Medal of Honor

Which, frankly, is impressive, because already the game's looking very good from where we were sitting in EA's LA offices. The Gardez mission is part on-rails driving, part tight scripting, and a lot of well-paced mayhem. The obvious comparison to draw is with Modern Warfare 2 (which no one at EA ever mentions by name, but it's the obvious gorilla in the room); there are similarities, of course, but the treatment of the combat is both more nuanced and better-paced.

And you can lean, too, which is kind of neat and innovative... Anyway.

The game features almost no HUD at all so far. You get incoming fire indicators, and a simple ammo counter that fades after you stop firing. Otherwise, it's all just game: sound, impact effects, destructible scenery, some very pleasing knife kills, and just solid, down to earth action. 

The Gardez level opens following you and your team clearing a checkpoint, on your way to meet a local contact who has some important operational information. You're all in local Pushtun garb, heavily bearded, and doing a good job of blending... to start with. It wouldn't be much of a demo if things went smoothly, and sure enough, an RPG team takes out your lead vehicle, and you're called upon to fight through the ambush and relieve your team leader.

Right away, the impact of the close relationship EA has with the real spec-ops guys is obvious. The dialogue is spare and hushed; knife kills are sudden stabs delivered without remorse. And the sense of controlled emotion when rounds impact close is ever-present. There's also a tighter sense of teamwork between the player and AI-controlled team-mates, especially in one sequence where your partner kills the lights in a building so you can both enter using night vision scopes and IR sights.

Constant chatter from your team leader keeps you updated to their own progress, and as you clear the ambush you actually get sight of them engaging in a firefight, before you take to the rooftops to try and flank the enemy. But as things start to get really interesting, the level - and our demo - ends.

The idea that it's just going to get better is, frankly, mindboggling.

But, as they say, there's a lot of work to go.

Achieve this!
With the game probably a year away, it's hard to nail down what kinds of content we're going to see in the final version, but we have already grokked a little from our chat with the team.

There'll be vehicle-based missions, for one thing, according to Greg. "In an Apache," he said, you get a whole other view of the battlefield." He also let us know that EA's looking at new way of dealing with the crack of the modern gamer, achievements.

"There are multiple really cool things we'll be doing around these Tier 1 characters and their abilities," he said, "to tie into achievements and other things.

And then of course there's the multiplayer angle of the game, which has some obviously very stiff competition from the likes of MW2. Sean Decker, though, is very happy with the challenge ahead of him, and very aware of the stakes involved when it comes to PC multiplayer.

"It's going to be awesome," he says when we ask him about the game beyond the bounds of singleplayer, "and I'll say this up front - it has to have dedicated servers." Sean's passion for the topic is unmistakeable, and he goes on to make us feel very excited indeed about Medal of Honor's multiplayer.

"There's no worse experience than the lobby, and voting, and host migration, and all that. It's a bad experience." Which, of course we totally agree with. And, since we know the game's going to have vehicles in the campaign, we hit him up about vehicles in multiplayer levels.

"Well, with DICE involved," he says, grinning, "I think you can assume we're going to touch on vehicle combat just a little."

We braced Greg on the subject of multiplayer as well. "The way we look at it, is you get the right team for the right job, and we have that. In the end it's like two great tastes that just have to go together, and you have to do it right." 

Suddenly, a year seems a very long time to wait.