Medal of Honor | B-

Electronic Arts and Danger Close's FPS, Medal of Honor made headlines before it even hit shelves. When the multiplayer beta was released, it was revealed that it was possible to pick sides as either the U.S. Army or the Taliban, rather than assign players to arbitrary, nameless teams. This development was not taken particularly well by anti-video game activists, even spurring disbarred attorney Jack Thompson to take on the case. Eventually EA deemed that the public relations nightmare was hardly worth sacrificing potential sales, so they decided to cave in and rename the Taliban as the "Opposing Force." For all the controversy, however, the question remains: Is Medal of Honor any good? The answer: sort of.

The single player campaign is short and will run about five-to-seven hours depending on difficulty and skill level. Of course, "skill level" is a very broad term when talking about this game, because the AI is so awful that even the most inexperienced players should have little trouble dealing with enemy NPCs. Computer "tactics" are limited to finding and firing from cover. Even playing on the middle difficulty setting, it feels as though I should encounter more resistance while playing.

Storytelling isn't exactly a primary concern for the team over at Danger Close. The plot seems cliché and predictable. The soldiers on the ground struggle as they conduct day-to-day combat operations, while the command fights with Washington over strategy and politics. It's vague and unoriginal. This problem could easily have been remedied through the use of good character development, but unfortunately, this is hardly the case. It's difficult to care whether your allies live or die when they aren't given any personality that would differentiate them from the enemies you're shooting.

Other than the faulty AI, the game plays pretty well. While nothing groundbreaking, Medal of Honor is mechanically decent. The controls are of the typical FPS fashion and there is a variety of weaponry to choose from. Medal of Honor's graphics are solid — from deep, sculpted gorges to bombed-out city remains, the game does a good job in bringing the war-torn country of Afghanistan to life. Gameplay is smooth, yet completely typical of a first-person shooter.

With an easy, shallow six-hour campaign mode, EA had to be sure that the multiplayer aspect justifies the $60 price tag. So they decided to contract the multiplayer out to Dice, the company responsible for the high-quality experience in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Fortunately, the multiplayer is done well, borrowing certain elements such as offensive and defensive support abilities from the Battlefield series as well as the Modern Warfare games. Combat is more difficult and intense than in the campaign mode, so players who completed the single player first may have difficulty acclimating to the multiplayer. Player classes are customizable — each class has access to different types of weapons, which can be further outfitted with accessories, both of which are obtained via a leveling system. However, the system lacks the depth of other games in the genre. There are several types of game modes: a team, death-match style, conquest and objective-based modes. Though the game modes are interesting, the maps have little variation between them.

Medal of Honor is not a bad game, nor is it a great game. The market saturation of modern war shooters works against it, as games like Modern Warfare 2 or Bad Company 2 are preferable options. However, if you're sick of both of these games, then give Medal of Honor a try.