Medal of Honor: Warfighter - Limited Edition

(EDIT: AMAZON CAME THROUGH WITH REFUND INCLUDING POSTAGE COSTS - VERY HAPPY WITH AMAZON'S SERVICE HERE)

Pre-ordered the game for PC based on the sell that it was using the BF3 frostbite 2 engine. So here's me thinking the core elements of what makes BF3 great such as the gunplay and the way it handles would be produced in a similar level of quality.

My god how I was wrong.

Now here's the thing. THE GAME IS NOT FINISHED. The bugs and missing features list that are being pointed out on the battlelog forums is insane. The game plays like it's in alpha stage, not a releasable product.

The campaign is somewhat fun (only as a kind of interactive cinematic walkthough) but it's all been done before and brings nothing new or exciting to the table whatsoever. The characters are boring, plot is random and has gaping holes in it. It's like watching a pretty lame movie but with good action scenes. It sort of entertains you for a night, but you're not going to watch it again.

I did, however, buy this game for the multiplayer aspect and this is indeed where it fails. and FAILS HARD.

The first thing that greets you when you try to play this game is the absolutley dreadful user interface. It is completely counter intuitive, makes it incredibly hard to find simple functions such as "quit game" and makes the experience of trying to get in a game, partner up with your friends, edit your class etc extremely frustrating. I still haven't figured out how to mute people in the game, as the "mute VOIP" button seems to do nothing half the time. Not much fun when you get in a lobby with a guy who insists on listening to extremely loud death metal music and leaving his mic plugged in.

A big gripe with the gameplay is the fact that setting up your mouse sensitivity is impossible to get right. The reason for this is they have made it so when you aim down sight, the sensitivity is the same as when you are in free look. This means it is nigh on impossible to aim accurately in this game and makes the gunplay feel completely weird and counter intuitive. This is unlike any other first person shooter I've ever played, is very frustrating and not at all fun. I'm pretty sure this is a console port issue and shows the game hasn't been designed or tested on PC at all.

Then the audio - whilst the music is pretty good (although clearly ripped off from the Bourne movie series) The in game sounds are completely all over the place. I play on headphones and if I set the volume to a comfortable level so I can hear gunfire, then explosions and "thud" sounds when you are shot are DEAFENING. You turn it down for that, and you can't hear footsteps and your gun sounds like it's been fired 30 miles away. Not to mention the numerous bugs with audio cutting out and/or sounding muffled etc

Then there's the balance and game design issues. Although some of the gametypes are fun, and do bring slightly new ideas to the standard playlists, they are all blighted by gamebreaking balance issues. Grenades are ridiculously overpowered with too short a fuse, spawns are terrible (especially in Team Deathmatch ), the spec ops class has this ability to temporarily see everyone on the map through walls which completely out-does any of the other classes abilities (nor does it make any sense) Maps are designed badly with areas which no one ever ventures into and with ill thought-out choke points. The list goes on and on and on....

I don't personally have a problem with the graphics, yes they are a bit "cartoony" and not a patch on other games but they do the job ok. Although the maps do lack any sort of destructability which was hinted at in the marketing and even mentioned on the box packaging(naughty EA). Anyway, it's the gameplay, balance and polish issues that make it a complete fail. If I could get a refund for this game I would. Maybe some of the issues will be patched, but I don't agree with paying to be an alpha tester. The biggest issue is just the way the gunplay handles, with the previously mentioned sensitivity issues coupled with the fact that hit detection is all over the place makes it just a complete turn off from start to finish.

If you're a serious FPS fan. Avoid. If you don't mind throwing away 30 quid for one evenings light entertainment, then you might not be too disappointed.

Its that time of year again, for many of us we were expecting Bad Company 3 but we have received a gift from Danger Close instead.

I have read many reviews with many concluding on how this new Medal of Honour is more Call of Duty than Medal of Honour but in my opinion MOHW is its own game it's a fun, shooting, blasting, rollercoaster of a ride game and it does this very well. Sadly it doesn't seem to have much of a following and has been written of by many reviewers.

Medal of Honour is exactly what it says on the tin, its no Arma. It is a action first person shooter, when we watch Commando, Rambo, Casino Royale, Homeland, Executive Decision or any Steven Seagal movie we don't say that they copy each other, they are simply action films and Medal of Honour is simply a great first person shooter and that is it's DNA. It is one of the forerunner fps franchises and for me, I am glad that they have continued the franchises step into the 21st century.

The game mechanics are brilliant, it feels very realistic where Battlefield is more hands on MMOFPS run and gun. Medal of Honour's character models feel much more heavy. The controls are still quite similar to Battlefield but feel somewhat refined. The cover system could do with some work but aside from that the shooting mechanics are great. The single player is quite reminiscent of Sky & Cinemax's Strike Back and it has some of the most thrilling first Person driving sections that I have seen in a game to date. Medal of Honour has learnt from Battlefield 3 and I believe that it has more in common with Battlefield than COD. Medal of Honours younger brother Battlefield 3 is for me the defining shooter of this generation.

Online Medal of Honour feels very fast paced and this change I suspect was a deliberate one. The games are a lot quicker and can take some getting used too if you're a Battlefield gamer like I am but this more arcade feel is a breath of fresh air. It has a good selection of maps and for me the servers have been stable. Yes, MOHW uses Origin but I have had 0 problems with the service since I installed the game.

Onto the graphics, Medal of Honours graphics are very close too if not some of the best in class bar Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2, Medal of Honour is brilliant. I am using a standard GTX 580 and have the game running on ULTRA and have experienced zero lag frame rate drops or slowdown. I hope that Danger Close will release some brighter maps which really show the beauty of the frostbite engine as some of the maps can be quite dark.

Danger Close have done a brilliant job, unfortunately Medal of Honours success and fate has been determined more so by the time of year that it has been released in than the quality of the game and as there is no Battlefield this year it would seem that its fate had been decided. If Medal of Honour didn't come out at the same time as Dishonoured, Halo 4, Call of Duty BO2 it would have scored better with mainstream reviewers. I doubt we will see another Medal of Honour game until 2014 or thereafter as it will be Battlefield vs COD next year and I suspect that this will be a next generation Battlefield which will run perfectly on the GTX 680 or unannounced 700 Maxwell series.

Give MOHW a chance, if you like action and enjoy shooters rent it or buy it.

Score - 8/10

+ Great Campaign
+ Refreshing Multiplayer
+ Great Graphics
+ Solid Controls
+ Driving Levels

- Dark Dank Maps
- Small Selection of Multiplayer Maps
- 720p Downscaling on driving levels
- Ported Cutscenes
- No exploding skulls with headshots
- Questionable cover system

I have noticed that there are a lot of trolls reviewing products on Amazon.co.uk and I hope to produce than objective unbiased reviews for gamers and tech enthusiasts. ObjectiveReviewerRT11

Not as good as BF BC2 or COD MW3. My PC was built with gaming in mind and even at 32Bit this game worked. A couple of lockups, because of the lack of RAM, but on the whole this game did not cut it for me. The story line and cut scenes are a bit jagged and as someone has pointed out already some scenes cut back to 720p. I am not into Multiplayer/Online, only Singleplay. Since loading this game and the few probs with memory I have loaded 64Bit to get the full use out of an Overclocked System, back to the game. Setting up the mouse was a bit awkward, in the first scene, to get an accurate lock and steady, when in scope mode, I had to take down the sensitivity to zero. So when that scene/level was finished, Look, Peek etc; was really slow, back to adjust the mouse again (EA! Please get it right next time) and then throwing grenades is RUBBISH! I am sure that in real life I could throw further than I did on screen.

Sound is not much better through headphones or 5.1, have the sound turned up and the speech deteriorates, the music backing seems to be the only half decent part of the whole game. I think that EA should take a close look at its MOHW Forum and bring out a decent update, and looking at the stats, of the different countries, England is always quite low, have we in the UK got inferior copies??