Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (PS2)

The gameplay is constant and the action never stops making this game difficult to stay away from. On top of this, you can repeat levels to gain extra bonuses (some of which are very funny!), and the online play is fantastic!

Unfortunately, EA does not support Xbox live so no online play there, but if you have a PS2 and an broadband adapter, you are in luck. The online play matches that to Golden Eye but is even better as you can play up to 8 people within each match. You get a choice of weapons, maps and you get to choose your multiplayer skin.

As a consolodation, the Xbox still has single screen multiplay which in my opinion is still better than Golden Eye but on top of this, there is also a cooperative game play which is also very fun although watch out for that positional respawning!

Excellent title and well done to the guys at the studios for this!

The opening sequences look great, but what about the gameplay? Is it possible to "die" in the first two missions? You just blast away hopelessly at everything in sight, and you never get the chance to improve because you seem to get through the level whatever happens. Gameplay seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of realism and verisimilitude. Check out Ratchet and Clank (admittedly not in thrall to the need for realism) for how to manage such set pieces - I was going to say "task-based" set pieces, but there appear to be no real strategic tasks in the first two missions of Rising Sun, apart from some gimmicky stuff with a fire extinguisher below decks in mission one. All you seem to do is wait for the ship to get blown up, or for the planes to stop flying over!

The final mission closes with a similarly dreadful and distinctly bewildering aircraft-based shootout. Maybe I would understand it all better if I repeated the entire game on the "hard" setting, but life has to go on.

The graphics are less sharp than Front Line in places - the ammo and health pickups are certainly less well-defined, and harder to see.

The storyline suffers from a lack of clarity - what's all the stuff about the brother? It's never taken to a proper conclusion (unless we're supposed to wait for the sequel!).

Apart from the Singapore mission (the best, and closest to Front Line in feel), the promised multi-path levels are a disappointment - too full of dead ends and loops back to the original path.

The settings also appear easier - I started on normal and completed the whole game within a day or so, without dying on the first two "levels" at all. At least in Front Line the first level was properly competitive - the Pearl Harbor sections here (too short to merit the description "missions") are too formulaic and feeble. And I'm sure machine-gun nests are easier to overcome in Rising Sun. Some of the weapons appear over-powered, too - the shotgun surely shouldn't work so effectively at such a range, and the same possibly applies to the single-round Welrod pistol.

The problems with "enemy AI" continue in Rising Sun - Japanese soldiers run on the spot, poke through walls, and generally ignore you as their comrades fall in a hail of gunfire so you can pick them off more easily. Rising Sun also eschews the insane slaughter of the final mission of Front Line (which offered excellent gameplay), with the result that, to compensate for this, some of the enemy are absurdly hard to kill in the final mission. Should have kept the bonkers shoot-out, guys!

The good bits - and there are some - include a great start to the Guadalcanal mission (slipping into the jungle under cover of night), the Singapore hotel, the ruined temple, and the Burma railway mission. Tools placed in later levels that let you go back to previous levels and unlock different bits are also a nice touch, but I was too bored to explore this properly.

And finally, to paraphrase Woody Allen, such a disappointing game, and it's all over so fast! Not enough missions, and too many similar ones (there's only so much jungle a man can take...). Fans of MOH Front Line will enjoy this because so much is familiar (hence the three-star rating), but don't hold your breath.