As I noted in my review of the original Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MoH:AA), it was a game that I knew I was going to be playing through several more times. Now that I'm equipped with 20/20 hindsight, I would have to say that was prophetic. I've finished the original no less than four times, and I've been tempted on occasion to play through it yet again. What is it that keeps bringing me back to it? Well, it's not that it provides a unique experience every time through, that's for sure. If anything, MoH:AA is one of the most tightly-scripted games made to date. I think what keeps me coming back for more is the sheer fun factor. No matter how many times I participate in the Normandy Beach landing, for example, it still fills me with a sense of awe.
That I would buy the expansion pack, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead (MoH:AA:S)—is that an unwieldy title or what?—seems pretty natural, really, in light of the degree to which I've enjoyed the first game. All of what made the original game special is found in the expansion as well. In addition, the expansion pack brings a number of new weapons to the table, still more hectic missions than the original game, and some of the most amazing scripted sequences to date. Still, I wish I could say the expansion lives up to my expectations, but it doesn't. Read on to find out why.
The game looks pretty darned good, even after the release of Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2k3). It obviously falls short of UT2k3's eye candy, and in truth I don't think it looks quite as good as the other World War II inspired shoot-em-up from EA Games, Battlefield 1942 (BF1942). Still, it looks good, and it's more than good enough to immerse yourself in the action. The special effects are noticeably better this time around, some of the textures seem improved from the original, and it seems to me like some of the models have benefited from some extra work as well, though I may be mistaken on that point. The short summary is that there are better looking games these days, but MoH:AA:S isn't anything to complain about... yet. If EA Games is still using the same engine in another year or so, well, then I might have something different to say.
I was greatly impressed with the aural elements of MoH:AA, and the expansion pack is no different. If anything, the weapon sounds are still as sharp and compelling as they were in the original. The music is the same, perfect fare that the first game featured. The ambient audio is still wonderful, and so forth. I have no complaints about the audio whatsoever. The expansion is as pleasing to ear as the original game was.
Given that the expansion pack adds roughly nothing to the interface, I have little to say beyond what I said in my original review. My lone complaint remains the same; i.e., the interface reminds me of the annoyances of console games. That is, there is no clear menu structure. One must poke around an admittedly pleasant and thematically consistent room for all of the "hot spots". This is old news, though, so I won't berate the point any further. I think it would have been nice for the expansion pack to revamp the interface, but if you give me a choice between improving the interface and another mission or two, I would surely choose the latter.
The game's mechanics are largely unchanged, save for two obvious differences. The first obvious difference comes into play in the missions insofar as you have far more "big toys" to use. Many more of the objects in the landscape are now functional. Using the anti-aircraft guns against the ground troops in the first mission was a hoot, and I found myself using mortars pretty frequently in some of the later missions as well. It's nice that these things are active, as it lends much more realism to the gameplay. The second obvious difference involves the multi-player aspect of the game, so I'll cover it in that section of the review. Suffice it to say that the single-player mechanics are just as great as they were in the original game.
I let the original game slide on this count because I knew some things about the troubled history of its development. The developer was behind the eight ball from the beginning in terms of the schedule, and it only got worse as time marched on. I could thus forgive them for not drawing a coherent thread from it all. In contrast, MoH:AA:S gets off on exactly the right foot, proceeds quite well for a time, and then falls apart at the end as far as I'm concerned.
You start off wearing the boots of Jack Barnes as he makes his way through the end-game portion of World War II in Europe. The first several missions make sense, more or less, and they contribute to the feeling that you're really there fighting with the allies. The entries from Barnes' diary do much to make the conflict very personal. Then all of a sudden you're surrounded by a bunch of Russians on the way into Berlin in what seems like a completely disjointed couple of final missions. Was I the only person who thought something was rather blatantly missing in between? Sheesh. I found the story elements of the game disappointing at the end after getting off to such a great start.
This is where the expansion both succeeds wildly and fails miserably. It succeeds insofar as some of the missions in MoH:AA:S exceed the scope and best the overall wow-factor of the original game. The opening mission, "Welcome to France" is downright amazing, featuring a paradrop into what can be described only as hell. Truly, that is the most inspired beginning to a video game that I've ever seen. It left me trying to remove my jaw from the floor where it had fallen. It's just that good. Bravo, developers!
Unfortunately, though, if the original game can charitably be described as "short", then the expansion doesn't even qualify as an expansion. Seriously, that was my biggest gripe with the original game, and the same thing applies more forcibly where the expansion is concerned. I realize it's an expansion pack, but it's selling at the same price as many other full-up games. I played through the original game in about seven hours or so. Granted, it was a gripping, heck-of-a-lot-of-fun seven hours, but it was a mere seven hours nevertheless.
I played through the expansion in half that time. The opening missions weren't challenging at all. If anything, they seemed easier to me than the opening missions from the original game. I found only a couple of the missions difficult at all—both "A Night in Hell" and "What Comes Around..." really taxed my patience thin in dealing with the artillery bombardment and stupid AI-controlled squad mates who couldn't be bothered to shoot the German guys right in front of them—and I blew through even those pretty quickly. The missions are so richly scripted with such a wealth of detail that I assume they take longer to put together than the average level in Ghost Recon or other such games, but a few hours of gameplay for $34.95 is just nuts. That's more expensive, in terms of dollar-per-hour value, than movies for crying out loud!
In retrospect, I think I made a mistake buying the expansion pack when I did. When it came out, I had just finished the original game for the fourth time, and I was still really geeked about it as a whole and positively drooling in anticipation of more. I also figured that this time around the developers would be able to leverage their previous success to get a more favorable schedule from the publisher; i.e., I was hoping that the game wouldn't get cut so short as the original. The expansion pack was fun, and I know I'll be playing through it several more times, but it just isn't worth the money for the content you get.
I really liked the multi-player aspect of MoH:AA, and I figured it would do well. The fact that so many players are still slugging it out on so many servers today (6019 players on 1623 servers as of this writing according to GameSpy 3D), seems to indicate that my impressions of the original were shared by many. While I like the trend toward larger and more interesting maps in MoH:AA:S, I'm not at all sold on the change in movement speed. Coming from Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, the movement speed in the original did seem slow at first, but I really learned to appreciate it over time. It made the muti-player gameplay quite special compared to most other first-person-shooter games. No matter how good you were at moving about, you just couldn't dodge well enough to avoid getting whacked if you simply ran out into the open. It forced the player to adopt a more cautious and realistic approach to play, and that was very welcome.
MoH:AA:S changes all this by upping the movement speed non-trivially. Yes, I realize it's an option on the server, but the default is set to the faster speed. This is a big mistake in my estimation. It's a change I might have argued for when I first headed on-line with the original game, but after playing a lot of it, I'm quite opposed to the faster speed. It removes something very precious about the gameplay of the original, turning too many firefights into another dodging competition. Players don't have to think like they used to. If they get into a bad situation, they can get out of it far more quickly. Maybe that appeals to most folk, but I think it an awful change.
It was almost exactly a year ago now that I was writing my review of the original game, and I said of it that you really needed to quit reading and go buy it. My conclusion for the expansion pack is exactly the opposite; i.e., I suggest you avoid it like the plague for the time being. Once the price drops to a far more reasonable level, say, $15, then it's worth the money. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun playing the expansion pack, and I know I'll have lots of fun playing through it again. But it's just too short a game for the money at full price. It just isn't worth it for the time being. Personally, I hope EA Games continues to support the franchise, but they really need to bring a full-fledged game to the table, not something that you can bust through in a couple of hours.
01/11/2003