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

Lead Designer
Lead Engineer
Art Director
Lead Animator
Lead Sound Designer
Lead Artist
Lead Character Modeller
AI Lead
Test Lead
Concept Artist
Associate Lead Designer
Producer
Associate Producer
D-Day Producer
Senior Producer
Executive Producer
Development Director
Localisation Producer
Designers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

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

A decent FPS on the PS2, but could've ironed out some issues.

The Good
+ Customisable controls
+ Excellent presentation
+ Great soundtrack
+ Adequate graphics


The Bad
- Clunky, stiff controls
- Some cryptic mission objectives
- Unstable framerate
- Finicky hit detection


The Bottom Line
Presentation: 90/100
The introduction is excellent, as well as that the first level is a part of D-Day, and can sometimes feel like as if you are part of the battle.

Graphics: 80/100
The graphics are adequate, as well as much of the level designs, but the framerate can sometimes drop if the action gets very hectic.

Audio: 87/100
The gunshots are realistic, and the voice-acting is passable. But what stands out in the sound department is the excellent soundtrack. This game also supports Dolby Surround.

Controls: 55/100
Medal of Honor: Frontline is a decent game, but could've been better if the developers ironed out some control issues. The controls is one of them; while having the ability to customise almost any button is a great idea, but being forced to use an imprecise aiming sensitivity is not, turning and looking can be either too slow or too fast, and also there's no auto-aiming or a sensitivity adjuster to remedy this issue. To add insult to the injury, you have to be pinpoint accurate, and aiming in general is stiff and unfriendly. The controls is a mixed bag with no auto-aiming, and with the imprecise aiming which is compensated by customisable controls.

Difficulty: Easy but technically frustrating
The game on easy is generally very easy, while hard is fairly difficult, especially when you're fidgeting around with the aiming. Getting shot is not as easy to tell as it was in the previous games; in the original Medal of Honor, the screen would violently shake, indicating that you're taking damage, but here, the screen makes a small screen jerk that's almost unnoticeable.

Gameplay: 80/100
The main gameplay is great, but leaves room for improvement. The AI is adequate, the level designs are good, but there are certain issues in gameplay, such as how it's sometime hard to tell if you are taking damage or not. While that there's no blood anywhere in the game, the enemies sure like to put a show to their rather long death animations, but it can turn redundant as some animations can become delayed. The rate of fire for most weapons are reasonable (eg. Colt .45, MP40), but some are questionable (Silenced Pistol).

Overall: 79/100
Medal of Honor: Frontline is a decent game, but its weaknesses, such as the crippled control can affect the gameplay. If you can overlook these flaws, you'll have a lot of fun with the game.

Score: 79/100

PlayStation 2 · by SamXNE_997 (167) · 2014

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

Whow, actually a good one in the series.

The Good
I couldn't compare it to the Xbox or GameCube versions, but the graphic in this game is tip-top perfect for such a game. They actually did a really fine Medal of Honor game with no silly things such as undead knights like in Underground, or five bazooka shots to destroy a single Panzer like in Allied Assault. This game has very nice balance in missions, enemies, and objectives, but due to timeline it is set to, it may appear as a bit short in which case you can only impatiently wait for Rising Sun. When I first experienced attention given to Medal of Honor: Underground, I thought w00t, this is incredible. No doubt you'll be even more pleasantly surprised with Medal of Honor: Frontline, from visual achievements to character movements and artificial intelligence of your opponents.

Something which I most appreciate ingame is a dedication to details. That may be just something you can spot in here. For example the way how D-Day mission starts, with all the feeling of a war, bullets flying, explosions randomly shaking grounds, and you panickally trying to reach the trenches for desperate safety. Or when you parachute down in Holland and one of your team members ends up stuck on the windmill, and while calling you for help german sniper mows him down. Or when enemy soldier is near a staircase and you shoot him, he doesn't just fall back down but rolls all the way down with proper thumps and bumps, and that sort of details really add a lot to the atmosphere and a feeling you didn't just throw away your money for something patched up quickly due to former glory of its predecessors.

Weapon arsenal isn't that rich, you you can equally use allied and axis arsenal of weapons making it ad to variety and comparisson. It is really such a pleasure being at the distance and just using your sniper rifle to eliminate the threat, but usually, when you have sniper, so does the Wehrmacht. Aside from variety of enemies and different uniforms, not much of the vehicles are used in the game, except some Panzers and a few trucks and cars here and there. Character physics is nicely recorded and seeing someone running towards you and catching one of your bullets making him fly and roll towards you really makes you just like this game more and more.

Music is extremely well done in this game. The one in MOHU was fine and quite good for PSX, but this one is really creating a great soundtrack, although it doesn't give a feeling like there are more than couple of tracks altogether.

The Bad
Sometimes collision recognition is making some big errors, like when I shoot at enemy soldier who is two steps in front of me, reloading his weapons, and he appears intact. Usually, when enemies are reloading weapons, you can get them just as well as if they're shooting, but guess sometimes an occasional bug like this happens. On the other hand, sometimes these kind of bugs are intentional. For example, you have a clear sniper shot and yet you cannot harm an enemy soldier unless you first activate something that will destroy half of surrounding and then you'll be able to finish what you started. Sort of silly.

Also, one of the msot annoying things in game is allied AI. Your comrades are as stupid as they could possibly be, rushing sometimes ahead, getting surrounded by 3 or 4 enemy soldiers and it's really like extremely annoying seeing them so stupid. More to the fact that they cannot die, and they immediately get up when shot to death. Might be the fact of the easy level, or it just might be the fact to compensate on their incredibly stupid AI, wouldn't know. Also, there were occasional mistakes when some allied soldier surprised me and I blew his head off by a mistake, but guess what... his head was intact, only thing that flew away was his helmet. Tsk tsk tsk....

The Bottom Line
The whole game setting is set in the missions from 1944 ahead, or, from D-Day forward. Missions are extremely well done, very versatile, ranging from extraction to beaches pinned down by german bunkers, running streets of Paris, being onboard german U-Boat, wreaking havoc upon enemy shipyards, shooting on the speeding armored train, stealing prototype aircraft, and more. They are well done, and very interesting, no doubt about it.

This is the first WWII shooter that has none of Id crap such as supernatural something, or monsters just to boost up the atmosphere into imperfection, nope, this is WWII to the finest. And I really can't wait to get my hands on Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. More to the fact I hope there'll be some prerendered cinematics in the game, and not just movies taken from that war. Plus, it does seem tempting to see things up front from the eastern line of war, don't remember if any game had that so far. So, heads up, and hope Rising Sun won't have any supernatural dragons or anything to fight against.

This is a fine game, no silly robot and undead things like MOHU, and no monsterish gibberish like Wolfenstein. It is a World War II and nothing else. Something that should've been made long time ago if it wouldn't be for influence of Id Software which really are incapable of making a good game. hat down for the graphical achievements they accomplish but that doesn't make them good game developers. They should've sticked to making horror gibberish E-movies instead, they're just holding back the whole gaming industry by attracting masses to play such craps. I mean, after seeing the RTCW and how great that game could be if only they didn't add that supernatural crap, man, they have so much potential and they continue to waste it all the time. And not only that, their wasted potential influences other companies to make crappy FPS games. They could've probably done better games than Half-Life or Deus Ex if they set their minds onto it, but no, they just like to stick to "I make crap, and we're proud of it!" phrase. Tsk tsk tsk.... Finally, Frontline is a game that won't give you any craps aside from some minor lacks here and there, it is a game which has begin and an end, and doesn't try to be anything but what we're expecting it to be, a WWII FPS.

PlayStation 2 · by MAT (240759) · 2012

[ 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.