Medal of Honor multiplayer first impressions

Check out our first impressions of what could be a great online game - despite the Matchmaking bugs, lack of LAN play, and other oddities.

Expectation is a hell of a thing - games have crashed and burned purely because of the hype leading players to expect some kind of second coming. Medal of Honor has certainly been guilty of massive hype, but now that we've had a chance to log on and plum the depths of its multiplayer mode, we're almost certain it's been worth the wait.

But it is, once again, a far from perfect launch from DICE and EA.

One of the most glaring issues out of the box, is just how unfriendly the game is. It opens up websites, insists in installing Punkbuster (badly), and once complete hides itself away so you're left digging through directories to launch the game for the first time. Even then, many players - us included - are wondering where the multiplayer component is... well, it's a wholly separate game, with a wholly separate engine, in a wholly separate location.

Wolfenstein tried this, to much failure, but oddly EA's taken the opposite route. Rather than deliver a hi-fi singleplayer experience and a stripped back multiplayer engine, Medal of Honor's singeplayer game engine can best be described as rudimentary. The only graphics option of any depth is Anti-aliasing, and even that can only be turned on and off. And it shows in-game, too.

Multiplayer's a whole different kettle of fish - this is a fully specced PC engine, and to be honest, it's possibly one of the best looking PC multiplayer titles of the year. But that's assuming you can get the game going.

Punkbuster blues
EA and DICE had serious issues with Punkbuster installs with their last game, Bad Company 2, and the same thing seems to be happening with Medal of Honor, at least for some players - us included. Here's the downlow on the problem from the EA MoH forums:

What is happening is that as Punkbuster is already running (as you can see in Task Manager) the Punkbuster install decides not to complete, as you already have it...

What? I don't even... EA provides a workaround, though of course it doesn't work for most. If you are having issues, we recommend looking further down that thread for a file you can download and manually drop into your PB and MoH folders. That worked a treat, and before long, we were fragging with the best of them.

However, we then faced another issue - the game offers a quickplay matchmaking service that's very convenient, but at the moment it's logging XP and advancement for a lot of players. In other words, it's fun, but effectively a waste of time if you want to keep any unlocks and rewards.

Ignoring that, the game's general server browser is actually pretty tight, allowing you to be very specific about regional and gaming parameters. 

And, of course, there's the fact that the game in no way supports LAN play. It's online only, or the highway, but at least DICE didn't reneg on their dedicated server promise, and there are already dozens of local servers from Sydney to Perth with very reasonable pings.

The game itself
We'll deliver our final verdict on the entire game in our next print issue, but so far we're not only loving the graphics, but the entire game - aside from aforementioned issues. Even the lack of full 32-player support isn't an issue, as the maps are quite lovingly crafted for a very particular style of gameplay, and they deliver it very well. Matches are a wonderful combination of tense cover-hopping and moments of all-out assault, and even in the standard game mode the kills come quickly. We've yet to play Hardcore - our usual preference - but we expect that be even better.

Most impressively, we can safely say that Medal of Honor is now our favourite ballistic experience - the weapon handling and sounds are wonderfully impactful, and really go a long way to making the game what it is.

So far, we're giving the game a very tentative thumbs up... but check issue 119 for the final verdict.