About the game
Medal of Honor is a 2010 first-person shooter developed by Danger Close Games and DICE and published by Electronic Arts. It is a reboot of the Medal of Honor series and the thirteenth game in it. It was released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, plus a phone version, in October 2010. The earlier games were set in World War II, but this one takes place during the War in Afghanistan and is loosely based on Operation Anaconda, in particular the Battle of Roberts Ridge.
The campaign has objectives such as raiding enemy hideouts and calling in airstrikes. Players slide to cover and can ask teammates for ammo. For half the game the player is a Navy SEAL codenamed Rabbit. The rest of the time the player switches between Deuce, a Delta Force sniper, Specialist Dante Adams of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and Apache gunner Brad Hawkins.
Multiplayer is class based with Rifleman, Special Ops and Sniper classes. Players earn experience to unlock weapons and attachments, and a run of points without dying grants an offensive or defensive support action such as a mortar strike or ammo. Two sides play, the Coalition and the Opposing Forces. Reaching level 8 in a class makes the player Tier 1 and changes their appearance.
EA Los Angeles began development in 2007 after Medal of Honor: Vanguard, Airborne and Heroes 2, and chose to move the series to the modern era. In July 2010 the studio was renamed Danger Close Games. The team consulted with US special operations soldiers. DICE built the multiplayer on the Frostbite engine, while the campaign uses a modified Unreal Engine 3. At GDC 2010 EA said the PS3 would be the lead platform. Ramin Djawadi wrote the score, and Linkin Park's The Catalyst plays over the end credits.
The game came out in North America on 12 October 2010, in Australia on 14 October and in Europe on 15 October. It was the first Medal of Honor to get an M rating in the United States. The Limited Edition included an invite to the Battlefield 3 beta and, on PS3 only, a disc to download Medal of Honor: Frontline. A Tier 1 Edition was sold in Europe.
Reviews were generally positive, with a Metacritic score of 75 on PS3. Critics liked the multiplayer, the sound and the voice acting, and criticised the short campaign, minor technical issues and similarities to Call of Duty and Battlefield. EA reported more than 5 million copies sold across October and November 2010. A sequel, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, followed in October 2012.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 75 out of 100 from 56 reviews (PS3). Individual reviews: Edge 7/10, Eurogamer 8/10, Game Informer 7/10, GameSpot 7.5/10, IGN 6/10, Joystiq 4/5.
Good to know
- It is the first Medal of Honor game rated M in the United States.
- The Limited Edition's bonus disc downloads Medal of Honor: Frontline, which was only offered on the PS3 version.
- The Platinum, Medal of Honor Tier 1, needs every campaign and online trophy, so it can no longer be earned now that the online servers are gone.
- Players who had registered with EA's Gun Club and bought the VIP version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 got the M24 sniper rifle in multiplayer at launch.
- The single player and multiplayer were built by two studios on two different engines.
- In the trophy list the campaign trophies are named for mission moments, with the mission written in the description line.
Made by
Director Drew Stauffer, Producer Greg Goodrich, Producer Patrick Liu, Designer Antonio Barnes, Programmer Paul Keet, Art Beau Anderson, Composer Ramin Djawadi.
