As tiresome as WWII is getting, Medal of Honor's execution makes up for it, and earns the title of best FPS on Wii.
The Bad: So-so voice acting with annoying repetition; no local multiplayer; the campaign's pretty short; graphics are a bit blocky on Wi-Fi.
Medal of Honor, as of late, hasn't had a great track record. The franchise started with a spectacular shooter to nearly rival Goldeneye on PS1, but like Call of Duty (mostly), it's still stuck in World War II.
There's nothing wrong with World War II, it's a great idea to use it as a first-person shooter setting, and many of the games based in it have been awesome. But it gets old.
Not that that can't be overcome with spectacular gameplay, generally speaking. Yet I'll emphasize again that tons of Medal of Honor games have been mediocre, if not just plain bad, recently.
Fortunately, Medal of Honor: Heroes is a different story. Both Heroes games are on PSP and turned out well, just like this one. In fact, upon release it was probably the best third party effort on Wii that wasn't a port, and still is in those higher echelons.
Not that third parties have put much effort into games on Wii, but this one manages to impress regardless. Metroid Prime 3 isn't a shooter technically, but a first-person adventure, making this the only quality shooter thus far from any company.
The campaign is what you'd probably expect. You'll be battling through the Normandy Breakout, trying to make it alive out of WWII with your allies. That's where WWII games have gotten annoying, they're all basically the same.
But on the upside, if you're new to shooters, the three difficulties (green, veteran and hero) do a very good job of getting you better at the genre. If you beat green, veteran won't be a ton harder at first, easing you into it, etc.
However, the main story is extremely short, only a couple hours, in fact, though that number increases including deaths and all the difficulties.
The voice acting during this is actually rather poor. The guy who tells you about your mission (you're apparently part of a secret organization along with being a soldier) gets very annoying, very fast. Other AI characters repeat the same lines over and over. "Leave some for us!", "Doesn't get much deader than that!" and, "Out of ammo, gotta reload!" get old within one or two levels, and that's all you'll hear from them.
Yet the sound and graphics in single player are top notch. There's naturally some very serious war music, and it isn't overdone. The sound of guns, explosions, and targets being hit sound just like they should. Guns and bombs feel like they're done the way they work in real life. And the graphics look better than Gamecube graphics in general, fortunately. EA certainly didn't give Wii a lousy port again, and that shows.
In arcade you'll play through the same levels as in career, but you'll be on-rails, and focus on shooting, reloading, health packs, and grenades. It's pretty fun, supports the Zapper (which makes aiming much easier and more fun), and allows for newer gamers to enjoy it too.
The better you do on fulfilling all your objectives, the better score you'll get on the level. This gives you a gold, silver or bronze medal, and advances your rank. You do in fact move up in real life army rankings, which is pretty fun to see. In your records you can keep track of that, the percentage of people you kill and your accuracy, and more. I personally like this addition quite a bit.
Unfortunately though, there's no local multiplayer. That takes away from the chance of bringing everybody in to this game as a more mature welcome to the Wii, despite arcade mode. Plus, it means you'll have to rely on Wii Sports for four player for now. Other than that, two player Guitar Hero and Resident Evil are all you've got until Brawl.
But then, (again, as of release), Medal of Honor has the best Wi-Fi available. You could even still say it does, because EA has their own Wi-Fi account, so no friend codes are required for the full experience. You can get up to 32 person multiplayer going, which is as or more fun than the career. It's no trouble setting up an account, a server, or joining a game already going, and there are plenty of cool maps to pick from.
You can't voice chat (since the Wii doesn't have a way to do that yet), but you can call out for help and such with the control scheme in wireless. It's good to see the developers thought about that factor, even though voice chat would be better.
The graphics in Wi-Fi can be a bit blocky though. The opponents and allies have chunky clothing, even though the locales look the same. But that's just a nitpick.
The absolute best part about the game, however, is the controls. Aiming is tight, and works as well as Metroid Prime 3's in this respect: the way you dreamed of when the Wii was announced. It's far, far superior to using two joysticks.
But unlike Prime 3, the other controls are all flawless. Moving mortars, reloading, throwing grenades, setting bombs, hitting people with your weapon, it's all done withhout a single mistake. Not that Prime 3's were bad, but a little clunky once in awhile. These aren't. They're probably the best controls on Wii to date.
All the buttons work just right, too. Shooting is naturally assigned to the trigger, you can lean out (by tilting the Wiimote) from hiding spots, aim down the site, crouch, target (in green mode), switch weapons, and again, the game won't make a mistake.
Wii has received almost no support from third parties. Nintendo's done its best, as ever, to make the best titles on its system, but one company can't make a spectacular game every month.
Ubisoft's best was a decent Rayman, (thought No More Heroes was from them, Suda made it) and Activision hasn't really given much effort to the Wii versions of its games.
Capcom's ports of Resident Evil and Okami, on the other hand, are wonderful. Plus, they have Zack and Wiki to their credit, with Dead Rising and Monster Hunter on the way.
Sega hasn't done something AAA in awhile, but a few of their best efforts (Sonic and Nights in particular) are on Wii, plus MadWorld and House of the Dead coming up, too.
And fortunately, EA is a company that's giving good support too. Along with this, the best third party game not from another system first, EA has brought the best versions of Harry Potter and Madden to Wii, too, in many cases.
Not that any of them aren't giving as much or more support to other systems, but they've given us games that aren't awful ports from PS2 that wouldn't look good on a Gamecube.
So if you like shooters, you have a Wii, and you want the best, this is where you want to go. Even if that's not the case, this is one of the best third party attempts on the system, in case you already got everything Nintendo has to offer. I'd certainly suggest it.