Introduction

Developer: 2015
Publisher: EA
Officlal site: http://mohaa.ea.com

Games imitating the movies

Ever notice how movies with similar plots and themes seem to all come out at the same time? In 1997, we endured two volcano movies: Volcano and Dante’s Peak. Then we had a pair of comet-colliding-with-earth movies in 1998: Armageddon and Deep Impact. That same year saw the release of two World War II movies - Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line.

Look at the draw distance

It's not smart to crouch by barrels

Tracers lace the night

The gaming industry, in its efforts to mimic film as high art, also goes through this sort of me-too business. WarCraft II and C&C Red Alert were released near to one another. Quake III and Unreal Tournament both made it out for the 1999 holiday season. This time around, the inevitable comparisons between Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault will be made. And why not? They’re both Quake 3 engine-based FPS games set in the European theater of World War II. RTCW takes more of a fantasy, arcade approach, while MOHAA takes more of a hardcore historical, realistic angle.

Who’s responsible for all of this?

Grey Matter Studios (founded by many of the former members of Xatrix, makers of Kingpin) collaborated with Activision to release RTCW last year. Electronic Arts utilized helpful licenses from its association with Dreamworks SKG (producers of Saving Private Ryan) and contracted 2015 to develop Medal of Honor Allied Assault. Interestingly, 2015 had no prior experience making a full game – they’re best known for their work on Wages of Sin, the expansion pack to the ill-fated SiN. Now who remembers all the comparisons being made between SiN and Half-Life before they were released?

30 ought six vs. 9mm. You lose, Kraut

Popped in the head

This is a bad position

Medal of Honor franchise

The Medal of Honor series made its first appearance on the Playstation 1 in late 1999, and became arguably that platform’s best first person shooter. You played as Lt. Jimmy Patterson, running covert missions deep into German occupied territory, shooting up Nazis with 12 authentic WWII weapons. The original Medal of Honor was so popular among critics and the buying public that it spawned a sequel (prequel) on Playstation 1, Medal of Honor Underground, where you took a lead role in the French resistance. MOHU was released in late 2000, but wasn’t quite the runaway hit that the original was.

Allied Assault is the franchise’s first appearance on the PC. It’s not a rehash of either of the two Playstation games – these are all new missions. You even play as a different hero, Lt. Mike Powell. References to Patterson, and Manon from MOHU are made, and you even get to meet up with Manon, but that’s about all the relation that MOHAA bears to its predecessors. The game is broken up into six distinct missions (each with several sub-levels) that span the length of the war. These missions take you from the US campaign in North Africa to commando raids in Norway, to Omaha Beach, to the hedgerows and bombed out cities of France, and finally deep into Germany itself.