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[palpabl_purpura]

The COD franchise set FPS soooo far back this generation. The result was stagnant innovation in the form of shallow online fragfests, and heavily scripted single player campaigns treated as afterthoughts. For those who tire of shoot, respawn, repeat, etc, there are few viable options. Games like Borderlands 2, Bioshock 2, and Rage represent where the genre needs to be or a at least ardent attempts at moving in the right direction. What made games like Wolfenstein and Doom great without multiplayer? Devs need to find the answer and build on that foundation with deeper gameplay and expansive worlds. Less mindless fragfests please!

 

[Lonely1]

Time for Cyberpunk shooters!

Day One.

 

[sflufan]

Less mindless fragfests please!

Does this also apply to multiplayer? Because I want MORE mindless fragfests (ie, Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc.) in that!

 

[Htown]

Day One.

Hard Reset.

 

[Lonely1]

GAF should start its own mock review firm.

 

[megamerican]

MOH got dumped on because they didn't send out advance review copies. Reviewers made an example out of it. I'm fine with it because the game is a soulless cash grab from a publisher that specializes in soulless cash grabs. Still though, I'm highly skeptical that MOH is 20 points below Homefront.

 

[Neuromancer]

GAF should start its own mock review firm.

Our rates will be reasonable.

 

[D4Danger]

GAF should start its own mock review firm.

4 Mtn Dews / 5

 

[Castor Krieg]

I agree.

It was a solid 7 or 8/10 SP campaign for me so the very low scores were a surprise.

Any game that kills you over invisible line for failing to follow an objective deserves to be nuked into oblivion. Fuck this on-the-rails bullshit.

 

[DaciaJC]

I guess I'm the only person in America that wants another Medal of Honor like Airborne.

No, I'd like to see the same mission design philosophy again ... but taken even further.

Some levels might have you dropping in with a HALO jump, others with a below-radar helo flight. You're able to customize your loadout before the start of the mission, like in Airborne. You're given a number of objectives scattered (or clustered, who knows) across a fairly expansive map and the freedom to tackle them in any order you wish. Local transport is available for requisitioning. You might run into enemy patrols along the way, or you might have to deal with a solitary sniper plinking away at your squad from a distance.

 

[Rated-Rsuperstar]

I guess I'm the only person in America that wants another Medal of Honor like Airborne.

Your not alone. I've been championing that game for years. In fact I just posted about in the Warfighter review thread.

 

[Fluellen]

EA is playing fast and loose with the truth, according to what I heard.

The SP was written very differently. The action was inside a sort of slow burn realistic military detective story about unravelling the terrorist network. Their pre-reviews didn't like it. They forced a bunch of changes at the last minute -- including adding the first two awful levels and reordering several of the existing levels so that the story no longer made any sense -- and they wonder why the SP was panned.

Also, they rush the game out the door to try to fit into their anti-CoD marketing scheme and they wonder why its buggy and too short.

If you want a good game, you have to make a good game. You can't make the shell of a good game and then trick the audience into believing its fully realized.

(Also, I agree with whoever said future MoH should include more open-ended maps and open up more mission planning options. Thats a way for them to stay with the authenticity and get more distinct from CoD.)

 

[FStop7]

Still not sure why this franchise exists? What does it bring to the table that Call of Duty and Battlefield do not?

It exists to play leapfrog with Battlefield the same way Modern Warfare and BLOPS do.

 

[ErikB]

Still not sure why this franchise exists? What does it bring to the table that Call of Duty and Battlefield do not?

From the 2010 game, I am liking the lean and peak thing and the, er, slide to cover move.

Er, have people tried sliding in to cover?

Although I'd like the lean more if it worked like in bodycount, with fully holding LT for lean and peak with half holding LT for iron sights while moving.

 

[RedSwirl]

Still not sure why this franchise exists? What does it bring to the table that Call of Duty and Battlefield do not?

The franchise kind of lost its relevance after EA finally brought a mainline Battlefield game to consoles.

Honestly, I appreciated the 2010 game as basically a Modern Warfare clone that actually tried to observe a real present day conflict instead of creating a fictional one. I personally think they should have doubled down on that angle because it's something Activision is still too scared to do.

To that end, I don't even think MoH needs multiplayer anymore. If it were me I'd just package one disc where MoH is the singleplayer and BF is the multiplayer.

The COD franchise set FPS soooo far back this generation. The result was stagnant innovation in the form of shallow online fragfests, and heavily scripted single player campaigns treated as afterthoughts. For those who tire of shoot, respawn, repeat, etc, there are few viable options. Games like Borderlands 2, Bioshock 2, and Rage represent where the genre needs to be or a at least ardent attempts at moving in the right direction. What made games like Wolfenstein and Doom great without multiplayer? Devs need to find the answer and build on that foundation with deeper gameplay and expansive worlds. Less mindless fragfests please!

I actually think the scripted rollercoaster ride campaign format has its value, but only when done right, and thus far only Valve and Infinity Ward really know how to pull it off.

My personal wish would be fore games like the first Crysis and the Far Cry games to represent where first person shooters will eventually go. I want to see more wide open sandboxes that allow me to play my way and account for various possibilities with the mechanics at hand. Right now my ultimate wish would be for someone to make a mainstream FPS with the same level of scale seen in ArmA II with an almost completely dynamic battlefield.

WWII all played out

Modern warfare all played out

Time for Cyberpunk shooters!

Fuck that, I want a space war. That's where I think they need to go next. Not a man vs aliens war, but a straight-up man vs man interplanetary military struggle. Thematically speaking, I want more games like Killzone.

 

[Fluellen]

There's room for an real-world special operations shooter. Not over-the-top action and contrived plots like BF and COD.

If I were making MoH, I'd do the following three things:

1) use more open world maps to allow for more tactical variation
2) somekind of interactivity or branching in the story
3) multiplayer would be all co-op

But EA keeps trying to beat COD at their own game because they have no creativity.

 

[Nizz]

The franchise kind of lost its relevance after EA finally brought a mainline Battlefield game to consoles.

Honestly, I appreciated the 2010 game as basically a Modern Warfare clone that actually tried to observe a real present day conflict instead of creating a fictional one. I personally think they should have doubled down on that angle because it's something Activision is still too scared to do.

To that end, I don't even think MoH needs multiplayer anymore. If it were me I'd just package one disc where MoH is the singleplayer and BF is the multiplayer.



I actually think the scripted rollercoaster ride campaign format has its value, but only when done right, and thus far only Valve and Infinity Ward really know how to pull it off.

My personal wish would be fore games like the first Crysis and the Far Cry games to represent where first person shooters will eventually go. I want to see more wide open sandboxes that allow me to play my way and account for various possibilities with the mechanics at hand. Right now my ultimate wish would be for someone to make a mainstream FPS with the same level of scale seen in ArmA II with an almost completely dynamic battlefield.



Fuck that, I want a space war. That's where I think they need to go next. Not a man vs aliens war, but a straight-up man vs man interplanetary military struggle. Thematically speaking, I want more games like Killzone.

What's surprising to me is that DICE pulled off a decent campaign in Bad Company 1 in that it was a little more open than BC2 and BF3. It was still linear but gave you a little more room to work with. I thought BC2 was a step down in that regard.

I kind of want to try MoH:Warfighter, although I think I'll wait till it goes down in price a bit.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

wow wow wow

this is out?

I've seen the ad a few times (in Edge, I think), but I completely ignore all ads by default, so I really had no idea. And as far as I can tell, zero people here seem to care about it. At all.

 

[antitrop]

EA believes the game was a "good game with a receptive audience"?

This was supposed to be a learning experience. Fucking denial doesn't help anybody.

Extremely pathetic, I'm more disappointed at EA for this than the actual quality of Medal of Honor itself.

 

[B-Dex]

Frank, instead of assuming everyone was chatting shit about Worf, consider that you are surrounded by people who are fucking lying to your face about your products. Get some better mock reviewers or something. Ask West & Zampella what can be done.

It's more like the higher ups on the title just didn't bother listening to anyone's critiques and lo-and-behold this is what happens.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Mock reviewers are not going to give a review that requires major retuning. They are concerned someone will shoot the messengers.

 

[Meccanical]

Remember when EA was good?

I just want another Def Jam FFNY, or an NBA Street.

C'mon EA.

 

[Fluellen]

How about you just trust your studio to carry through with the vision they've been working on since they finished MOH2010 instead of coming in and ripping the thing to pieces at the last minute because some test reviewer didn't like it?

 

[Hot Coldman]

It's more like the higher ups on the title just didn't bother listening to anyone's critiques and lo-and-behold this is what happens.

No, I think rather than have to go through all the effort of ignoring someone saying "your game needs to die" they get ahead of it and specifically find people that will work within their narrative. Which is ignorance in its own special way, but I don't think comments like Frank's would appear if he did have someone warning him about this. He'd be keeping mum if he had been. Or something like that. I dunno, trying to predict EA's behaviour is almost as mindfucking as predicting Sony's.

This game was getting released regardless, so really I don't know why they even try and predict the score.

 

[chickdigger802]

Remember when EA was good?

I just want another Def Jam FFNY, or an NBA Street.

C'mon EA.

or a good bond game. those bond games also had driving sections made by NFS teams


And fuck cyberpunk or space.

Give me a seafighter game. You ride dolphins and shit, harpooning motherfuckers.

motherfucker.

 

[Nirolak]

or a good bond game. those bond games also had driving sections made by NFS teams


And fuck cyberpunk or space.

Give me a seafighter game. You ride dolphins and shit, harpooning motherfuckers.

motherfucker.

The James Bond team moved on to Dead Space.

I don't think we lost out here, but others may disagree.

 

[RoboPlato]

Remember when EA was good?

I just want another Def Jam FFNY, or an NBA Street.

C'mon EA.

EA was pretty awesome for the first half of this gen. Tons of new, quality IPs. Hoping that cycle starts again next gen.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

People should read this: http://pcgmedia.com/what-are-journalists-missing-when-it-comes-to-medal-of-honor-warfighter/

Is Medal of Honor a bad Modern Military Shooter? Seriously? When our only other options are the Battlefield 3 campaign and annual Call of Duty releases, can you really say that Medal of Honor Warfighter is comparably bad?

In my experience... yes. I've fallen through floors, had the game lock up, had scripting issues where the pace suddenly came to a halt. Not to mention the fact that the game is filled with terrible storytelling that doesn't take advantage of its linear globetrotting and also features some of the most terrifying CG characters I've seen in my life.

It's on par with Battlefield 3's campaign, which also wasn't very good. There are far better "cinematic shooters" or whatever you want to call 'em.

 

[Nirolak]

EA was pretty awesome for the first half of this gen. Tons of new, quality IPs. Hoping that cycle starts again next gen.

Well, we know that currently, in terms of AAA retail games, Visceral RedWood Shores, the Mass Effect leads, Visceral Montreal, DICE, and at least one other internal studio (or a second one at an already mentioned studio) are making new IPs to launch out relatively early in the generation.

Whether they're high quality, we obviously can't tell yet.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Whether they're high quality, we obviously can't tell yet.

I predict excellent mock reviews and internal testing for all of them.

 

[antitrop]

I can't believe people are still trying to say that Medal of Honor was a martyr for genre fatigue with MMS games.

Did they even play it?

It is substantially worse than any mainline Call of Duty game ever and slightly worse than Battlefield 3's campaign. Unlike Battlefield 3, MoH doesn't have a phenomenal multiplayer component to save it.

 

[Nizz]

How about you just trust your studio to carry through with the vision they've been working on since they finished MOH2010 instead of coming in and ripping the thing to pieces at the last minute because some test reviewer didn't like it?

And giving them more time to do it. I think this yearly race to meet that October deadline purely to beat COD games to market has worked against their favor.

Maybe more time wouldn't have solved all their problems, but it couldn't have hurt. EA going back to a springtime/March release date could be good. Around that time people could be slowing down a bit or feeling a little burned out playing COD/Halo since Fall and could be open to a new title in the spring.

 

[Mattdaddy]

People should read this: http://pcgmedia.com/what-are-journalists-missing-when-it-comes-to-medal-of-honor-warfighter/

I like the cut of his jib. I enjoyed the game.

 

[FLEABttn]

They are concerned someone will shoot the messengers.

Until they aren't within that 5 point range one too many times.

I gave the 1 hour PSN trial a go. It wasn't what I'd call objectively bad, I'm just tired of the subgenre.

 

[antitrop]

The article should be titled "What is Michael Cromwell missing when it comes to Medal of Honor Warfighter?".

Secondly, the general consensus is that Medal of Honor Warfighter is taking the bullet for all the other modern military first person shooters.

That's obviously an opinion, but I still disagree. I don't know how one can say something like that when most of the negative reviews very clearly state why the review had an issues with the game aside from any genre criticism.

What they wanted was Call of Duty, but what they didn’t want was a Call of Duty clone. Spot the problem.

How is that a problem at all? Ever heard of oversaturation of the market? Also clone insinuates that something is of generally the exact same quality as that which it is cloning, which is not at all the case for Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

Tell me again how Medal of Honor doesn’t do things as well as the competition? What are these writers smoking?

I don't know how to take this writer seriously as a games journalist if he can't clearly identify the answer to his own question by playing through the game. It's hardly a mystery. In fact, all he has to do to answer his own rhetorical question is read through my posts in the OT. I clearly stated over multiple posts why this game was worse than its competition, many, many times.

Whatever game he played, I want that one instead. We can trade, Michael Cromwell. You can play the shitty, mediocre, bland, nearly offensively boring and trite Medal of Honor: Warfighter that I played, and I can play the supposedly CoD-quality Medal of Honor: Warfighter that you played. EA must have accidentally made two different games and I got the wrong one.

 

[jet1911]

Even id I liked Warfighter a MOH set in modern time with Airborne mechanics and open maps with interesting/varied objectives would be glorious.

 

[Messofanego]

Wow, that bombcast talk with Jeff going into how these mock reviews work seems highly relevant right now.

I know, right?

Hardcore Gamer 5/5

Assassin’s Creed III is one of those rare games conceived to be revolutionary from the beginning. Games like this only come around once in a generation. One of the most, if not the most, ambitious titles ever created. An inspiring testament to what can be accomplished with unbridled devotion, it’s possible that nothing of this magnitude will ever be attempted again. It’s a truly definitive event that will be looked-back as a crucial step in gaming evolution.

 

[antitrop]

I know, right?

"it’s possible that nothing of this magnitude will ever be attempted again"

That is probably the single most offensive line of text I've ever read in a video game review.

That statement was written with all the finality and inexperienced enthusiasm of a 13 year old.

 

[sixghost]

eh...the first game sold like 6 million....

And they all loved it so much that they went out and didn't buy the sequel.

 

[Fluellen]

He's right about this:

Instead of nurturing their 2010 child, EA have tried to appeal to those who didn’t like 2010′s reboot, rather than those who did.

 

[antitrop]

He's right about this:

Ya, I can agree with that.

 

[Kinyou]

I know, right?

Wow, is that real?

Do companies really expect mock reviews, that they literally paid for, to be brutally honest?

 

[Deadbeat]

I concur with the individuals that believe in pursuing this cyber punk genre. Strap it into my veins.

 

[FStop7]

Meanwhile, at Castle Respawn, a red phone begins to frantically ring.

"West? Zampella? It's John. Listen, we need your shit done and out there. Like now."

 

[Messofanego]

From the 2010 game, I am liking the lean and peak thing and the, er, slide to cover move.

Er, have people tried sliding in to cover?

Although I'd like the lean more if it worked like in bodycount, with fully holding LT for lean and peak with half holding LT for iron sights while moving.

I'm no Medal of Honor fan but I remember the "peak and lean" from way back in MoH: Allied Assault (2002). With how generic piggyback CoD the direction MoH has gone in, this is the only distinguishing feature.

I don't know why they never bothered to iterate on the Airborne formula.

 

[Margalis]

Edit: Eh, probably best not to weigh in on this.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

He's right about this:

Kind of sounds like exactly what happened with Dragon Age: Origins to Dragon Age 2- EA stepping in and making changes to a sequel that try to appeal to people that didn't like the original game in the first place, leading to an inferior sequel.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Meanwhile, at Castle Respawn, a red phone begins to frantically ring.

"West? Zampella? It's John. Listen, we need your shit done and out there. Like now."

It's funny, because their game will come out next-gen and it won't even be a big fucking deal like EA expects until the sequel

I just know it

 

[CryptiK]

Durrr.... hurrr... what we said the fans wanted they didnt want how does that work derp.

MoH isnt an established insta buy franchise anymore my friends so you have to listen to the community.

 

[ErikB]

I'm no Medal of Honor fan but I remember the "peak and lean" from way back in MoH: Allied Assault (2002)

It works well on consoles because you have two analogue inputs, so (using the left stick) you can sort of lean just enough to see over/around cover by only moving the stick part way (not that I know if this makes any difference mechanically, as in you expose yourself less, but I find it aesthetically pleasing) and you can lean a bit to the side and up a bit (or whatever) to get a better angle on things.