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Medal Of Honor: Warfighter
While the 2010 Medal Of Honor reboot failed to make as big an impact on the market as EA had hoped it was still a pretty competent shooter. Warfighter is a direct sequel making it the fourteenth game in the series. With the aid of members of Navy Seal Team 6 acting as consultants, Danger Close promised that the game would not only be realistic but also highlight some of the personal plights these men have to endure. With Call of Duty once again in its sights, can Medal Of Honor finally recapture its former glory.
The unfortunate answer is no, Warfighter poses absolutely no threat to Call of Duty. The game places you in the boots of "Preacher" who you may or may not remember from the last game as well as "Stump" who has about as much personality as his codename indicates. The game opens with a routine mission to thwart some black market arms dealers in Pakistan but a much larger terrorist network is soon exposed. Action jumps between exotic locations such as the Philippines, Somalia, Dubai and Bosnia where you get to see the world and shoot lots of foreigners in the face. The disjointed storyline is all over the place and jumps back and forth in time constantly. The gist is that some baddie calling himself the Cleric, hates Americans and have some nasty surprises in store for them involving some Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, which is every bit as explosive as it sounds. In between all the shouting and shooting there is also an attempt to outline the strain that Preacher faces in his marriage due to his job. A valiant effort at something different but utterly destroyed by the poor character models. When I first saw Preachers wife and daughter in one of these cut-scenes I thought that the game had a zombie mode. The gameplay is pretty by the numbers and if you have played any sort of military shooter in the last few years you will have seen everything that there is to offer. The enemy AI is pretty poor and baddies will either shoot tireless in your direction while ignoring your squad or pop up from behind cover for you to easily pick off. Friendlies are not much more useful either and basically serve as bearded bullet vending machines for you to restock up during battle. They have the nasty habit of pushing you out behind cover and into the line of enemy fire instead of actually shooting anyone. In one memorable scene I was killing bad guys amid smoke grenades that reduced visibility to almost zero. After killing my fair share I thought I would hang back and let my squad do the rest. After about two minutes of intense shooting and screaming I went to investigate, only to find my squad blindly firing at nothing while a lone enemy sat stuck behind a crate. The game does occasionally offer up some interesting sections, most noticeable the missions where you are in a vehicle. One sees you in a high speed car chase while the other tasks you with evading pursuers long enough to upload data from a stolen laptop. You even get to engage in some stealth driving at one point which is pretty awesome. These two sections look quite good and offer a surprising amount of freedom but use a visible older version of the Frostbite engine. There is also a memorable mission where you take control of a boat and have to take hostages to safety amidst a huge storm that is wrecking the environment around you. It is sections like these that showcase just how good the game could have been if it stepped outside the box a bit more. There are also some baffling missions like the one where you watch a long cut-scene, fire one shot to complete the mission and then watch another long cut-scene. While most missions start with a message stating that it is based on real events, you'll still engage in the usual clichés such as shooting down a helicopter with a rocket launcher. There is a good selection of weapons and you can pick up any firearms dropped on the battlefield. Your character can also take cover from which you can lean out to take potshots at the enemy. This is quite cool but requires some finger bending to achieve. It has to be said that running into battle, before baseball sliding behind cover and popping out to nail enemies is quite fun. There is a door breaching mechanic that the game adores so much it even has its own mini-game associated with it. Whenever you reach a door you select a breaching method such as kicking it down, hacking it open before kicking it down or blowing it open before kicking it down. A flashbang is tossed in and then you get to pick off the enemies on the other side in slow motion. More breaching options are unlocked by performing headshots on the unfortunate victims. You'll be breaching a ton of doors but the irony is that none of the unlocked methods actually seem to have any advantages over simply kicking the door down. The audio is rather nice with a soundtrack composed by Ramin Djawadi. He also worked on television shows such as Prison Break and A Game Of Thrones so definitely knows how to score a good soundtrack. Linkin Park also contributed one of their tracks as a theme song with variations heard throughout the game. The voice acting is believable with lots of authentic military jargon being constantly spouted by everyone. While I had some fun playing Medal Of Honor: Warfighter it could definitely have been a much better game. The problem with characters such as Stump, Preacher, Voodoo, Tick, Mother and Dingo is that they are so utterly unremarkable. I had trouble remember which beard belonged to which stupid codename half the time. This means that the emotional element falls flat and the poorly rendered female puppets don't help matters either. The visuals are powered by the Frostbite 2 engine and while spectacular in places, the game never rises above other brown shooters. If you like shooting foreigners for vague reasons, more beards than a Chuck Norris convention and believe soldiers are people with a higher calling in life then Warfighter is the game for you. If however you just want an entertaining shooter that is going to keep you hooked, it is maybe not such a great choice. 
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System Requirements
TAGS: Medal Of Honor: Warfighter, Preacher, Mother, The Cleric, Stump
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