Medal of Honor: Warfighter Review

You can tell it's the fall can you? Golden, dry leaves everywhere, it's getting colder by the minute and we're getting more and more rain by the day. Of course, the market being flooded by numerous first-person shooters is yet another unmistaken sign. EA's much-touted big-budget title, Medal of Honor: Warfighter has hit stores for all major platforms and we've spent the last several days digging into its single-player and multiplayer treats.

In MoH: Warfighter, players head out on a mission with a group of colorfully named U.S. Navy SEALs - Mother, Preacher and Voodoo (not that colorful as a matter of fact); who are all characters from the previous installment. The goal of the first mission is to interfere with a black market arms deal, although as soon as our heroes reach their destination the mission goes awry and they were forced to escape. After a debriefing you are sent immediately to Somalia to accompany U.S. Marines as they try to end piracy operations in the area.

He's thinking: "Why the hell am I in this game?"

Love choppers. Just love 'em.

The story is linear, as expected, and it unfolds quickly. To be honest, the story won't make much sense to a lot of people. This is yet another game where we are thrown into a typical warzone of all of the world's most popular hot spots such as Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so on.

Gameplay wise, it's likely that you're heading straight into familiar territory. The single-player campaign is linear, offering a standard on-the-rails type of shooter experience we've all seen countless times before. In a nutshell, restricted movement and dashing through hordes of baddies, with a relatively predictable storyline, is what you can expect. This would've been a cool ride if the developers added at least something unique to the experience - be it an intriguing plot, cool characters or a few interesting additions to the FPS formula. Sadly, MoH: Warfighter's mechanics feel way too familiar and, to top it off, it seems to be riddled with bugs. We've seen a nasty issue in the sniper mission at the beginning of the game. Right in the middle of the mission, the aiming system gets all screwed up and you can't hit the last two targets for some reason. As we understand it, a few issues have been fixed with the initial patch (still not 100% sure about that), according to some reports a lot of the bugs weren't ironed out.

At any rate, visual glitches remain throughout gameplay, with the framerate slowing down considerably during certain cut-scenes and even some flickering and other weird issues like enemies spawning out of the sky and so on.

The multiplayer, on the other hand, is actually a huge step forward from the previous Medal of Honor title. For instance, one of the most appealing additions to the multiplayer is the new-fangled Fire Team mode, which represents an interesting combination of co-op elements and standard competitive matches. Players are offered a chance to select one of the following classes: assaulter, spec ops, point man, sniper, demolitions and heavy gunner. Classes are distinguished by their abilities and support actions (kill streaks). It's a fairly simple game. Two-man Fireteams are formed and each team has a player who has the ability to rearm or heal a teammate. This straightforward system is extremely cool, as it encourages gamers to cooperate during matches.

There is also solid range of weapons on offer. In that respect, there are a few cool features such as being able to utilize different magnified scopes on a single weapon, preparing for either close-ranged or long-ranged combat. Additionally, you might enjoy the game's frantic vehicle segments, but in all honesty, there really isn't more to the game than these facets.