Medal of Honor: Warfighter Expectations

Perhaps the most notable thing about this game is that it actually attracted more attention by announcing that a beta key for Battlefield 4 is included with limited edition preorders than it has from marketing its own campaign or multiplayer game play.  However, after a less than stellar sales record from 2010's Medal of Honor modern reboot, public expectations are rather muted for a popular franchise release which is slated for October 23 of this year.

Many franchise loyalists have expressed that the MoH series was best represented by the World War II installments that helped to redefine the first person military shooter genre, but that's not to say that the last MoH game was a complete disaster.  Still, there were several things that kept it from being a great, or even memorable game.  Medal of Honor was somewhat successful in terms of distribution.  EA reported that the title sold over 5 million copies after just two months, but the game seemed easily replaced by heavier hitting titles soon after release.

That being said, what is it that MoH: Warfighter needs to get right to hold it's own during the Fall 2012 release season?  There are several things about the last MoH that left an odd taste in gamers' mouths, but for the sake of argument, let's boil it down to the most obvious points.

Single Player Campaign (Story):

I can remember being particularly excited by the prospect that MoH was playing the angle of what it was like to be an elite soldier in the United States Special Forces, and the game's inclusion of tie ins to real world events like 9/11 really fueled the fires of controversy that may have ultimately increased sales of the title.  Still, with all of the hype, the story was perhaps a little too effective in its aim.  The plot devices of MoH were planted in the real world, and a great amount of effort was taken to portray the soldiers in game in the most realistic way possible. However, it also served to alienate players from the story that the game was trying to tell. 

The NPCs were often a little too clinical as they worked their way through enemy encampments and villages which made the characters feel robotic and alien to civilian players.  MoH: Warfighter promises to examine the more human side of many of the characters returning to the franchise by exploring the effects of war on their personal lives, but I question how this will tie into the conflict of the new game.  If the plot moves away from the more grounded, realistic tone that MoH set for a more action oriented experience, the developers may struggle with diluting the campaign to something derivative, and that's the last thing that today's shooter market needs.  


Multiplayer Development:

It's not unheard of for developers to contract out development of certain game resources to other studios under the same publisher's flag, but MoH developer Danger Close's decision to leave the construction of their title's multi player component completely up to DICE was something that confused many fans of the game.  The result of said split development was that the two parts of the game felt like they were completely different games with different control schemes.  DICE's approach to MoH's online multi player was evocative of their then recent Battlefield: Bad Company games with a little bit of Call of Duty's franetic pacing, twitch reflex shooting and kill streak like gameplay mixed in. 

Multi player felt good, but it didn't carry many of the mechanics over from the single player campaign that could have made the experience feel unique.  For example, the campaign control scheme introduced a crouch sliding mechanic as well as a cover lean command and both were absent from the MP side along with the inability to go prone.  Perhaps those additions wouldn't have dramatically altered the MP experience, but they would have provided some tie ins to the campaign that could have pulled things together.  

Development of Warfighter looks to be handled by one developer with the use of the Frostbite 2 game engine created by DICE, but who really knows what this will mean for the MP suite.  Early reports indicate that Warfighter will utilize micro destruction like Battlefield 3, but most likely on a much smaller scale.  It's most likely that some environmental elements may be destructible, but structures and buildings will be another matter since MoH tends to favor smaller, more frenetic map layouts over the sprawling environments that Battlefield 3 is known for.  

The Breakdown:

With so many shooters on the 2012 roster that failed to capture much acclaim this year, Medal of Honor: Warfighter has quite a bit of ground to cover if it plans to make any sort of dent in what will most likely be a holiday season dominated by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  Not that every shooter that EA publishes should be out to steal the throne from Activision's Call of Duty series, but it is still likely that there is a lot riding on MoH's shoulders in terms of market representation this Fall.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter may be another in a long list of modern military shooter games, but this series still has a lot of potential to influence the direction that the genre will be taking in years to come.  It will be interesting to see what adjustments will be made to this tried and true franchise and whether or not the series reboot will be justified in the public's eye.  Medal of Honor: Warfighter launches on all systems on October 23, and hopefully the experience will be worth more than the Battlefield 4 beta for pre order purchasers.

What Half-Life 2 Can Still Teach Devs About Shooting Games

8 years later....still awesome

I'm fully aware that I have been living under a rock for the past 8 years when it comes to Half-Life 2, but having recently built a capable gaming PC, I finally was able to experience this title as it was meant to be experienced.  Of course there was the opportunity to purchase HL2 for consoles via the "Orange Box" release, but I had no interest at the time since most of the game's fan base seemed to be PC loyalists for which I had irrational disdain.  However, after Steam announced that they would be discounting HL2's already low price tag of $9.99 to nearly 1/3 of that cost, I decided to dive in and give the game a try.

After roughly 3.5 hours of playing the campaign, let me say I am still thoroughly impressed with this game.  It's true that HL2's mechanics are somewhat clunky and outdated given the fact that so many shooters have deemed it necessary to include an excess of sensory feedback devices (i.e. motion blurring, head bob, ADS, etc.), but HL2's bare bones point and shoot/interact mechanics are almost a refreshing break from all of those things.  Not being able to see Gordon Freeman's hands while he is steering a vehicle, and the absence of his lower body when pointing the reticule toward the floor may detract from the immersion effect of the game, but those complaints are small beans when compared with the copy and pasted issues that many modern shooters face.

So what is it exactly that HL2 gets right almost a full decade after it's release that modern shooters repeatedly fail at?  It all boils down to simplicity, and difficulty.  Now my current play through is still fairly young at under four hours, and I'm sure things will ramp up before I'm through, but HL2 is not an overly difficult game even on the highest difficulty.  The difficulty of the game is not really what I'm talking about, but rather the level of player challenge that the game presents mechanically.  Confused?  Let me explain. 

Most modern games offer multiple levels of difficulty that adjust how the game performs in specific ways.  Lower difficulties dumb down enemy AI, and perhaps even lower the number of enemies you face from level to level.  Other alterations may include increasing the overall amount of damage that your character can sustain from enemy encounters, or the availability of health packs and ammo, etc.  However, many shooters will still lead players through the environment in an obvious way via an NPC shouting "follow me to the next objective", or by placing a glaring way point marker on the HUD that leads you to the next checkpoint.  They want you to succeed even though there may be some cheap or unsound obstacle sitting in your way.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but nearly many modern shooters on the market has a way of leading players by the nose through scripted events in an effort to make things more exciting or visually pleasing.  Everything is instance based, and it makes for short, derivative campaigns that really don't leave players feeling like they have accomplished anything.  Sure, the ride was exciting, but then again it was more like participating in a choreographed action movie than actually having interacted with a world or it's inhabitants.

At it's core, HL2 is still a linear shooter with clearly defined objectives and way points, but moving through Gordan Freeman's world feels very different than most experiences in that navigation and puzzle solving is left mostly up to the player.  Perhaps the most obvious indication of this difference through the first part of the game is that there is very little dialogue aside from the few interactions Gordan has with NPCs as he sets out into the world.  There are huge gaps in the narrative where players are left to explore the environment where no direct communication with Gordan is made aside from the mechanical sounding chatter of his enemies.  There's no inner voice instructing players on how to solve puzzles, there's no radio chatter telling Gordon that he's headed in the wrong direction, there is only the emptiness of the desolate world that players must survive.

Puzzle solving also plays a huge part in what sets HL2 apart from most games.  HL2's world is a puzzle in itself even though it appears to be linear and straight forward.  HL2's stages are set up as one continuous labyrinth where players are presented with obstacles that are not immediately obvious to solve.  For example, in the early parts of the game I was navigating through the drainage canals of the first city when I came to what was apparently a dead end.  Before me was a pool of water with a large stirring apparatus in the center.  On the other side, a locked gate with a ladder and walkway behind it.  My first reaction was to scour that area for a way to get around the gate, but my searches above and below the water turned up nothing.  After several minutes, I realized that this area was just meant to throw me off of the true course which was hidden behind some rusty metal oil drums that I hadn't noticed earlier.

The small amount of triumph that I felt at having passed that obstacle was greater than any scripted action sequence that most modern shooters have thrown my way in the past eight years, and that's something that I hadn't expected from a first person shooter.  In fact, given Valve's reputation, they are quite adept at making first person action platformers that masquerade as shooters given the popularity and success of their Portal games, but perhaps this type of balance is what is needed in modern FPS games across the board.

ArmA 2 is another example of an older game that brought several interesting concepts to the board by giving players a huge sandbox world to traverse while still throwing in the action element that other shooters offer.  Now the ArmA series is perhaps a little too complicated mechanically to appeal to the wide audience that HL2 caters to, but still the concepts are the same.  Developers need to move away from holding the hands of their fans to some extent if they would like to appeal to more mature audiences. 

Is this a profitable business model that will ensure that heavy hitting publishers/distributors will continue to see top dollar sales on a continual basis?  Perhaps not, but it is an appeal for developers to pull back from their need to funnel players into enjoying their gaming experience in a specific way.  Games should be interactive, but also should promote exploration and innovation in a way that promotes better game playing instead of exploitation.  Perhaps with next generation consoles on the horizon, systems will be able to handle this more capably, but it is more likely that such games will find a larger following with the PC community. 

I will continue to enjoy the more generic shooters of this generation, but once I finish HL2, I will always be looking for something more to fill out my experience.