Medal of Honor: Frontline

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.