Medal of Honor: Rising Sun review

Pearl harbor, a sensory overload.

Electronic Arts' long running Medal of Honor series has done much for the FPS genre with it's fun gameplay and regular updates. This latest game starts with the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor early one sunny morning in 1941, no title screen, no warning, just loud explosions and a burning boat. Get up on deck and man the machine guns to shoot down as many attacking fighters and bombers as you can. Then it's onto another smaller boat, another AAA gun and shooting more fighters. Explosions, smoke and gunfire are all around you (if you have a suitable system, the game is THX certified and would sound amazing I'm sure) and it's really atmospheric and bodes well for the rest of the game.

Singapore Sling

It seems that the whole Japanese airforce has flown into your sights.

Once you've completed the Pearl Harbor mission it’s then on towards the main part of the game and it's here that everything comes crashing down around it's ears and your feet. You have the usual complement of weapons, rifles, machine guns, grenades etc. and there's plenty of Japanese soldiers to shoot. The game moves through the Pacific theatre, taking in several different scenarios and locations, with several 'mini' missions that need to be completed to open the next level. Things like find this or that, or clear a level of enemies, the usual kind of thing. Not much is different to almost any other WWII FPS I hear you say. Yes, that's right, it's not any different. The only thing I can think of that's different are the locations, but even these don't appear to change in any significant way, they're all similar (with the jungle stages the only exception), but overall it's very much a case of been there, done that all over again.

Nice view

Singapore, the start of the badness.

The graphics are woefully bad. Cardboard style buildings with straight walls, no variation, poor texturing and detailing, poor character animation (yours and the enemies) and just general all round badness. That something can look this bad on something as powerful as the Xbox is a travesty. I'm sure a PS one could manage this with no trouble at all. The sounds, however are rather good, excellent speech and gunfire sounds and plenty of atmosphere with aircraft flying over (inducing a momentary panic in case they fire on you, until you realise that they don't ever do that) and shouted commands, but it's certainly not great, merely good.

Enemy of the state

The jungle levels give some variation, but it's not enough

As for the enemy AI, well, what an absolute farce this is. The bad guys will often stop right in your field of view and often in the exact same place as a fallen comrade, meaning you can sit and aim in the same place and simply wait for your target to stop right on your crosshairs. Their aim is also really bad, but this is actually a good thing, as the controls are just rubbish. Movement and aiming with the two analogue sticks seems easy enough, indeed the (still) king of Xbox FPS titles, Halo uses the same system. So why is it so bad then? Well, moving the aim stick slightly makes your aim move slightly, no problem you think, but then moving it a little bit further makes the crosshair go flying across the screen like a bat out of hell. It's the same with the movement stick, a slight touch doesn't do much, but a slightly bigger push makes your character run all over the place, making circling an enemy almost impossible. It's actually easier to not aim at all and move around the level until an enemy is in your sights rather than aiming at them. It's terribly bad, like whoever did the (minimal) testing didn't even bother to try it, or at the very least, play Halo to see how it should be done. If Halo (a two year old game) can do it so well, what went wrong here?

Please, no more!!!

The Midnight raid on Guadalcanal, still rubbish at this late stage.

Overall it's a terrible game, a triumph of deadlines and marketing over game design and testing. The Pearl Harbor introduction is brilliant, much like the Normandy landings in the original - fast and breathtaking, it's like they took half the development time doing one level, then rushed the rest of the game to meet the deadline. If you've bought this game, or God forbid, been given it as a gift, I feel terribly sorry for you. If you don't already have it, get Medal of Honor: Frontline instead and save yourself £20. If you do have it, take it back immediately and read the previous sentence. It may be based in Europe rather than in the Pacific, but it's miles better than this crap. A game you wouldn't inflict on your worst enemy.