The Worst of Medeal of Honor
First off , the in game graphics are so God-forbidden awful that it heavily impacts the gameplay. Game environments are extremely pixelated. What’s even worse, the walls change texture patterns as you move, which can give you a bad headache. Almost all of the areas within a level look identical, giving it a very boring feel and making it very easy to get lost. Manon also apparently has X-Ray vision because you can often see enemies through walls. They don’t even have to be standing next to the wall for you to see them. Even more horrible are the soldier models. Many of the enemies are invisible from more than fifty meters away. Up closer, they appear as gray, white or blue blobs of pixels. It’s really inconceivable to realize at first how badly these graphics are composed. I know many say it’s not about the graphics, but this pitiful performance takes an obvious exception.
Underground’s horrid graphics make even worse what is already a bad game. The overall feel of the game is rushed and broken. Underground’s terrible aiming system is one of the first things you will notice. The game uses an auto aim feature that makes it impossible to hit your target unless the computer locks the cursor on for you. The even bigger problem is, the game does a really bad job at this, and many times will not lock on to a target in plain sight. This is especially a problem when the enemy is on lower or higher grounds than you are. Sometimes the enemy will even be firing at you, which makes it extremely frustrating considering they never miss. Weapon variety is also non-existent. You’ll almost never use any other weapon besides your Sten SMG throughout the entire game. Aside from all the problems, the game is also incredibly easy, even on the hardest difficulty level. You’ll almost never have to worry about being low on health. For every three enemies in a mission there will likely be a health pack which restores a third of your life. Also, enemy soldiers never take cover when underfire - they stand smack dab in the middle of a room while shooting at you. In my experience, my character died only a few times before completing the entire seventeen mission campaign.
Underground’s music and sound effects are actually pretty good. The music sounds a bit dated but it quite catchy and is a fitting score for the game. There isn’t much weapon audio, but what’s there sounds decent. The chatter of the German soldiers is not as well done however. They utter the same four or five short phrases over and over that don’t even really sound like German. Still, Underground’s background audio is the lone decent aspect of this game.
If you are crazy enough to complete all seventeen missions, you'l likely be done. The game leaves you no incentive whatsoever to take it for a second spin. The game has multiplayer, but I don’t know of anyone else who owns this game, so I’ve never been able to try it out. I highly doubt it’s any fun though.
Medal of Honor: Underground for GBA is a complete and utter disgrace to the Medal of Honor franchise. Either the GBA cannot handle a FPS or the developers simply did not know how to develop a game (my guess is it’s a combination of both). I wouldn’t even download this game off the Internet for free. Hopefully, Medal of Honor will never sink this low again.