Medal
of Honor: Allied Assault
Produced by: Electronic Arts
Developed by: 2015
Review by:
Luckee and Frag-girlie
January 30, 2002
In Medal of
Honor: Allied Assault, players are cast in the
role of Lieutenant Mike Powell, a West Point
graduate with a degree in military history and
languages. After his exemplary performance at
Carrickfergus and at the live fire training
exercises at Achnacarry, Scotland, the OSS
internally designated Lt. Powell as: Special
Infantry, which by their definition is “an elite
soldier with Ranger-level training, available for
and subject to flexible and short-term
reassignment for specific missions requiring
covert deception and/or sabotage in preparation
for major offensives." The OSS, Office of
Strategic Services, was the WWII-era organization
that was involved in sabotage, subversion, and
search and rescue missions as part of their daily
operations.
The introduction to the game sets the scene well
as you spin around between close-up shots of a
soldier’s uniform with all its decorations, to
visions of soldiers in battle and scenes of war
and death. The intensity of the music, combined
with the images on the screen, make your heart
rate increase and your adrenaline pump getting you
ready for action.
The game opens with you riding in the back of a
German Opel transport truck in Algeria, North
Africa with four other soldiers. Above the sounds
of your truck the Captain is telling the group
that they are to take control of the village
quickly, while trying not to let any sentries slip
away to warn the other troops in the nearby
village Arzew, as the truck comes to a stop. Your
attention is focused to the rear of the vehicle
where another transport truck is stopping to speak
with a German guard at the post. After a brief
conversation, things go awry and shots are fired.
The other transport truck explodes and you and
your group jump from your truck to engage in
battle and take over the village...
Graphics:
MOH: AA uses the Quake 3: Team Arena engine and
its graphics are excellent. The character
animations are very good, detailed down to the
last stitch on the soldiers’ uniforms. There are
also plenty other environment-type effects such as
a starry night sky, lightning storms in the
distance, and trees swaying in the wind that are
all beautifully done.
This game features some of the most
impressive environments ever created. The lighting
and fog effects in some scenes are so well done
you'll find yourself squinting in the sun or
struggling to see through the shadows or dense
fog. A
lot of the scenes closely resemble real WWII
locations that immerse you in them with their
familiarity. Those of you who have seen some of
the more popular WWII movies, specifically Steven
Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the
Gate, will notice the obvious influence. From
burnt down, crumbling buildings to the lush
countryside, the graphics depict these scenes to a
tee.
Every time a new shooter comes out using the
powerful Quake 3 engine we often ask ourselves if
we will see anything that we haven’t seen already.
So, with that in mind we can tell you this is the best we’ve
seen the Quake engine represented yet. People talk
about Return to Castle Wolfenstein as looking
really good on this engine, something which we
agree with to some point, but still it’s not the same
caliber as what was created in MOH: AA. This is
truly greatness at work!
Sound:
The music and sound effects in MOH: AA are
outstanding and add to the suspense. The music is
very well done with a full orchestra, often times
intensifying just before an ensuing battle. Every
level is filled with ambient sound effects as
well, from the sound of the breeze in the trees,
to distant explosions and other sounds of a far
away battle that convincingly bring the world to
life. Music wasn’t always used or needed, however,
to completely engulf you in the incident. The
soundtrack for the Normandy beach level, for
instance, consists of gunfire, water splashing,
and screams and cries of death, with conversations
going on between groups of panicked soldiers that
you hear as you pass by. We feel it was much more
effective and intense than any music could have
made it.
Surprisingly
this game didn’t forget the voice acting, which is
typically weak in games, as the Germans are
actually speaking German, not English with a
failed attempt at a German accent.
The sound
details continue to the weapons as each has its
own distinctive sound that accurately depicts its
real world counterpart.
AI:
The folks at 2015
did a great job with the AI in this game and
although we haven’t seen anything revolutionary, it
is definitely up there with RTCW, which has superb AI.
Where
this game's AI excels is in the combat situation. They don’t kick the grenade back at you like
they do in RTCW, but they do have an enormous ability to hunt you down
and kill you with one shot. They will duck
around corners or run and hide behind things until
they have painted you for a kill and they'll even jump out
of the way of your fire.
One good example of the AI was a situation from
the 2nd mission. You are making your way though
this base when the level ends and when the next
level begins you are disguised as a German officer
and are approached by these real German soldiers
asking for your papers for clearance. If you
hesitate in the least they point their gun at you
and threaten to shoot you unless you revel the
paper. When you show them the paper, one of the
guards raises his hand and apologizes for the
harassment and allows you to proceed through the
doorway. Then there are a couple of guards sitting
around playing cards, with one of them scratching
his head thinking about his next card to play.
The AI are often interacting with each other
independently of their interaction with the
player.
Controls:
MOH: AA has
the standard control settings and playability of
most first person shooters, allowing even the
novice fps fan to be a specialist in little time.
Multi-player:
Our favorite
multi-player mode is the objective based mode
where the Allies and Nazis compete for objectives
on one of the game's 6 objective-based maps. We
imagine the Omaha map will be the favorite of most
players.
Most modes will support 64 players,
which is good for home LAN parties as well and the
nightly online frag-fest, provided you have a
machine to host that many players.
Testing:
We figured you
would
want to know how this game ran on
different gaming rigs, so we tested it on two. The
first machine we tested it on was Frag-girlie's
which is a Win ME, 1.2 GHz AMD Athlon rig with 256
MB of RAM and a 32 MB geForce 2 MX card. The
performance of this machine was splendid at
1024x768 with everything turned up to 32 bit mode
for color as well as textures, but when we pumped
it up to 1280x1024 we started to get a fair amount
of choppiness. The next system we used was Luckee's and it is a Win XP, dual 1 GHz Intel rig
with 512 MB of RAM and a 32 MB geForce 2 card. We
ran the game at 1280x1024 with 32 bit color and 32
bit texture and had all the advanced options
turned up high and didn’t see any problems, it was
smooth as silk. (Note from Frag-girlie....
with that gaming rig, now you see why we call him
Luckee...)
Mod Community:
Hopefully EA and 2015 will continue to support the
mod community for MOH: AA, just think of the
possibilities with all that it has to offer. Even
though Medal of Honor had its start on the Sony
PlayStation, we feel that MOH: AA has found its
true place on the PC in the first-person shooter
genre. It will be fun to play for a long time to
come and could continue to grow and evolve with
the creation of mods. We’re anxious to see what
the mod community will do with such a great
product to start from.
WOW Factor:
This is one of
the most realistic games we’ve ever played. During
the Normandy Beach Level we felt as though we were
in the game. The realism and the sound effects
of this level seemed to make our heart rates
rapidly increase!
Conclusion:
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is an extremely
intense and engrossing experience that successfully
combines two types of warfare: all-out,
large-scale missions like the landing at Normandy,
and smaller-scale, behind the lines missions that
involve sabotage and intelligence work. It
successfully shows the most authentic wartime
atmosphere ever seen in a game and uses history to
exaggerate the cutting-edge 3D design and game
play. If you like high action, realistic game play
that puts you in the middle of WWII, Medal of
Honor: Allied Assault is the game for you. It is
truly an enjoyable cinematic-type experience.
PCShooter gives this game a Whopping 10/10 and our
Editors' Choice Award.
For additional
information,
checkout the official
Medal of Honor: Allied
Assault website.
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