Medal of Honor: Beta Hands-On

Ever since EA announced a reboot of the Medal of Honor-series, I’ve been eagerly anticipating its release. And while we’re a few months away from actually playing the final code of the game, EA and DICE have given a select group of people the opportunity to have a taste of the game’s multiplayer mode.

This past few days, after having dealt with the incredibly painful and awkward Betakey Redemption-process, I’ve encountered more bugs and glitches than I ever had before in a Beta. Granted, it’s still alpha-code, but after my PS3 froze six times in a row while getting a Scorechain, I got a bit irritated. But here’s the thing; I didn’t feel like giving up. I wanted to go on. The game is very fun to play, even in its current state, with all the bugs and glitches. And I guess that means something.

“But what’s this Scorechain you just mentioned?”, you might ask. Well, EA always said they wanted Medal of Honor to be a direct competitor to Activision’s multimillion-selling Call of Duty/Modern Warfare series, and in the process of developing this game, they’ve been paying very close attention to it. Like in Modern Warfare 2, you get points for killing people which will then initiate a ‘chain’. If the score gets high enough, you’ll receive a reward that can be used to your advantage.

The great thing about the system that Medal of Honor utilizes though, is that you fill the Scorechain not only with killpoints, but also with assist-kills and defensive points. This way, the game is much more balanced and doesn’t turn into one big campfest, which is often the case in Modern Warfare 2. 
Everytime you receive such an item for initiating a Scorechain, you can choose between an offensive and a defensive action, such as a Mortar Strike or a UAV. Using the UAV will not get you kills, but you will receive XP for it and at the same time you’ll be helping out your buddies, as the UAV’s data will not only be transferred to you, but to every player in your team.

In Medal of Honor’s Multiplayer-mode, there are three classes to choose from, which you can level up seperately: The Rifleman, The Specialist and The Sniper. As you progress and score points/XP, you unlock stuff to use in your kit, such as new weapons, new sights, extra ammunition and so on. In the current build, there aren’t many things to unlock yet, though I expect the full game to feature much more content.

In the Beta, there are two gametypes to choose from: ‘Team Assault’ and ‘Mission’. ‘Team Assault’ is basically Team Deathmatch, so I can’t really tell you anything interesting about it. The pacing is great though, and the available map is well designed and offers some nice vertical gameplay. ‘Mission’ features more diversity though and is much like Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s ‘Rush’ mode. One team attacks, while the other team defends. There are several objectives to complete, such as planting explosives and taking control of a checkpoint, but because the map is much smaller than the maps found in BF:BC2, there isn’t much room for flanking, which doesn’t leave much surprise for the defending team.

While you can respawn instantly in the Team Assault-mode, you have to wait a few seconds before you can enter the battle again in the Mission-mode. You can choose to respawn in the back, out of harm’s way, or at the front, near your teammates. This quickly becomes frustrating for the defending team though, because it’s rather unbalanced. In BF:BC2, for instance, you can only spawn near one of your squadmates, if he or she is alive. Otherwise, you’ve got to walk, fly or drive all the way back, which gives the defending team some time to breath.

But in Medal of Honor’s Mission-mode, you can spawn with any of your teammates. And as there’s always someone alive that’s near the target, the defending team has a hard time keeping up. This is a serious design-flaw and something DICE really needs to look into.

So, while you’re ranking up, all of your collected points/XP go into your ‘main score’. In Medal of Honor, this is called your ‘skill level’. I don’t know why, because just killing other players doesn’t really come down to skill if you ask me. It would be nice to see a true representation of ‘skill level’ in a game for once. Next to the main ‘level up’-module (which is just based on your total playtime and the total score you’ve obtained) that we’ve all become so familiair with, it would be great to have another icon/title attached to your player card which is based on things like accuracy and Kill/Death-ratio. But hey, things can still change. And I really hope they do, to be honest.

If you’ve played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 recently, or every other game made by DICE for that matter, some things feel very familiair. And that’s one of the main gripes I have with this game. It looks and plays a lot like BF:BC2. Sure, there’s much less destruction going on, the maps are smaller, the gameplay is quicker, the controls are changed (it’s basically exactly the same as Modern Warfare 2’s control-scheme) and the weapons handle differently. But at the same time it’s more of the same. So why would you buy Medal of Honor? For the singleplayer? Perhaps. But is it worth the money for its Multiplayer?

I personally think it’s too early to tell, especially considering that the code I’ve been playing is far from finished and already dated. The build DICE had up and running during E3 didn’t suffer from random freezes, had far less bugs and allowed people to pick up the weapons from killed players. Something that can’t be done in the build I’ve been playing. This only proves how quick things can change and how much work still needs to be done. And eventhough there were many things that didn’t work, or didn’t work the way I’d like them to work, I still had lots of fun playing the Beta. And it’ll only get better, as DICE will be releasing a patch soon to fix the random freezes.

Eager to try out the Beta yourself? The Beta is available when you pre-order Medal of Honor. Beta Redemption Keys are available at participating retailers as a reward for pre-ordering the game. Once you have a Beta Redemption Key, just go here to redeem it for a code for the platform of your choice. When you’re in, be sure to hit me up at PSN (PSN ID: Caemgen)!

This is a guest article written by reader Kevin Middelbos. His views may not represent those of TheSixthAxis.