EA has finally brought its Medal of Honor series (already wildly popular on the PlayStation) to the PC. Set during World War II,
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault chronicles the fictional exploits of Lt. Mike Powell as he battles his way from the shores of Africa to the shores of France to the heart of Nazi Germany. On the PSX, the Medal of Honor games were hailed as revolutionary, and though
Allied Assault never quite merits that level of praise, it's still a great game.
At first glance,
Allied Assault seems to have a lot in common with the World War II-themed
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but the similarities are strictly superficial.
Allied Assault takes a more realistic approach to the action, both in the enemies that you face (there are no zombies or mutants) and in the mission structure. The game unfolds across six real-life theaters of war, and the 30 playable missions vary a lot in how they play out. Just like a character in a good army movie, you'll be sabotaging tanks, destroying submarines, and sending false communications. Nearly all your missions are very well designed, especially the mission where you land on Omaha Beach.
The D-day mission has received a lot of attention, and for good reason--once the door on your Higgins boat drops, all hell breaks loose. The men in front of you drop in a hail of bullets, a Higgins boat to your left is blown to bits, and machine gun fire rakes the water everywhere. Getting from the boat to the relative safety of the shingles is a truly harrowing experience, although parts of it borrow a little too much from
Saving Private Ryan.
Since the game is set during WWII, you'll face a wide range of enemies, including tanks, machine gun nests, and even planes. The enemy AI is better than in
Wolfenstein--enemies will duck for cover, lay down suppressing fire, and throw back grenades--but too often it's obvious that enemy actions are scripted. At times you can actually tell when you've triggered the next wave of enemy attacks: stay still and nothing happens; silently creep a foot forward and they all come rushing out. This kind of heavy-handed scripting is a throwback to the days of
Doom, and more than a little bit of a disappointment.
Graphically,
Allied Assault looks quite sharp. It uses the
Quake III graphics engine and the character models, vehicles, and textures are well done, especially if you have a high-end video card. Unfortunately, there are some glitches, such as clipping and collision detection problems. It's not uncommon to see enemies walking halfway through a door or a wall. Also, in a (successful) effort to get a "T" rating, there is absolutely no blood or gore. When you a shoot a Nazi infantryman with your captured MG-42 machine gun, he simply falls down.
The weakest part of
Allied Assault is its multiplayer component. There are four game types, all of which are exceptionally average, and none of them is as compelling as
Wolfenstein's multiplayer. Still, it is undeniably fun to wage war in bombed-out French villages and other World War II battlefields.
Allied Assault offers a fun single-player game and its D-day mission will go down as a classic gaming experience.
3 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games (additional space required for Windows swap-file);
ATI® Rage 128, Radeon® or greater; or PowerVR Kyro II with OpenGL and DirectX 8.0 compatible driver;
