Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

aka: Kongressimedal: Liitlaste rünnak, Medal of Honor: Débarquement Allié, MoH:AA
Moby ID: 5616
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

In Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the first PC installment of the famous Playstation game series, you assume the role of Sgt. Mike Powell, a member of the 1st Ranger Batallion. You have been recruited by the OSS (some sort of secret service) and need to battle through over 20 levels based on historical campaigns during WW2.

Missions include the landing at Normandy (D-Day), assaulting the town Arzew, a rendez-vous with the french Resistance outside the village of St. Lo, and even taking the famous bridge at the German town Remagen. You will need to rescue agents, plant explosives, assault desert camps with your team and of course kill every Nazi that comes into your gunsight.

There are plenty of weapons available, including the MP40, some sniper and assault rifles, hand grenades and explosive charges.

Spellings

  • 荣誉勋章:联合袭击 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

220 People (195 developers, 25 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 45 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 141 ratings with 8 reviews)

A good enjoyable WWII shooter

The Good

I was a big fan of the 'Medal Of Honor' series on the Sony Playstation. This game is a very worthy first edition for the PC. Many things will be familiar to players of the Playstation games. The great sound and music from those games is all equally effective at setting a mood in 'Allied Assault'. Unlike 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein', the Germans actually speak German here, adding greatly to the games sense of authenticity.

The games three difficulty levels really add a lot of replay value. While the game is relatively simple on the 'easy' difficulty setting, ramping it up to 'hard' can make for a real challenge. Enemies will do a lot more damage, and you'll find that you can't take more than a few bullets. This makes for a much more realistic experience than you would have on lower settings.

'Allied Assault' will likely be remembered best for its tense Omaha Beach mission. Much like the opening scene of 'Saving Private Ryan', this mission really puts you on Omaha Beach on D-Day, with bullets whizzing by, shells exploding in the sand all around you, and your commander screaming orders at you and your team. It's truly an accomplishment in immersive game design, due in large part to the excellent sound.

Like the Playstation 'Medal of Honor' games, there are many unique missions to break up the monotony of a shooter. There are the undercover missions that have you sneaking around disguised as a Nazi officer. There are also a few different vehicles that you find yourself riding around in, either at the controls, or at the gun. In the case of the King Tiger tank, you're the one in charge. The tank on tank battles can be especially interesting.

**The Bad**

The AI in this game leaves a little to be desired. While the Nazis don't charge you like frenzied berzerkers, they don't always behave realistically either. There is one sad scene in particular where Nazi soldiers walk out one after the next from behind hedges, right into your blazing machine gun fire. At other times in the game however, especially the Snipertown level, the enemy AI seems to be pretty clever, and it can be truly difficult to see where shots are coming from.

As for your squad (when you have one) they can be a help and a burden. In levels when their death in not a failure condition, their extra firepower can really come in handy. When your sqaudmates survival is necessary however, they will sometimes stand in the middle of the street and be shot by the same sniper two, three, or four times, without moving out of the way or seeking cover. A system for issuing general commands to your squad would have been very helpful.

The games multiplayer component really offers nothing new, and is a hassle to get into. Rather than have an in-game system for locating servers, the game requires that you have GameSpy Arcade installed and use that the find servers playing the game. Then when you find a server you must boot back into 'Allied Assault', wait through load screens, then start the game. If you're lucky. Server full? Quit 'Allied Assault', open Gamespy Arcade, look for a new server, log in, launch 'Allied Assault', wait through three load screens... you get the idea. Once you do start a multiplayer game it isn't all that much fun after the team play breakthroughs of 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein'.

The games system requirements are pretty steep, and it's recommendations are even steeper. I have a 750mhz Athlon with 384 MB of RAM. The game runs well with low texture detail and color depth, but starts to lose some frame rate at higher detail settings, though to be fair, it is still quite playable (and quite pretty).

**The Bottom Line**

'Allied Assault' is a good, well paced, action packed WWII game for the PC. It's not a realistic first person combat simulation by any means, but it is a very fun and challenging action game. There are a lot of in game scripted events, a la 'Half-Life', which are all carried off to great effect. The games developers have done a great job of creating an immersive WWII environment, and using cinematic music and sound effects to bind everything together. Anyone who enjoys a good Half-Life style first person shooter would almost certainly have fun with this game.

Windows · by Entorphane (337) · 2002

Nicely Presented WW2 Run 'n Gun

The Good
I initially picked up this game based on my reaction to the famous "Nebelwerfers" demo. I'm not a fan of railroady cinematic games as a general rule, but the demo convinced me that there's merit in a well crafted experience. And make no mistake, Allied Assault, like its scion Call of Duty, is a cinematic run and gun with few pretensions to realism. Okay, it's not quite so silly as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but it's still very much a game.

And quite a good one, too, if a bit short. Spanning six missions, each split into several "levels", the game will not occupy too much of your time. There are expansion packs, however, as well as the vaunted multiplayer, so if you want more after finishing the game, it's out there. Most missions are of the on-foot variety, but a tank level and a handful of undercover missions break up the gameplay pretty well.

The levels take place across various locales, from the now-famous Omaha Beach landing (Which is quite the spectacle) to snowbound forests, to bombed out towns, and of course, German bases. Most levels are quite well designed, if very linear. Still, while undoubtedly linear, the levels feel a tad more open than the ones in Call of Duty do, allowing you to make detours in a few places to take out snipers ahead of time, and suchlike. And then there are levels like the "frozen forest", which, thanks to good design, almost feel open. Gameplay is standard WW2 shooter fare, giving you both German and American weapons, cunningly rendered to look almost like the real thing. Sniper rifles, pistols, SMGs, grenades, all the expected period weapons. Nary a raygun or suchlike in sight, thank goodness. All weapons have their pros and cons, like recoil, reload time, accuracy, and seem to be quite well balanced. No uberweapons here.

Allied Assault is of course based on the Quake 3 engine, which looks good, but not great. There are benefits, though, like engine stability, solid multiplayer performance, and reasonable system requirements. It's been so long since I could run a game with everything turned up to max, plus 4X AA, and still get a smooth 60 FPS, that I'm probably just being biased.

Sounds and music are some of Allied Assaults' best points, the score by Michael Giacchino is fantastic. There are some pseudo big band tracks in the game that just shine, as you might expect from the guy that scored Pixar's "Ratatouille" and "The Incredibles". Yeah. That guy. Sound effects are equally superior, in fact they make certain levels of the game. German cries, realistic gunshots, snow crunching under your feet and dogs barking in the distance as you traverse a snow-blanketed forest at night... You get the picture.

The game's difficulty depends on what you're expecting, really. People whined incessantly about the "Sniper's Last Stand" mission, I didn't find it to be much harder than the rest of the game, heck, I even got the medal for that mission the first time through without even knowing it. So, overall, pretty easy. On the "Medium" difficulty level at least, which is the setting that I started and finished the game on. Maybe I'm spoiled by games like Operation Flashpoint and even the original DOOM, but compared to those, Allied Assault just isn't hard. Period.

Multiplayer is quite nice, including such favorites as team deathmatch and objective-based modes. Still can't compete with the king of WW2 multiplayer squad based combat, Day of Defeat, in my book though. Still, Allied Assault remains to this day one of the most populated online games, and there are plenty of servers. That should tell you something about the multiplayer.

The Bad
The game's major flaws are its previously noted linearity, and the lack of squad-based missions. Only a handful of levels provide you with a team, the rest of the time it's the classic "one-man army" approach, as you wipe out whole bases full of Nazis with your Thompson and your Honorable American Manliness. Then there are the missions where you run through German bases, which almost play out like old-timey corridor crawlers. Like I said, realism is not a strong point here. The loner missions are still quite fun, though, and stand up very well against mechanically similar shooters. More squad based action and non-linearity would have approached perfection, but would also have made this a completely different kind of game. There are better choices out there if you're looking for that kind of game.

The Bottom Line
Not perfect, but if you like WW2 shooters, love great atmosphere, don't mind more traditional types of gameplay, and need some solid multiplayer fun, certainly give this game a spin. The demos are still readily available, and will give you a good idea of what to expect. Even better, the game and all it's expansion packs can be had for peanuts nowadays.

Windows · by phanboy_iv (84) · 2009

Best WW2 shooter so far, but...

The Good
Beautiful, furious, epic. Those are some of the first things that come to mind when you think of MoHAA. This is a fast-and-furious-take-no-prisoners shooter set in the Spielberg-ized WW2 most people have come to known and love. You are private Powell, and it's up to you to give those nazis some butt-kicking, and save your allied buddies. Essentially a slightly more realistic Return to Castle Wolfenstein with better mission design, and sans the fantasy edge.

Right from the start the game will dazzle you with it's fantastic graphics and John Williams-like music score, the level of detail in the graphics is truly astounding, and the music as well as all of the sfx, are recorded with a truly amazing quality, making full use of directional sound and it's features.

The game progresses through 6 linear campaigns that take you all over Europe and this is in my opinion, a great choice of gameplay progression, since you don't have to worry about a basic plotline to tie it all together. You want a plot? You are at war and you get transferred around, that's your plot. And it works fantastically because the star of this game is the level and variety of gameplay. The game has an astounding level of creativity when it comes to it's missions. Each one has a unique gameplay premise, and while it is most definetively a fps first and foremost, every now and then you get a mission where you have to infiltrate an enemy base, or man a gun emplacement, or take control of a tank, or engage in sniping duels, etc, etc, etc... Even the standard "kill 'em all" missions have interesting touches, all courtesy of the level of detail placed on the real-life weapons, the detail of the character models that react realistically when hit (and even crawl around or limp when injured), or the interesting locales you have to fight through (like the D-Day mission, or the nazi submarine pens).

The Bad
Those are some really nice graphics, huh?? Well forget about them pal, only monster systems need apply for this one, and I blame it all on a non-judicious use of it's engine. The levels are just too big, and the amount of variables (like squadmate behavior, etc.) is just too much for an engine designed for essentially dumb shooters. Furthermore, if you are not one of the lucky souls capables of running this baby at full detail, then you are in for some juggling around, the game offers a nice set of detail settings, but none manage to be really effective, since the basic problems still remain (the levels are still too big, and there are too many things to keep track off), I had to tone everything down to the bare minimum, and I even had to juggle with my desktop resolution every time I wanted to lunch this frigging thing (I never had to do that with the new Wolfenstein, both Q3 games) and there is no way to switch you 3d accelerator card from the main game interface....great.

Other problems include an annoying tendency to include re-spawning enemies on some levels, and an AI that is questionable at best. I'm really puzzled at this, since at times I see it do some really smart things, like making good use of cover (first FPS I see where the enemies actually lean over walls), throwing grenades back at me (or even jumping over them to protect their buddies) etc, etc. However most of the time they behave like the dumbest soldiers ever. Your enemies will run into your line of fire with incredible enthusiasm, or even shoot themselves, and your squadmates first instinct is always to run guns-blazing towards the biggest group of enemies they see...

Aside from those issues I have a less objective bone to pick with this game, and it's the "politically correct" way it handles everything. Not only have you got no blood or gore in the game (not even a Max Paynish-red puff) but there's nothing interesting to pick your imagination or interest in between the missions. The game lacks a certain edge that makes other less-perfect shooters more memorable. There are no iconic characters, there is no ending, essentially there are no "odds and ends" everything is the way it's supposed to be, almost sickening in it's antisepticness, a jewel polished so much that it has no distinctive glow... but well, that's just me. :)

The Bottom Line
Almost perfect in it's presentation and gameplay. And truly funny to play, but for me this game just doesn't have the right stuff. It's better than Return to Castle Wolfenstein in nearly every way, but when I think about it now, I had much more fun playing Wolf, and I'm probably gonna replay it someday... not so with this one.

Of course, most people that get this Spielberg-sanctioned title probably want a "Private Ryan simulator". And this game delivers on that account.

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2002

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Medal of Honour: Allied Assault appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Film homage

The D-Day section, in which the player storms Omaha beach, is directly inspired by the opening scenes from the film "Saving Private Ryan". It's worth noticing that Steven Spielberg directed the film and was involved in the earlier Medal of Honor games through his production company DreamWorks Interactive.

Bans and censorship

  • There is no blood to be seen at all throughout the game. EA/2015 removed all blood so they could retain a Teen ESRB rating.
  • The US and EU versions are forbidden to be distributed in Germany because they contain symbols which are regarded as unconstitutional (e.g. swastika). For the German version the developers had to remove any appearances of swastikas. Most of them are replaced with an Iron Cross. Additionally in the level "Scuttling the U-529" all Hitler salutes were removed.

Critical reception

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was featured on the cover of the February 2002 issue of Computer Gaming World, where it was billed as the "most intense WWII game ever".

Dedication

The credits say: "This game is dedicated to all the men, women, and their families, that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. You will always be remembered."

Ending

The game has no proper ending: final mission, "The End", credits.

Enemy communication

The Wehrmacht soldiers speak flawless German. A player understanding the language, may occasionally have a slight advantage, as they can anticipate the enemies' actions: "Er ist im Luftschacht!" (He's in the air shaft!), "Mein Gewehr klemmt!" (My rifle's jammed!).

Online servers

The game's online servers (which were hosted on GameSpy) were scheduled to shut down on 30 June 2014, like for other Electronic Arts titles in the wake of GameSpy's total closure.

References

  • In the fourth mission the player is assigned to find an OSS agent named Manon. This woman has appeared in countless Medal of Honor games as a minor character, offering to meet up with the main character of the game to give information. She is also the main character in Medal of Honor: Underground.
  • During the credits, a 1940s-style song is played while pictures of WWII are displayed on screen. One of these is a picture of Mike Powell and what appears to be his regiment. In the picture the player can see Mike Powell and also James "Jimmy" Patterson, the main character from Medal of Honor: Frontline, which had not been released at the time of this game's debut.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) - Action Game of the Year
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Action Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Best Level of the Year (for Omaha Beach)
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Best Sound of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2002 – Best Sound of the Year (PC)
    • 2002 – Best Level of the Year (PC, for Ohama Beach)

Information also contributed by ApTyp, Entorphane, JPaterson, Matt Neuteboom, PCGamer77 and Zonker.

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Related Sites +

  • Official Website
    Official website, designed by Electronic Arts.
  • We Want YOU
    An Apple Games article about the Macintosh version of Allied Assault, with commentary being provided by Aspyr Media President Michael Rogers (June, 2002).

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  • MobyGames ID: 5616
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by phlux.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, -Chris, Unicorn Lynx, JPaterson, Jeanne, tarmo888, Neville, Zeppin, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack, Kayburt.

Game added January 23, 2002. Last modified March 23, 2024.