Medal of Honor Allied Assault: Spearhead Preview

By Amer Ajami, GameSpotPosted Sep 26, 2002 2:52 pm PT

Fight alongside American, British, and Russian commandos in this expansion pack to EA's phenomenal World War II first-person shooter.

While development on the recently announced expansion pack to Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is still a few months away from completion, Electronic Arts did manage to complete one aspect of the game's production not too long ago: deciding on a name. After an initial back and forth between titles like "Team Assault" and "Reload," Electronic Arts and developer EALA finally settled on Medal of Honor Allied Assault: Spearhead. Like most expansion packs, Spearhead will make a number of additions to Allied Assault's original gameplay, not the least of which are new multiplayer maps, a new multiplayer mode, several new weapons, and a whole new mini single-player campaign that will have you fighting Germans on their own doorstep. For those who haven't had the pleasure, the original Medal of Honor: Allied Assault put you in the shoes of one Lt. Mike Powel, an OSS agent tasked with infiltrating Nazi positions in North Africa and Europe, extracting vital military secrets, and wreaking mass havoc on the Axis powers in general. The game was superbly executed, thanks to its gorgeous graphics, amazing sound effects, and gameplay inspired by the likes of Saving Private Ryan. We recently had the chance to play an early build of Spearhead, and it's clear that this forthcoming expansion pack is striving to offer the same level of excitement and fevered combat that its predecessor did earlier this year.

You'll parachute into France on the night before D-Day.

In fact, you'll find yourself in a pitched battle immediately upon firing up Spearhead. Interestingly, you won't play the role of Lt. Powell in the add-on. Instead, your character is a Sergeant Jack Barnes, a US Army Ranger who's sent into Normandy the night before the infamous D-Day invasion. Much like Allied Assault, Spearhead opens with an in-game cutscene that is depicted from your perspective. Though, instead of landing on the beach, you'll be inserted into France from 3,000 feet. You'll start Spearhead aboard a C-47 Gooney as part of a squad of airborne infantry. As you approach your jump window, a red bulb above the lone door on the C-47 will flicker on, and one of the airplane's crew chiefs will signal your squad to rise. You'll notice each soldier checking the chute and pack of the person in front of him, and then the squad takes turns sounding off their "OKs." A few seconds later, the red light is replaced with a green one, and the soldiers aboard the C-47 dive out of a perfectly good airplane for the short parachute ride down to French soil.

There's nothing quite like blowing up Nazi gun emplacements.

While parts of Allied Assault were directly inspired by Saving Private Ryan, this sequence in Spearhead is an obvious homage to the second episode of HBO's World War II miniseries Band of Brothers. As you float down to the ground, you'll immediately take note of hundreds of other parachutes, dozens of other C-47 planes, and streaks of triple-A fire lighting up the night sky. As you make your descent, you'll be witness to disturbing scenes like a hapless soldier free-falling toward the ground without a chute and a midair collision between two C-47s. The Omaha Beach level was a particularly nerve-racking and memorable experience in the original Medal of Honor, and Spearhead's opening moment is a worthy follow-up.

In cruel irony (considering your character's name), you'll crash through the roof of a barn, and you'll have to manually unlatch your chute straps before a squad of Germans storm through the structure. Your primary objective is to meet up with your company, though you'll find this to be an impossible task. The hedgerows of Northern France are crawling with German infantry and the occasional tank. To dispatch any armor that you might come across, Spearhead's levels have strategically placed heavy gun emplacements that you can also use to mow down wave after wave of onrushing soldiers.

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