Medal of Honor: Warfighter didn’t meet expectations. It was released in a peak period, amid much hype and many millions of dollars in marketing but generally poor critical reception (it’s got 53-55 on Metacritic) and a less than stellar reception at retail preceded a tepid response from fans (it’s got 5.2-5.8 on Metacritic’s user scores).
Well, EA seems to have realised that it might be best to keep the Medal of Honor brand on a shelf for a little while. During an investor call yesterday, EA’s COO – Peter Moore – said that the company was “taking Medal of Honor out of the rotation, and have a plan to bring year-over-year continuity to our shooter offerings.” So there’ll still be a CoD contender in that all-important Q4 sales period.
Moore continued by accepting the collective judgement on Danger Close’s shooter, saying that “Medal of Honor was an obvious miss. The game was solid, but the focus on combat authenticity did not resonate with consumers.”
While it is obvious that the game was a “miss,” it’s debatable whether that was because of the authenticity in the setting or any one of myriad problems pulled out during its review process. In fact, it was never the “authenticity” that seemed to be a sticking point in any review I read. Moore goes on to say that “critics were polarized and gave the game scores which were, frankly, lower than it deserved.”
It’s difficult to say that a game’s scores were polarised, given that Metacrtic’s PC listing for the game lists a single “positive” review (from a German website called “PC Games”). It lists six “negative” reviews (from sites like PC Gamer and IGN). There are 23 “mediocre” reviews. I’d say that’s fairly squarely in the “mediocre” range, skewing slightly towards “negative.”
Hopefully, it’s just in the public message that EA is endeavouring to avoid the real issues and privately, they’re having serious discussions about what the problems really were and how to fix them. Danger Close did manage to get some things very right with the series’ reboot and it would be a shame to just write it off completely.
Perhaps having a new title in their “rotation” will give EA an opportunity to allow something with a little more polish to be put out in the weeks before Activision’s all-conquering shooter distracts everyone again.
Source: Polygon
quinkill
I didn’t even consider this after the last Medal of Honor game. Nothing to do with combat authenticity, everything to do with gameplay, story, UI, multiplayer.
avengerrr
I don’t see why EA need to release a second shooter. BF3 seemed to successfully target the market with a different style MP and of course a tailored PC experience; FPS formula’s are tricky as it is. Last MoH I truly enjoyed was Airborne, which was incidentally and unique approach on WWII combat.
Starman
Translation = we hoped that all the fancy adverts would make people ignore the bad reviews & buy it anyway.
Nickboss1
Yep.
teflon
I think that’s a good move from EA. Danger Close now have a perfect opportunity to exploit the early days of the next generation and hopefully build a new IP for themselves, which can stand toe to toe with the rest of the market…
Sadly, I’m not so sure they’ll be able to take it, unless they’ve already had a core team laying the foundations for the last year, so that they can have already shifted into full development for the new consoles. If they’re not already firing on all cylinders, they’ll not have a hope in hell of releasing something good for 2014’s Christmas mash up…
doomsday619
Bring back the Bad Company games to replace it.
Bilbo_bobbins
Agree with that, much more fun.
Youles
I find it’s lack of success amusing, after EA’s constant childish comments and jibes towards CoD (even though they’re quite justified), serves them right! Looking tired MoH?
LTG Davey
Glad to hear it. Stick with Battlefield EA, its actually good.
Tuffcub
*raises hand*
Scuse me.. everyone forgotton about.. erm.. damn.. forgotton their name! Ha! Ironic! . The ex Infinity ward peeps. Them. That game.
Eldur
Respawn Entertainment.
http://www.respawn.com/games/
Fascinating. Simply Fascinating.
Tuffcub
hah!
Location: http://www.respawn.com/games
Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website.
Return to the page you were previously viewing.
Eldur
Good thing I’m on my work PC!
Eldur
I might be the odd one out here, but I really enjoyed the campaign of the ‘original’ Medal of Honor (the first entry in the reboot, as opposed to the WW2 one). I thought it was refreshing to be part of a single military action, played out from a variety of perspective, that seemed genuinely authentic with only a limited amount of Hollywood sheen.
Several scenes stand out in the memory. Arriving by quadbike to clear an insurgent camp at night, leaving a helicopter (along with my battalion) into a valley of death and a brilliant ‘last stand’ moment in a gradually disintegrating rammed earth shack; the latter’s one of the only war-game moments that genuinely made me question my chances of survival and made me want to ‘live’. As the game limited itself to one campaign, it told a much more convincing story of war and was all the more affecting for it.
I was massively disappointed that Warfighter seemed to forego all of that only to become another ‘me-too’, world hopping, macho shooting gallery.
McProley
I totally agree, I thought the first was brilliant storywise.
Peter Chapman
I really liked the first of the rebooted series too.
blast71
Agree. 1st Medal was a great game, bought it for a tenner new and loved it. Better than the last few COD’s IMHO, although BLOPS 2 was a return to form.
mclarenrob2
Im definitely not buying Call of duty this year, its pointless! Ill buy it again next gen if they have a complete overhaul and new engine.
Bilbo_bobbins
and dedicated servers.