Medal of Honor Beta: Was it worth the wait?

When I heard that EA/DICE was going to allow those players who pre-order Medal of Honor to have access to the multiplayer beta, I promptly went to my local Gamestop and placed my order.  Apparently I had heard a bit late, the beta opened on June 21st and I got my access code on the 23rd.  The kid behind the counter said, “By the way, the 360 beta was delayed but it should be available tomorrow.”  PC and Playstation 3 players had immediate access.  No one was really sure where the problem was in regards to the 360 version, and no one in charge was saying anything.

Fast forward>>ONE MONTH LATER.  The beta is finally open for 360 players two days after the initial run was supposed to end.  So, now I was in with the cool crowd.  I got to play the game that was going to put MW2 die hards on notice.  My thoughts?  I don’t think Modern Warfare has much to fear.

There were good things about it, absolutely. I liked the maps that were included with the beta.  There were two that I played through, and each one had a specific game type linked to it.  The first one was a ruined Kabul city district for what the game called Team Assault.  It is basically a team death match type of play that has the American forces pitted against the Taliban insurgents.  The other map was a mountainous river valley with mission objectives, similar to a domination mode in MW2.  If you were a Taliban you had to hold off the American troops for a not-terribly-clear time limit. If you were an American soldier you had to destroy objectives and drive the insurgents back through several defensible areas.  The maps were very detailed and unique enough that I enjoyed seeing the new scenes and figuring out the new strategies.

MoH has a class system similar to Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  In fact other than the new maps, it looks, plays, and feels almost exactly like Bf:BC2.  (Yes, there are vehicles that can be controlled by the player.) There are three classes in the beta.  The first is a Rifleman, which is a standard run-and-gun type of soldier.  Next, is a Special Ops soldier, which I used the most because it had the added ability of using rocket launchers, which helped take out the player-controlled vehicles.    Finally there is a sniper class which has…. wait for it…. a sniper rifle.  All of these classes are upgradeable as you progress and level up.  If you are familiar with Bf:BC2 then imagine that only a little less refined, no building destruction, but I assume that will be in the final product, and with quite a few bugs and glitches.

Since this is a beta it plays like a beta.  The first few days I played it I got randomly dropped out of every match that I played.  The gameplay was very choppy and there was a bad problem with phantom killers who appear out of nowhere a millisecond before you are dead.  Since those first few days the game play has improved, probably partly because the number of players online has plummeted.  In one weeks time the number of players that I see online at any given time has fallen from somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 to last nights grand total of around 1,000.  I imagine that significant a drop in players caused the improved the game play in regard to lag and latency issues.  The mission map has some pretty bad glitches where the American troops are unable to complete a waypoint and inevitably lose because of that, but the team assault map is significantly better.

All in all, the Medal of Honor reboot will bring a great game series into the modern era with style.  I definitely like the idea of using a realistic situation like the military action in Afghanistan as a backdrop for this game.  If there was ever an issue I had with MW2 it was the ridiculousness of some of the scenarios associated with the story.  There are no Russians invading Burger Town in MoH.  If you like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 you will definitely like Medal of Honor.  I don’t however feel like this will do much to cause people to drop MW2 or even hurt the prospects of what is coming later, Call of Duty: Black Ops.

As of press time it has been announced that EA will be extending the 360 beta to August 9^th.