it seems that this is a game that's worth playing, but patience while they patch up stuff would probably be worth it. 

Medal Of Honor, and in fact the entire realistic war-setting FPS sub-genre, flew under the radar for me. I like pure action, fantasy, medieval. Having to use realistic strategy and tactics in order to avoid the one or two hits it takes to put you down is not what I'm used to. Until MOD:AA, I'd never actually played a game from this genre. But having played through it, it's in fact very similar to the Soldier Of Fortune and NOLF series'. And in those games I actually enjoyed sneaking around corners and trying to make every press of the trigger a headshot. This is the same, only even more emphasised.

You can take a number of hits before hitting dirt, but there is more reloading in this game than any I've ever played. At times this can be slightly annoying, especially in the sniper town where you'll have to reload many times over before you figure out where the next sniper is hiding. Nonetheless, this was my personal favourite part of the game. The comparison to Saving Private Ryan was obvious; and a smart move as it made it even more realistic actually pitting yourself in a destroyed town with snipers everywhere, pretending your actually in Saving Private Ryan.

The other highlight was, of course, Omaha Beach, again from Saving Private Ryan. It was a very difficult level to begin with. I ended up getting through with 4% health left, even with many, many reloads. But while it was a highlight, it could have been much more on a grand scale - the feature of the game. I'd love to see the battle remade in a newer engine.

The gameplay was surprisingly enjoyable and well-paced throughout the game. But while it was very fun, MOD:AA does have some drawbacks. Firstly, it's far too short. The ending was very abrupt, with no big battle at all. The entire game I completed in just two days, 3-4 sittings. Other games would only be reaching the halfway point by this stage. Fortunately, there are two mission packs available for extra playtime.

The other disappointment for me was the design. While this is a 2002 game, getting on six years old now, the Quake3/IDTech3 engine is capable of better. Games that come to mind: RTCW, American McGee's Alice, FAKK2; all of which were released well before MOH:AA. However, it was probably slightly better than Soldier Of Fortune II, which used the same engine and was released only months later.

Having said that, some of the design was great for 2002 - the war-battered sniper-town, the dark snowy forests, small villages set among countryside. But there were other levels looking very flat and plain such as the submarine and Omaha Beach itself.

Overall though, the design was good enough and even for a short game, MOD:AA was a load of fun. Probably not quite as fun as Soldier Of Fortune 2, but I'll be sure to play the two mission packs and look forward to the two PC sequels released since MOH:AA. 

i worked on Breakthrough, let me know what you think. 

oh sweet, what did u do on it?

i'll probably review both the mission packs next :) 

i'll tell you after the reviews :P 

I could never get that to run on my old gfx card, should try it now. 

Add more turret combats? 

The first mission pack for MOH:AA, did not really live up to the original game, but only due to many small problems. It really needed more polishing and playtesting.

Spearhead is made up of three missions, each containing roughly five levels each. The first mission takes place around the French countryside of Normandy. The visuals were good, living up to the original game, as was the gameplay. I will say the video intro is quite possibly the best intro to a video game I've seen. It begins with you parachuting out of a plane, flying through the air with carnage all around you, and eventually crash landing through a barn. Very intense.

For me, mission two was where the problems begun. Mission two took place in a nice snowy atmosphere, but it's the gameplay that ruined it. I eventually got up to tank, and having not received my stickybombs yet, could not proceed any further and had to start the level again. It was not clear at all the steps required during this level, as you need to blow up various equipment.

The third mission took place in Berlin and was really quite bland and ugly. The level design was flat, very open and the destroyed buildings were just a little too destroyed. Eventually I got to a point where I had four tanks to take on with a single rocket turret. Completely impossible, and I was forced to put god mode on. I'd already also left another two tanks behind. I'm guessing at some point I was supposed to have received sticky bombs, but that was not the case. Eventually I then get my own tank so here begins a long tank level, the finale. The tank level in MOH:AA was my least favourite, so having to play through more of this in what is already a short mission pack was not a good way to end it.

Add to this short playtime (only a few hours) the endless clipping problems as you get stuck on all sorts of small trees and even changes in terrain level. In the last mission I was able to use tiny pieces of barbed wire to my advantage, blocking tank rockets.

Apart from the final mission, the level design only barely lives up to the original MOH:AA, but gameplay needed much more playtesting and it was far too short to cough up money for. 

http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/games/dogfight2/

Too bad it's so fucking difficult and you have limited lives :( 

The second mission pack for MOH:AA, titled Breakthrough is exactly that; a breakthrough. But while it's much improved on the previous mission pack, titled Spearhead, yet it was the very brief and unpolished Spearhead that was more popular and received the favourable reviews.

Of course Breakthrough still had it's own set of flaws, different from the original game and Spearhead again. But it was the professionalism of the level design that saved Breakthrough - it looked much better than it's predecessors. Same engine, same graphics, but better build quality and a much more intense atmosphere. It kicks off intense right from the beginning in the Battle Of Kasserine Pass - a pass which is so thick with fog you can barely see in front of you. Very atmospheric and intense. This continues throughout right until the finale in an Italian castle. There are no levels here that really stand out as being sub-par, unlike the original game.

That covers the positive, so what of the flaws? This time, it's fairly big one - lack of ammo. While I never completely ran out of ammo, throughout the game it was really touch and go. I was forced to make every single hit count. Even then you may be reduced to the pistol in a couple of levels. Mission two, which takes place in a canal, is the worst for this. All I had left were about 30 shotgun shells, but a shotgun is hopeless when your enemy is 100 metres away sitting in a machine gun turret. So while I never truely ran out, it did force me to play much more conservatively, which had a slight impact on the enjoyment levels.

The other problem I found was the amount of times your put in a gun turret, the back of a vehicle or a tank having to hold off enemies. The problem is your nothing but a sitting duck which a huge gun. While this was fun for a while, it occurs a little too often in Breakthrough. The worst of it being in control of two rather awkward and frustrating mortars as several tanks appear over the horizon. I prefer solid run-and-gun gameplay, with only the very odd gimmick.

Breakthrough is overall a much longer experience than Spearhead and with the subtly improved level design, fans of MOH:AA really should not skip on Breakthrough. Just make sure your hits count, because the level of difficulty is slightly harder this time. 

and you better be ready 

Just a shame the concept is as old as the hills.

http://fantasticcontraption.com/ 

they may as well not bother, the greatest game ever made has already been made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLuYpxbP2EY 

 

What are the best Quake 4 sp mods ? 

I nearly wasn't going to play Enclave. I got it anyway, but upon installation get a blank screen when loading the game. A month later I decided to come back to it and check some forums for a solution. Turns out if your monitor is 60hertz it won't work. A rediculous problem, but easily fixable as I pumped my monitor up to 75hertz.

Having played through the entire game in two days, the second half in one sitting, I really struggle to think of a game, at least action game, that looks this good up until 2002. The level design is top notch all the way through - to the point of absolutely inspiring me to make my own levels. The levels are fairly small and cramped, with a theme last scene in Wheel Of Time. Only WOT was rather bland throughout most of the game, whereas Enclave is brilliant the entire way through. There are many different design styles from villages, castles and citadels to more creative islands, mines, hell-like outlands, woods and even a haunted house. The game engine is good, but doesn't allow the visuals to depend on fancy engine features for its looks. Instead what we have in Enclave is great architecture and design matched with wonderfully intricate textures. There appear to be only two level designers for the game - one of which was JF Gustafsson, creater of two of Quake 2's best custom releases, Age Of Panic and 1964. So it's no wonder we've got a visual feast from Starbreeze.

Only nitpicks with design would be that there are a few levels used twice in game. The reason why they're repeated is because you play this game in two halves. The first half of the game your playing the good guys, while the second half you return to the beginning of the story and repeat it as the bad guys. It was an interesting way to play through the game, but ultimately lead to a short and uninspired story.

Also one major glitch was the final two levels in the first half were harder than any of the levels in the second half. In fact the finale at the end of part two was dead easy.

While much of the game play was great fun, it was very unbalanced. As you progress through the game you get the choice of different characters to play, with different weapons. I attempted to play most of them and found that the Druid/Sorceress was easily the most dominant character with her long range spell attacks. Any close-range melee combat with many of the other characters was poor and very difficult. Even on easy, I'd die in no time trying melee combat with the large strong characters. While as the Druid/Sorceress it was breeze as enemies usually couldn't even get to me in time. So playing Enclave as any melee based characters is likely to be far too frustrating.

The other problem is no quicksave. If you die, you start the level again unless you've found a checkpoint. In that case, whenever you die you respawn at the checkpoint. It doesn't restart the game at the checkpoint, it simply respawns you. Which basically means you can just keep respawning until all enemies are dead, which makes it even easier than a quicksave. Frustratingly, sometimes checkpoints don't come soon enough, and some levels don't have them at all. The penultimate level in the first half was badly needing a checkpoint and I think some people may give up on that level.

If you only play first-person-perspective, you can switch from third to first very easily in Enclave. I couldn't figure out what the key was, but I accidentally pressed it at some stage. I'm a FPS fan, but for Enclave it actually seemed better as third person, especially when you get to play as the scantily clad Druid. More third-person-perspective games need the option of allowing first-person.

Enclave isn't perfect; the checkpoint feature and lack of quicksave is frustrating and the characters are not well balanced. But with gorgeous level design, its not a game you want to miss. Sadly, I think many players have skipped it. 

Yo Tronyn you should play Enclave, you'd appreciate it I reckon - it reminds me a lot of Heretic 2 and Rune. Just make sure you play as the Druid/Sorceress. 

is definitely awesome. 

I made 4 levels for breakthrough.

Kasserine Pass II was the second desert level. This had the mine detector segments in it. I would like to hear your opinion of the section where you escort the minesweeper tank while sniping at rocket launcher guys.

I also made the third level, Bizerte Canal. This had the canal crossing, and the section where an NPC has to pick a lock while you fight off guys on neighboring rooftops. I'd love to hear if you liked that section too.

Then i made two multiplayer maps, Anzio Beach (foggy bombed-out beach town) and Tunisia (narrow canyon connecting two desert towns.)

Some screenshots here in case you forgot:
http://www.celephais.net/cv/portfolio.htm

Also about the level design, we had a lot of community mappers on that project. Of the five or six main level designers, we had Yogi, Amethyst7, Unitool, and myself, all from the quake 1/2/3 mapping scene. Probably the only reason we could ship a decent game in the ridiculous short schedule we had is everyone knew the quake3 tech really well. 

Your 2 levels actually had quite difficult parts to them. The second desert level was overall pretty difficult from memory, especially escorting the minesweeper tank. And that lock picking scene was pretty hard too - you have to make every shot count. The idiot NPC got blown up a couple of times haha. No ammo problems on your maps though.

BTW what maps did Yogi make? I loved his Q3A maps, he's got a real talent for detail. You can't really do that sort of detail in realistic shooters though. 

thanks for the generous comments but they should be directed at metl :) 

my memory is a bit fuzzy, but...

I know Yogi did the very first level and I'm pretty sure he also did the very last level or last two levels. Beyond that, i'm not really sure but I think he made one more somewhere in there. 

lol yeah metl, that's what i meant :P 

http://www.ausgamers.com/games/duke-nukem-forever/screenshots/

I take it the game isn't optimised yet - not even any anti-aliasing here.... 

Which doesn't antialias, since it uses deferred rendering.

Looks underwhelming.