Medal of Honor: Frontline

aka: MOHF, Medal of Honor: En Première Ligne
Moby ID: 6826
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

In Medal of Honor: Frontline, you play as Lt. Jimmy Patterson, a member of a special forces team.

As a soldier during WW2, you must complete various missions and objectives. You will take part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, seize the Nijmegen Bridge, infiltrate a weapons facility, sabotage a German U-Boat and more.

You will have access to historically accurate weapons and equipment, such as pistols, rifles, and explosives.

Parts of the game will have you working alongside other soldiers, which adds to the overall experience. Some missions require you to use stealth, where you must pose as a Nazi and show identification without giving yourself away.

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

346 People (255 developers, 91 thanks) · View all

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Lead Engineer
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Lead Sound Designer
Lead Artist
Lead Character Modeller
AI Lead
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Associate Lead Designer
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Associate Producer
D-Day Producer
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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 80 ratings with 6 reviews)

An emotional, immersive WWII FPS

The Good
A sequel to the PS1 games Medal of Honor and MOH: Underground, the series comes back with a highly immersive, and highly entertaining game which was only surpassed by the PC title Allied Assault before it. This is one of the most immersive, and emotional games I have played, and appeals to both casual gamers, hardcore games, and history buffs alike.

This game is one of the most immersive games I have ever played. From charging the beaches on D-day to fighting alongside allies in a French village, this game will really make you believe that you are in WWII fighting German Nazis. The ambiance is amazing, and with surround sound will blow your mind. Scrupulous attention to small details like Flak cannons in the background, Axis soldiers talking REAL German, and great lighting effects makes you feel in the game. On the D-day mission you will be thrust into battle as machine gun fire rattles around you, and you can see your friends rushing up the beach to confront the enemies. You can hear them shouting orders to each other and screaming for reinforcements. Buildings are done to look like they were personally handcrafted one by one, unlike this games predecessors which were a repetitive mix of the same buildings. The HUD display has been minimized to only health and ammo to provide the best view of the action. You could sit at the game for hours playing missions with your undivided attention, only interrupted by mission briefings and bathroom breaks. Or sleeping. But who does that anymore?

The graphics are on par with its prequel Allied Assault. Great efforts were definitely put into this game, so that you could see all the attention down to the last brick on a building. Character models are done exceedingly well, for both allies and axis. Explosions and smoke effects are the best I've seen on a console. The game suffers from no frame-rate slowdown whatsoever, even in the scenes with immense battles and there are tons of enemies and friendlies fighting on the screen at once. All in all, the graphics of the game definitely worth noting in a game such as this.

The musical score is the best I've heard out of any video game. The scores are varied to be fast-paced for those action-packed moments, and emotional in somber at sad levels. You'll be humming the songs after you shut the game off. Even the main menu music, which is the most amazing music ever composed, draws a tear to your eye when you hear it. The ambiance is done extremely well with authentic machine gun sounds and well done-voice acting.

Even the history buffs, who like to play historically based games will find that the historical accuracy of the game is very high. Most, if not all of the game's events took place in real life, and even the game's main character was a medal of honor recipient. The games cutscenes are not rendered, but instead are something that you would find on the history channel. They are black and white documentations of WWII, with commentary on all of them, providing a entertaining while educational reward.

The guns, while I not say are plenty not rich, are accurate models of real WWII used weapons, like the M1 Garrand, the BAR, and the Thompson machine gun. Both the allies guns and the axis guns can be used, for a bit of variation.

The Bad
The missions are terribly linear for such an immersive game. For the first time in a mission you will piss your pants because the missions are so fun, so detailed, and so immense. However this is not the truth the second time around. A lot of times the levels are made strictly the same every time, down to the gun placement, and most of the time, enemy placement. The first time you will see something cool, and say "Wow, that was pretty cool. Enemies in this game must be pretty smart to do that." Then the second time you see it and say "Oh, hes gonna do that EVERY time. That's sorta stupid." The basic problem is that the game "cheats" to much on the AI, which makes it seem very smart, but in truth it's all prerendered. You will find that the second time around is nowhere near as fun as the first time, and the third time around you will be completely tired of the level. As a result, the game has a pretty bad replay value.

I am completely mad at the AI of the game. Allied Assault had a great AI, so why would the CPU's lose most of their brain power on the console? Allies are sluggish, hiding behind crappy cover and jogging slowly into battle while you are forced to rush into battle and take out the enemies beforehand even before they get there. Enemies are terrible as well. Most will stand there and shoot you, without any attempt to go for cover or evade your gunfire. This lowers the replay value even more.

The controls, as you'd expect from a console are pretty bad. You can spend a while trying to aim at a person and completely miss an entire clip. Movement is fairly smooth, although there tends to be problems when you try to climb up and down ladders

The guns, while I would like to say are interesting, are very few. Even though most guns you can pick up off enemies and use, the same 5 guns are used mostly throughout the game, with weapons like the sniper rifle and the bazooka thrown in during specific missions.

The multiplayer mode is not exactly the greatest in the world. Truly, since all of the levels are designed to be linear, the game looses a lot of its appeal during multiplayer. As well as this, the game has no bots, and is completely boring with only two people. Guns are very limited, and the views are very constricted. Even the GameCube and Xbox versions, which support 4 person multiplayer, aren't all that well with multiplayer, and a 2 player multiplayer isn't all that entertaining either.

The Bottom Line
Medal of Honor is a great game that has appeal to all players. The game should have, and could have, won game of the year for outstanding graphics and sound if it weren't for a crappy AI and the linearity of the levels. The game is not made by its multiplayer, but by its one player mode. Because it is so emotional and immersive, I recommend it to both casual players and hardcore fans of the series alike. Even though it is an old current gen game, it has loss none of its appeal to the newer sub-par sequels. It is one of the two best in the series, only bested by its predecessor, the FPS gaming bliss that is Allied Assault.

PlayStation 2 · by Matt Neuteboom (976) · 2005

Excellent war game that help paved the way.

The Good
The first time I saw Frontline on a shelf at Blockbuster I was a little curious, after seeing so many articles about the PC versions and the original PSone games, I was intrigued that a newer console version was released. I knew that it wouldn't be as good as the PC version, but still I was pleasantly surprised.

To start of the graphics are phenomenal for that time, even though they are a bit dated now. The tracers from gunfire, the dirt and mud from mortar rounds impacting, grenade blasts, rock chipping around you, it really does convey that you are in a war zone. Also the texturing and the lighting are pretty damn impressive too, even to this day I'm still impressed how well this game looked back then.

The controls take a little bit to get used to, but luckily they are easy to learn and once you get them down pat, it's not a problem. The music is great as well, each level's music fits and certain situations can get your blood pumping.

The choice of weapons really help the game along, from pistols, grenades, machine guns and rifles (my personal favorite is the Springfield 03) and the plentiful ammo and health refills in some of the easier modes can make the game bearable, especially when you are ambushed which happens from time to time.

The variety of levels are a plus too, from storming the beaches of Normandy to a U-Boat even, there's no lack of variety. Two of my favorites is the mission in the Netherlands and the Nijmegen Bridge where the sniper rifle is present. It's really fun to use it and pick off Germans especially the ones running, it's always fun to watch them flip backwards or shooting them off of the Nijmegen Bridge.

In short, this game really does have a lot to offer.

The Bad
Well, a few things did bother me, one was the physics of the NPCs, it's a shame they couldn't incorporate some kind of rag doll effects instead of the preset animations. It's not really a drawback, just a personal preference, however it can be fun too at times, especially if you use the sniper rifle to shoot out an enemies knee having them fall face down and shoot through the top of their head (what can I say, I love to do sadistic things at times). I do wish though that vehicles could have been implemented, you can use fixed machine guns from time to time, but it would have been nice to use a tank, a half-track, shoot from a plane or something. To me that was a major disappointment.

Now the lack of blood doesn't bother me, in fact I think that is what gave the game a kind of charm, the thing that bothered me was the storming of the beaches. Now bear in mind, I know that the technology was a bit limited back then, but I was expecting something along the caliber of Saving Private Ryan with dead bodies strewn across the beach especially after the boat capsizes and you can see men get shot through the water, similar to the movie. Sadly though, you only get a few dead bodies, now true there is a lot of chaos with mortar rounds and machine gun nests bearing down on you which helps it along and distracts you from the lack of bodies.

Also along the lines, the game doesn't have that feel of realism that the modern war games have, instead this one has a pure sense of going commando. Now true some missions you have some help and run with a squad at times, but infiltrating a U-boat in a crate, taking out basically an entire division at a dock, sabotaging a armored train or even breaking into a top secret Nazi facility. This game is a bit more fiction, but still it has it's charm, it just doesn't have that sense of realism storyline-wise that the modern day games have.

The Bottom Line
In the end, Frontlines is still pretty damn impressive to this day, now true compared to the newer games (next-gen not withstanding), especially the Call of Duty games it really doesn't match up that well. Still, Frontlines came along at the perfect time and helped pave the way for the future Medal of Honor and Call of Duty titles on the consoles.

So if you have never experienced this game at least give it a shot, odds are you can find it cheap at any local video store especially now with the declining of the PS2 on the horizon, it'll be pretty cheap, but you will still get your money's worth.

PlayStation 2 · by Big John WV (26954) · 2009

Witness the beginning of the decline of the 'Medal of Honor' series.

The Good

MOA:F looks, feels, and (especially) sounds like its three predecessors on the PS1 and PC. It's a very well put together game, with solid level design and fairly good graphics (nice explosions). The authentic WWII sound effects add a lot of ambiance to the game.

The missions are well paced, and your objectives are generally clear; you don't spend a lot of time wandering around confused, wondering where to go next. There is a very helpful feature that allows you to access hints about your current objectives by pressing the 'Select' button. This doubtlessly saved me a few hours of wandering around in frustration on some levels.

**The Bad**

This is NOT the PC 'Medal of Honor: Allied Assault', nor is it even really the original PS1 MOH games. The controls are absolutely awful, almost to the point of making the game completely unplayable. There are numerous different control schemes to choose from, and even an option to customize the controls to your liking. This is all for not, however, as the aiming is always imprecise and sluggish, regardless of what controller setup you choose. There is no way to adjust the sensitivity of your aiming mechanism, and it is consistently difficult to aim at even the closest of targets. Many times did I unload a whole clip at a Nazi at point-blank range, only to miss and miss and miss due to poor control. The targeting reticle moves around too quickly and sloppily, except when in sniper mode, in which case it moves painfully slowly.

The graphics, while nice, aren't anything to write home about. The AI, both enemy and friendly, is spotty. Your squadmates will often lag behind and stand around while you move forward into combat. Nazis often just stand there and let you shoot them again and again, without running or taking cover.

There is no in-mission save, which inevitably leads to the unwanted repetition of boring and tedious sections of the game. Multiplayer in previous MOH games has always been every shade of boring, and it was wisely left out this time.

**The Bottom Line**

I have yet to play a truly good FPS for the PS2, and this one certainly breaks no new ground. While MOH:F has a lot of flaws, it will probably scratch the itch of gamers who don't have a PC or an Xbox, the platforms where the quality FPSs seem to all be landing lately. Rent it first though, because the controls really ARE that bad.

PlayStation 2 · by Entorphane (337) · 2002

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
XBOX credits piltdown_man (232931) Mar 23, 2016

Trivia

Enigma machine

During the second mission of chapter two, "Storm in the Port", you are on a German U-Boat and have to steal any information you can and sabotage the boat. However, the level contains a bonus objective that is not told to you by the game. You can find a German Enigma Machine, and by pressing the action button can take the machine's codes and complete the bonus objective, and earn a medal for the action.

The German Enigma coding machine was not fictitious. It was in fact real. The Enigma was an encryption and cipher machine that the Germans used most famously in WWII. The system of encryption for the Enigma was extremely complex, and only through operator error, procedural error, or captured codebooks (a.k.a cipher) could the Allies decipher the messages. As a result, the Enigma's codebooks and secrets were extremely well-guarded. The simple fact that you can walk up to the machine and steal the codebook is questionable in the game, though such a feat certainly would have been awarded.

There is also the matter of historical accuracy. During WWII, only 15 cipher books had been captured, and the Americans and Canadians had one each. The rest were performed by the British. As well, the Naval Enigma cipher was actually captured by a British boarding crew on the U-110, not a single American soldier.

Besides the historical background, the little objective is also a reference to the WWII movie U-571. The plot of the movie details an American naval crew attempting to capture the Naval Enigma cipher aboard the U-Boat U-571. This movie is also just as historically inaccurate as the game, which suggests, perhaps, that it was even the basis for which the objective was based on.

Another funny reference is that in the cheat menu, the typewriter you enter in cheats on is actually the Enigma itself.

German version

In Germany the game had to be pulled from the shelves and all the covers had to be reprinted, because there was a swastika on the back cover and Nazi symbols aren't allowed in (or on) games there. For the same reason all Nazi flags in the game were replaced. Additionally all level statistics (except time and overall evaluation) were removed, the cutscenes using historical film material were re-cut and all words like "Nazi", "Hitler" or "Führer" were avoided during localization. A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Nazis

All of the Nazis speak real German. If you go to the cheat menu, and turn on subtitles, you can see what they say if you sneak up on them unnoticed. Some of the conversations they have are quite humorous, and can be pretty long as well.

References

Several of the chapters in the game are actually modeled off of famous WWII movies and novels.

The first and most obvious one is the "D-Day" mission, modeling its missions, plot, and setting to the movie Saving Private Ryan. Besides the entire plot and completely recreated setting, several elements are borrowed from the movie, including the hopeless abandonment on the beach, the frantic bunker gunfire, shelling, and storming the seawall.

Chapter two, "Storm in the Port" also takes its setting from Saving Private Ryan. The first mission is a reenactment of the climax of the movie, where you must fight through the broken wreckage of a French town to help the Allies in their struggle against advancing Axis soldiers and tanks. The second part of the chapter, storming the German U-Boat pen, also models quite a bit of its scenery and costume design off of cliche German submarine movies.

It makes sense that the game would borrow heavily from Saving Private Ryan; Steven Spielberg directed the movie, and also had a major part in the production of the game.

Another one of these chapters in the game is titled "Several Bridges Too Far". This is an homage to the WWII 1970's book and movie A Bridge Too Far. The plot of the book and movie detailed Operation Market Garden, the failed Allied attempt to break through German lines at Arnhem in the occupied Netherlands.

In an reenactment, the chapter in the game puts you on the front lines of Operation Market Garden. The missions take you through the war-swept city of Arnhem, where you actually rendezvous with the men trapped behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Throughout the chapter, you even meet most of the characters that are portrayed in the movie.

Information also contributed by Matt Neueboom

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JPaterson.

GameCube, Xbox added by Kartanym. PlayStation 3 added by MAT.

Additional contributors: MAT, Istari, Indra was here, Jeanne, Patrick Bregger.

Game added June 27, 2002. Last modified February 20, 2024.