Medal of Honor Multiplayer Hands-On

Medal of Honor was a first-person shooter franchise steeped in the history of World War II and some of its most famous battles. However, the latest game in the series sheds its historical leanings in favor of a modern setting--in this case, the ongoing war in Afghanistan between coalition and opposition forces. While we have yet to see how Medal of Honor approaches this potentially sensitive subject in single-player, we have played portions of the game's multiplayer mode, which is being developed by a separate team at DICE--the same developer behind the Battlefield series.

As such, it's probably not surprising to learn that Medal of Honor's multiplayer has a Battlefield-like quality to it in that it's fast paced and there's rarely a lull in the action. We got our first taste of this in the Helmand Valley map, which pits the opposing forces against each other on rugged terrain sprinkled with bombed-out fortifications. As the coalition forces, our goal was to make our way through these structures on the map before proceeding through two checkpoints to the final defensive stronghold located in a dilapidated building. Naturally, this was much easier said than done because the coalition forces also had the task of trying to find an optimal path across the rocky terrain and move swiftly through entry points so we didn't get bunched up. Of course, this happened several times and the opposing team--which often has the higher ground--managed to fend us off until the closing seconds of the match.

But before the match completely ended, we tried some of the other selectable classes for the coalition forces--each with its own weapon loadouts. The three classes we saw were rifleman, special ops, and sniper. The rifleman has access to all-around solid equipment, including the M16 assault rifle. Special ops makes use of the M4, as well as the 870 modular combat shotguns. Lastly, the sniper has the M21 and M24 sniper rifles. We had some decent success with the sniper because it was easy to step back, let everyone else charge in, and then pick off enemy forces when they were drawn out of their hiding spots.

In the following multiplayer match, we took to the streets of Kabul in a team assault match. This map is quite different from the previous maps in that all combatants are restricted to a single, ravaged downtown area. The abundance of structures also made for some excellent sniper hiding spots, but for the most part, some of the confrontations boiled down to firefights in the streets. Actually, a lot of these firefights devolved into members from opposing teams running around trying to shank each other with their combat knives. Throughout the course of the match, we also got a glimpse of the classes and weapons for opposition forces, which included sniper, special ops, and rifleman as well. As expected, many of these weapons are of Russian origins, including variants on the AK-47, the TOZ shotgun, and the SV-98 sniper rifle for the rifleman, special ops, and sniper classes, respectively.

Unfortunately, our time with Medal of Honor's multiplayer was all too brief, but we'll have more on the game in the coming weeks and months before its October 12 release date.