Monday, August 2, 2010
Next review
....Will be Starcraft 2!. Since I never got around to playing too much of the first one, campaign wise (loved mp matches, but wasn't very good either), my review will be done as one fairly new to the series, which may be rather interesting.
Medal of Honour beta impressions
Medal of Honour Multiplayer Beta Review (PC)
Medal of Honour is back, after a rather long hiatus. Slated for a 14-17th October 2010 release, this newest addition to the series is the first to feature a modern setting, in the Middle East.
What’s most interesting about this newest title however, is the fact that the single player and multiplayer portions are separate and different. Different as in, two game engines, and two developers, one for each section. Yes, you read correctly, there’s a different game engine and developer for single player and multiplayer. EA is working on the single player using a heavily modified Unreal 3 engine, while DICE is working on the multiplayer using the Frostbite engine. Yes, this is the same DICE that created Battlefield: Bad Company 2 using the Frostbite engine.
Will any of this actually matter? Hopefully not. Hopefully both developers bring a great experience to the table due to the more focused objectives.
EA released a closed multiplayer beta on June 21st 2010 on PC and PS3. The 360 version is still delayed, unfortunately. For this review, the PC version will be the platform evaluated, as I don’t currently own a PS3.
First off, some basic information about the beta. It IS a beta. It IS buggy, and glitchy. That’s a given since it’s still in a fairly early phase of testing.
So far, from what I’ve seen, it is a bit of a console port. It could change, but it’s unlikely. The good news, if you can call it that is that the controls feel far more responsive than Bad Company 2 did on PC. So while it feels like a port, it’s not as much as BC2 was.
The default controls aren’t too bad, and if you’re used to BC2, then MoH will be easy to pick up. The controls are a little bugged though, unfortunately. To get sprint and crouch to work, you will need to remap them, same key is fine. This only needs to be done once. Crouch may also bug out during a game, which is annoying, but jumping fixes it. Toggle crouch also does not work, which is a shame and annoyance, as constantly holding down left control hurts the pinky finger. The look sensitivity for controller support is broken, so a slight nudge will send you spinning, and no amount of tinkering in-game can fix it.
The server browser, unfortunately, is also broken, but matchmaking works. While in-game, the score list doesn’t show latency/ping, so if you’re using matchmaking, you could get lumped with a very high ping server, and not know. Having said that though, there doesn’t seem to be any latency issues while playing, though I am not sure if their networking algorithm is very good, or if the server I connect to is local.
The beta includes two game types, combat mission, or team assault, which is just another way of saying team deathmatch. Combat mission however, is more or less MoH’s version of the rush game type from BC2. It works like this; there are two teams, the US and the Taliban. The USA is the attacking team, while the Taliban defends. There are a few (5 in the map available in the beta) objectives which the US must attack, or destroy, with the Taliban defending them.
The map itself is fairly big, but only specific parts are open at any one time, depending on the current objective stage, just like how the map expands when it’s time to move up in BC2. There are a lot of places to take cover behind. Aside from the large amount of rocks, there are wrecks (cars and tanks/APCs alike), small buildings and walls.
Cover is extremely important, as a few shots will drop you dead. Seems like DICE have lowered the amount of damage needed to kill, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The only problem I see arising out of this is that the amount of campers, especially ones with snipers will rise, as seen in many a game of Modern Warfare/2. Though this is of little problem to objective oriented game types such as combat mission.
There are also killstreak rewards, though nowhere near as game breaking as the ones found in MW2, or even CoD4 for that matter. At each killstreak kill, you get a choice of a either an offensive killstreak, or a defensive one, for the lack of a better word. For example, at three kills, you get the choice of either a mortar strike, or a UAV recon type reward. At 5 kills, it’s a rocket strike or an ammo refill. You hit one button on your keyboard for one, and another button for another. As of yet, it hasn’t been revealed if you can change what killstreaks you get at what levels or such, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be possible.
There are three classes regardless of team; Assault, Special-Ops and Recon. Assault’s primary weapons are assault rifles and light machine guns with their special weapon being the “tube” grenade launcher. Special Ops get sub-machine gun type weapons and shotguns as primary. How the M4 is classified as an SMG, I have no idea. Their secondary is an RPG/M72 LAW. Recon, taken straight from BC2, is the sniper class. They use semi-auto or bolt-action sniper rifles. Secondary weapons are explosives such as IEDs and C4. Every single class has a backup pistol, model depending on the team.
MoH also does have a levelling system, which is rather similar to that class ranking system of BC2’s. From what I could tell, you accumulated individual points for each class that you play as. Those points will level that class and that class only. Once you change class, you will earn points for that class. I could not see any other ways to level/rank up, though the possibility most definitely is there. When you rank up, you unlock a variety of things, such as extra magazines, different scopes, different weapons and such.
Obviously, each side have different weapons. So if you unlock say, the second tier gun for recon, then you get that gun for both sides, even though they’re different. The guns sound rather “meaty”, rather than the rather slightly loud “put put” noises from the guns in BC2. The guns are pretty satisfying to use, albeit having close to no recoil, which some may say seems to make the game rather easy, or lame, paired with the low number of hits required for a kill.
For such an early beta, MoH, while at times can be seemingly as bland, and uninteresting as being just another “CoD”, does have points where it shines. The combat mission game type, balanced killstreaks (looking at you CoD), and the weapon sounds, and of course, the Medal of Honour name, make this game “different”. And obviously, the aforementioned bugs do need to be fixed before release. EA just might have the winning formula to snatch away those CoD players, on console at least, once they fix those bugs. Definitely, worth a try if you can get your hands on it, and if you’re into something different, but not wanting to stray too far away from CoD.
Medal of Honour is back, after a rather long hiatus. Slated for a 14-17th October 2010 release, this newest addition to the series is the first to feature a modern setting, in the Middle East.
What’s most interesting about this newest title however, is the fact that the single player and multiplayer portions are separate and different. Different as in, two game engines, and two developers, one for each section. Yes, you read correctly, there’s a different game engine and developer for single player and multiplayer. EA is working on the single player using a heavily modified Unreal 3 engine, while DICE is working on the multiplayer using the Frostbite engine. Yes, this is the same DICE that created Battlefield: Bad Company 2 using the Frostbite engine.
Will any of this actually matter? Hopefully not. Hopefully both developers bring a great experience to the table due to the more focused objectives.
EA released a closed multiplayer beta on June 21st 2010 on PC and PS3. The 360 version is still delayed, unfortunately. For this review, the PC version will be the platform evaluated, as I don’t currently own a PS3.
First off, some basic information about the beta. It IS a beta. It IS buggy, and glitchy. That’s a given since it’s still in a fairly early phase of testing.
So far, from what I’ve seen, it is a bit of a console port. It could change, but it’s unlikely. The good news, if you can call it that is that the controls feel far more responsive than Bad Company 2 did on PC. So while it feels like a port, it’s not as much as BC2 was.
The default controls aren’t too bad, and if you’re used to BC2, then MoH will be easy to pick up. The controls are a little bugged though, unfortunately. To get sprint and crouch to work, you will need to remap them, same key is fine. This only needs to be done once. Crouch may also bug out during a game, which is annoying, but jumping fixes it. Toggle crouch also does not work, which is a shame and annoyance, as constantly holding down left control hurts the pinky finger. The look sensitivity for controller support is broken, so a slight nudge will send you spinning, and no amount of tinkering in-game can fix it.
The server browser, unfortunately, is also broken, but matchmaking works. While in-game, the score list doesn’t show latency/ping, so if you’re using matchmaking, you could get lumped with a very high ping server, and not know. Having said that though, there doesn’t seem to be any latency issues while playing, though I am not sure if their networking algorithm is very good, or if the server I connect to is local.
The beta includes two game types, combat mission, or team assault, which is just another way of saying team deathmatch. Combat mission however, is more or less MoH’s version of the rush game type from BC2. It works like this; there are two teams, the US and the Taliban. The USA is the attacking team, while the Taliban defends. There are a few (5 in the map available in the beta) objectives which the US must attack, or destroy, with the Taliban defending them.
The map itself is fairly big, but only specific parts are open at any one time, depending on the current objective stage, just like how the map expands when it’s time to move up in BC2. There are a lot of places to take cover behind. Aside from the large amount of rocks, there are wrecks (cars and tanks/APCs alike), small buildings and walls.
Cover is extremely important, as a few shots will drop you dead. Seems like DICE have lowered the amount of damage needed to kill, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The only problem I see arising out of this is that the amount of campers, especially ones with snipers will rise, as seen in many a game of Modern Warfare/2. Though this is of little problem to objective oriented game types such as combat mission.
There are also killstreak rewards, though nowhere near as game breaking as the ones found in MW2, or even CoD4 for that matter. At each killstreak kill, you get a choice of a either an offensive killstreak, or a defensive one, for the lack of a better word. For example, at three kills, you get the choice of either a mortar strike, or a UAV recon type reward. At 5 kills, it’s a rocket strike or an ammo refill. You hit one button on your keyboard for one, and another button for another. As of yet, it hasn’t been revealed if you can change what killstreaks you get at what levels or such, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be possible.
There are three classes regardless of team; Assault, Special-Ops and Recon. Assault’s primary weapons are assault rifles and light machine guns with their special weapon being the “tube” grenade launcher. Special Ops get sub-machine gun type weapons and shotguns as primary. How the M4 is classified as an SMG, I have no idea. Their secondary is an RPG/M72 LAW. Recon, taken straight from BC2, is the sniper class. They use semi-auto or bolt-action sniper rifles. Secondary weapons are explosives such as IEDs and C4. Every single class has a backup pistol, model depending on the team.
MoH also does have a levelling system, which is rather similar to that class ranking system of BC2’s. From what I could tell, you accumulated individual points for each class that you play as. Those points will level that class and that class only. Once you change class, you will earn points for that class. I could not see any other ways to level/rank up, though the possibility most definitely is there. When you rank up, you unlock a variety of things, such as extra magazines, different scopes, different weapons and such.
Obviously, each side have different weapons. So if you unlock say, the second tier gun for recon, then you get that gun for both sides, even though they’re different. The guns sound rather “meaty”, rather than the rather slightly loud “put put” noises from the guns in BC2. The guns are pretty satisfying to use, albeit having close to no recoil, which some may say seems to make the game rather easy, or lame, paired with the low number of hits required for a kill.
For such an early beta, MoH, while at times can be seemingly as bland, and uninteresting as being just another “CoD”, does have points where it shines. The combat mission game type, balanced killstreaks (looking at you CoD), and the weapon sounds, and of course, the Medal of Honour name, make this game “different”. And obviously, the aforementioned bugs do need to be fixed before release. EA just might have the winning formula to snatch away those CoD players, on console at least, once they fix those bugs. Definitely, worth a try if you can get your hands on it, and if you’re into something different, but not wanting to stray too far away from CoD.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)