Medal Of Honor: Vanguard

Written by Tom Clare in PS2 Game Reviews, Monday 18 January, 2010

Released: 2007
Developer: EA Los Angeles
Publisher: EA Games
Genre: FPS
Platform: PS2

Medal of Honor’s fourth and final PS2 outing is a dishearteningly threadbare effort. Vanguard is desperately short on new ideas and content, whilst it’s ageing game engine and misguided emphasis on the ‘squad’ element make it feel like an anaemic Call of Duty clone.

At the most basic level, it resembles your average MOH; there’s a healthy dose of World War II blasting with weaponry of the period, as well as copious amounts of hiding behind make-shift cover to avoid tank and turret assaults. The shooting remains fun, accessible and fast-paced, though the game comes up short in many areas in which the series was once renowned for being strong in; its short, ugly, technically dated and there’s barely a shred of creativity behind the mission objectives and set-pieces.

The biggest difference this time around is that you are aided in combat by a number of team-mates. Initially this is pretty cool; they take up ambush positions, help with covering fire and occasionally bark some relevant pointers as to what’s going on. Having allies and a radar telling you exactly where all the enemies are situated however removes all of the tension, whilst in the early stages your allies do a lot of the work for you. It’s too much of a trade-off for an idea that hasn’t been fully-realised – there are virtually no instances that feel as though they couldn’t have been done with the player going alone.

For better and for worse, it plays pretty much the same as before, with just a couple of features that can tentatively be referred to as “innovations”. Being part of the 82nd Airborne division, you get to parachute into some of the combat zones and, with a bit of deft manoeuvring, land in positions of safety or better still, sniper spots. These parts are by far the most visually dynamic moments the game has to offer, as for a short time the level appears vast as you witness team-mates landing and explosions going off on the ground, though regrettably there are only a mere three jumps to be made in the game. In a more low-key improvement, soldiers who use flimsy objects (such as wooden tables) as cover can be shot through them, which is rather satisfying.

Still, signs of development shortcuts are worryingly frequent. Even in a direct comparison to the 1999 PlayStation original, Vanguard struggles to come across favourably; it’s weapon selection is smaller (curiously there are no pistols); there is a complete absence of unlockables and therefore replay value, and at only ten levels long, it is significantly shorter. Enemy A.I. remains similarly problematic; on the one hand, your foes will seek cover to make life difficult for the player, yet if you go straight for them when they are in cover or try to circle them at close range, they are extremely slow to react and easy to dispatch.

There’s little sense of spectacle, and as a result the well-worn formula feels like it’s going through the motions. Perhaps due to budget and time constraints there’s nothing on the level of the Normandy beach landings or Pearl Harbour attacks like in it’s predecessors, but even so, there’s no stealth sections; no submarines; mansions; castles; trains or anything like that. You are only ever really given two tasks; eliminate all enemies in a designated area or hold the ‘X’ button to blow up a door/gun emplacement, and this formula is repeated ad nauseum.

Pretty much all of Vanguard takes place in murky trenches and fields, and so even with acceptable-looking character models and a credible amount of environment detail meaning lots of cover for the player to take advantage of, the games years-old graphics engine make it appear dated and unattractive.

And everything else feels like a compromise. Menu presentation is markedly less classy than before; missions aren’t accompanied with briefings, star ratings or a statistical breakdown of your performance – just a few medals based on survival success, the use of weapons, and achieving a set number of headshots that seem to have been added largely as an afterthought. There was a time when the MOH games provided 18 levels of action, though Vanguard can only muster 10, the majority of which are short and easy. The last couple offer a bit of a challenge, culminating in a (slow-down riddled) finale with invading troops and tanks coming too late to rescue the game from mediocrity. The lack of surprises or major obstacles mean those with any kind of first-person shoot ‘em up experience are likely to coast through it in just a couple of days.

Whilst not terrible, there is in reality little to recommend Vanguard, even to fans of the series. The lack of online play is more forgivable on the PS2 and Medal of Honor has always tended to focus on the single-player experience anyway, but as the campaign is over in a flash, you’re left with a very slight, unambitious title that hasn’t moved with the times.

 

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