Pretty, interactive war tourism. If it requires no skill, it's not a game... and this requires ZERO skill.
Well, I tried to keep an open mind about the singleplayer campaign despite all the bad reviews. Here's how it boils down.
HANDLING: It's actually kind of decent. It can feel overly slippery when you make quick sudden movements and yeah, it's been done far better in many other games including all prior MoH's, but in general it lets you move around rather well, or at least well enough. The singleplayer handling is everything the multiplayer part of the game should have been, and is most definitely was NOT.
GUNS: This was the first and most obvious thing to me that felt boring and useless. I found myself missing alot of shots at first because I just naturally felt the need to compensate for the usual recoil. These guns had next to no recoil at all. I didn't mind the limited recoil in Rainbow Six Vegas 2... but it felt like this was a baby-fied experience. The weapons look great when armed, but are not satisfying to shoot. The shotgun in particular makes for a very impotent feeling.
GAMEPLAY: Also.. Boring. I tried taking cover, I tried to lean around corners, but in the end I just ran out in the open, stopped like an absolute moron to take careful (and lazy) aim to pop off headshots. The AI can't shoot for s***, and even when you do start getting regular bullet hits you seem to heal real fast making you some sort of supernatural being. Another glaring issue is the progression of objectives. Sometimes you just move onto the next objective no matter how half a**edly you've performed.. the cinematic scripting takes over alot.
STRATEGY: Hhahahahaha.. yeah right. You're spoon fed a very simple game mechanic. Follow your AI buddies, shoot when they tell you to shoot, move when they tell you to move, wipe your a** when they tell you to. There is nothing to challenge you in this game... at all. And you're even encouraged to spray and pray. Run out of ammo? Just press F on one of your AI buddies when you get low, they'll fill you back up. These guys are portable ammo depots... doesn't matter what weapons you're carrying, they can provide you with unlimited ammo of any type... except for nades, you have to find those cache cases. But why even bother using any nades when you can pop out a headshot constantly!?!
CINEMATICS: Boring again... very pretty, but the story is dumbed down and the cinematic moments are designed in a way that they're typical blockbuster dreck: Looks great in a quickly edited trailer, mindless blockbuster tools-o-the-trade when experienced in the full thing.
HONORING THE TROOPS: How many times did the developers harp on about this crap? Well did they even come close? I'll point out here that even though I know plenty of people that have been in warzones, and some in Afgan in particular... and I'm not a militant flag waver by any means, BUT... even I felt this was a disgraceful portrayal. Add those face/voice-censored promo interview vids of supposedly real world special ops guys saying how this game is the closest thing to date that brings what they do to life in a game.... bulls****. THIS GAME IS SHAMELESS PROPAGANDA TARGETED AT IGNORANT CHILDREN. Many intelligent gamers know that the CoD franchise has had a negative impact on making stupid children think that they have what it takes to one day become an SAS guy as well... I felt that this was even worse. Normally I'd just discount a game like this and go "meh, dumb action hero dialogue to promote the latest war/conflict" but they went out of their way to stress how they're honoring troops, and that's how I'm evaulating it. On that level it is utterly disgraceful and completely unrealistic in regards to mood/behaviour.
MULTIPLAY: Crap. I'm not a fan of BFBC2... I just didn't like the handling or the mechanics, but I could at least acknowledge it was a good game. This is suprisingly bad coming from that same studio. Multiplay maps are almost designed for sniper griefing. It's BFBC2 trapped within CoD sized maps without adequete cover. The frontline spawn system is horrendous, and the collision blocking when near other players kills any potential for team play. If you played the final open beta/DEMO before release... nothing was changed. Not only that, it's a shameless console experience. There are many interface/response issues but the absolute worst is when a map ends, you can't do anything. Can't look at a player list with pings and you CANNOT QUIT. WTF is that? You have to wait until the next map/match loads before you can gain access to the menu that lets you disconnect from the server. That might be fine for some kid infront of their PS3/360 with a gamepad, but with all those keys on a keyboard and you are completely locked out from anything? Either Dice sabotaged their half of the game, or the current staff at Dice really fluked BFBC2 and have no real knowledge how to make a good multiplayer experience. Or maybe the instructions from the main developer were so dumb that Dice had no choice but to make it this idiotic. I find that hard to believe... sabotage seems like the most believable possibility.
Again.. I am so SOOOO glad I didn't pay for this game. I even feel bad that my friend wasted his money on it, though he assures me it'll be worth it for access to the BF3 beta. He's deluding himself though. This game should never have been released and the developer has no business making more games after this.
If you want to spend time on a relatively enjoyable game with fellow annoying children, half of them using aimbots... go ahead and embrace CoD Black Ops. If you want a fun arcade military shooter, wait for Breach, Homefront, etc. Really, anything is better than this.
This MoH literally has nothing original, innovative or even adequately implemented to offer. And the time and money that went into making this wannabe-propaganda-film along with the fact that this is a franchise with a proven track record of being able to deliver good mechanics/handling... that makes the failure completely unacceptable, thus the 3.5 score.