Medal Of Honor Rising Sun Review

Friends

The Medal of Honor series that are famed WW2 first person shooters. The main difference being that Rising Sun takes the action away from Europe and places it in the Pacific, meaning your enemies are now the Japs and not the Nazis.

The game starts off with a dramatic episode landing you, as US marine Joe Griffin, in the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbour. The amount of action is breathtaking but its predecessor Frontline still has the better opening of the two. Unfortunately the rest of the game feels inferior to its predecessor apart from one or two small things. This isn't to say that its a bad game, but rather it is quite a disappointment.

The games missions are fairly well handled and range from sniping Japs while going down Guadalcanal, to being on the back off a munitions truck and defending it from Jap troops and Tanks.

The town-based levels are nice and its obvious that the designers experience with Frontline has helped with the design of these levels. The main problem is with the Jungle levels. The way they are designed doesn't really make you feel like you are in a massive jungle, rather it feels like a Jungle with corridors.

Onto the AI, I won't beat around the bush, the enemy is dumb, so dumb they will rush you with bayonets even if you are blasting them. The only time they use cover is if they were next to it before they saw you, and they are generally not very bright.

The guns in this game are very limited, to the point you'll use your favourite all the time unless you are forced to use another. You only have about 8 guns in the game, if that, and only 2 are Japanese. This is a disappointment considering the amount of German and overall guns in Frontline. The only one improvement in the weapons is the inclusion of a grenade button. This means you can throw a grenade at your enemies and shoot them with a weapon without having to go through your weapons to throw a grenade then go back to your weapon.

There is some music in the game but only at key points. The rest of the sounds are ok and keep the game going reasonably well. All i can say is i wish there was a bit more music.

The lifespan of this game is surprisingly short, you can complete it in around 5 hours. give a couple of more days to get every medal, extra item and secret objectives and you wish there was more. In saying that there is a multiplayer mode but it feels a lot more unbalanced than the main game and there really isn't a lot of multiplayer modes. Also the lack of weapons hurts the multiplayer.

Graphics 7

Explanation: Town levels look good, characters move well enough but the Jungle levels look almost like cardboard cut-outs and the "jungle corridors" don't help either

Sound 7

Explanation: Music and Speech do well enough, I wish there was more music though.

Gameplay 6

Explanation: Lack of weapon variety + Dumb enemies + Lack of path choices = repetitive game, the only things going for it are the town areas and multiplayer

Lifespan 5

Explanation: 5 hours to get through the missions, 2 or 3 days to find and do everything. Multiplayer helps but not much.

Influence +5

I like FPS' and I'm interested in World War 2 and all the things surrounding it. I've also played the previous instalments on Playstation and MOH: Allied Assault on PC with both expansion packs and liked them all.

Overall 6

Explantion: This is the worst Medal Of Honor game that I have played on the playstation systems. It is still a solid FPS but the makers are going to have to do something special with the sequel to get the series back to its best.