I’ve had only a handful of amazing online experiences, EA’s 2002 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Battlefield 1942 on the PC, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the PS3. Both Medal of Honor and Battlefield were unique in their own way and pretty much defined the two tangents of First Person Shooters (FPS) titles we play today. MoH:AA provided an epic single player campaign (who can forget the opening Omaha Beach battle à la Saving Private Ryan?). Battlefield 1942, while very different, laid the groundwork for a franchise that today still runs on the same successful premise of aerial, vehicular, and ground combat. And, of course, everyone who owns Call of Duty 4 has at least one reason why they love that game. While Battlefield has a monopoly on its genre, the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty franchises have always butted heads. What’s become clear to me is that Electronic Arts has to step it up and become a strong competitor again, though if rumors are true about the next MoH title, chances for a comeback aren’t looking good.

Rewind to Fall of last year. Activision, after having tapped Infinity Ward to come back on board and develop Call of Duty 4 (Treyarch developed CoD3 and is currently working on the 6th installment), released the much hyped title. Three months earlier EA Games released Medal of Honor: Airborne (both game screenshots are shown below). While both games were fairly comparable visually (I personally think CoD has an edge here), but reviewers went crazy over Call of Duty 4, Metacritic giving it a Metascore of 94, while MoH: Airborne only received a score of 75. What I think is going on is that gamers are just tired of WWII shooters. How many times have we blown up Nazi 88mm flak guns? Or stormed the beaches of Normandy, or parachuted in behind enemy lines? Too many times. Rumor has it, though, that Electronic Arts is taking its WWII franchise in another direction, Afghanistan. Not only will the speculated Medal of Honor title take place in the real, and very war torn country, the game will indeed be based on reality! This came as the biggest surprise to me, as we’re used to hearing either about Norman villages (MoH) or the CoD4 news report about an invasion of a intentionally unnamed Middle Eastern country. If EA’s “Medal of Honor: Operation Anaconda” (based on the 2002 battle of the same name) comes to fruition, I don’t see it doing too well. But who knows.

I do think that Electronic Arts continuing to make FPS titles, and departing from their WWII comfort zone, is a good thing. It keeps companies like the Activision/Treyarch, Activion/Infinity Ward duos honest to their fans. If there’s is only one supplier, quality goes down. It’s best to remember that all the developing of these war themed shooters requires a lot of trial and error. We need only look at Battlefield 2142 and it’s much too disconnected feel from the rest of the series. Also, we have to remember the ones that did it right; when Activision brought back Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4, the switch was seemless from WWII to Modern times. Infinity Ward seems bent on branching out (or even creating an original IP) and developing a sci-fi shooter; I have no doubt they’ll nail it.

It’s an exciting time for war themed shooters. Our current generation consoles have some impressive capabilities and will bring the war to us in a way like never before. I can’t even imagine what the next-gen systems, and innovative developers like Infinity Ward, will bring to the table.

Posted by Daniel on 08/06 at 03:17 PM
(0) Comments