what makes Medal of Honor stand out from the rest
of the competition.
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun isn't exactly the newest game I've checked out, but
the impressions it made are still worth the publicity (or lack thereof, considering my site's traffic lately). First,
the positives. When you turn on the game for the first time, instead of being bombarded by the game designer logos,
you are treated to the soft guitar sounds emanating over a clock radio. The screen is still black at this point, however
as the radio gets louder, the screen slowly opens horizontally as if you were opening your eyes from a deep sleep.
In the first person perpective you remain until a thundering explosion wakes you up completely. You sit up. Instead
of seeing your bedroom, you see the cold steel insides of a battleship, and terrified sailors leaping out of bed. Welcome
to Pearl Harbor.
From that moment on, the level begins with you trying to crawl your way out of a damaged, broken battleship
only to emerge topside with a panoramic view of hundreds of Japanese fighters bombing everything in sight. Don't stand
around too long though; you don't want to be a sitting duck. Grab a turret gun and start popping those Japs out of the
sky. This is by far one of the coolest moments of the game, because the sheer chaos as well as the amazing sound effects
help you get lost in the action. Later on in the game while making a midnight run on Iwo Jima, a cool part that rivals
the first level's is when you are crawling through the dark jungle, vision impaired by branchs and plants, when all of a sudden
a Japanese soldier will jump out of a foxhole screaming at you. Now THAT'S scary.
While there are numerous positives about this game, it's sad to say that EA has yet to fix what is lacking
from their entire FPS franchise: gore. While this game isn't made worse by the lack of it, nevertheless that is
what seperates it from the rest of the genre. It's a little too make-beleive to just shoot a guy on the screen, and
have him fall and disappear. No game. Also, EA has stubbornly refused to include an interactive environment once
again. By this, I mean that your allies are invincible unless they are staged to die at that particular moment.
I mean it, just try shooting them and they fall and get back up repeatedly. Also, try shooting a wall or the ground;
nope, no bullet holes or pock marks, just nothing at all. C'mon EA, get with the program! I hope they didn't try
to use the "it would mess up the graphics" ploy, because honestly this game would have been made SO MUCH BETTER had they done
that in the first place. For anybody who has ever played EA's Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, I'm sure you know exactly
what I'm talking about.
Nevertheless, what Medal of Honor: Rising Sun lacks in interactivity, it makes up for in realism of
the actual historical events. The Japanese were a lot sneakier than the Germans were, and EA thankfully incorporated
that into this game flawlessly. The music also represents the levels a LOT better, instead of that damn John Williams
orchestral music we've all grown used to. If you're looking for a good WWII game since you don't have a computer which
will let you play Call of Duty (which is the best game of that type I've ever seen), then this latest Medal of Honor game
should fit the bill.
