Medal of Honor is a game that looks better than its content. Though not a quality game, it does provides some good time.
Warfighter strives for this by giving you a genuine impression of what it's like to live as a Tier 1 operator, the elite operatives at the center of the modernized Medal of Honor series. It's clear from the first cutscene all the way to the end credits that developer Danger Close has the utmost respect for the extraordinary skills and bravery of these soldiers. If Medal of Honor extended the same level of respect to its players, Warfighter might have accomplished more than its numerous significant failures and lack of player agency has allowed.
The bare-bones mission design of Warfighter is entirely in service of its mantra, not its players. That is, Medal of Honor's campaign wants to throw you into situations "ripped from the headlines" – and it's devastating to whatever story Warfighter fails to tell. The primary objective is buried by disjointed jumps from one character or country to the next – as it has been in Battlefield and CoD as well. It's hard to keep the dots connected, too, because the timeline follows no discernible order and features flashbacks within flashbacks. The narrative of Warfighter's core revolves around the dissolution and rebuilding of an operator's family, but the characters and in-game events compromise pathos. There's a massive disconnect between the story the developer wants to to tell and the game it's made, and both suffer because of each other. All of this leaves Warfighter as uninteresting as it is disengaged, and none of its promises pay off. This is equally true in the hollow multiplayer. Abysmal map design cripples the already uninspired objective-based modes, creating obstacles cutting off paths to a bomb site or a flag return point. Shrubbery and impassable rubble obscure routes, creating a dense clutter even in the biggest maps, while spawn camping is an intensely frustrating problem in nearly all modes.
One of the almost success feature in the game is the wall breaching which seems to provide some value to the game by that once you complete a wall breaching perfectly (killing everyone during the slow motion), you will be rewarded in a different way of wall breaching. Of course, after you finish these (less than 10 types) missions, the rest of the campaign is rewardless. There are several scripted set-piece sections that stand above the rest, however--and in fact, stand above the campaign in general. All of them involve vehicles. Some of these driving sections are ridiculous and entertaining, directing you to incite crashes, and then showcasing the destruction in slow motion, Burnout-style. The camera that so lovingly caresses the chaos flies in the face of Warfighter's meager attempts to identify the drivers as everyday heroes, but the tension of avoiding oncoming traffic and the joy of watching your four-wheeled victims flip with abandon are both guilty pleasures. The game's most surprising turn of events is a vehicular stealth sequence in which you must slip into designated safe spots to avoid prowling enemy drivers. It's a neat idea, executed well, that generates tension and has you fearing your possible discovery. It's not difficult to succeed, but even so, this portion is elegant and imaginative.
Of course, if a military shooter is a means for you to shoot fools online and insult their skills (and mothers), the campaign may be a secondary concern, and it's just as well, since the multiplayer is much more satisfying than the campaign, though not without its flaws. The leaning mechanic in the campaign finds a place here, and while gameplay doesn't hinge on successfully using it, it's nonetheless a boon, allowing you to quickly establish a line of sight, take some potshots, and lean back into cover.
More important is Warfighter's fire team system, in which you are paired with another team member, and the two of you leech off of each other's successes. Your buddy is both protector and spawn point, and you earn a few experience points for his headshots and kills, presuming you're in close proximity. You earn various bonuses for sticking with your buddy, so you quickly develop a camaraderie of necessity. This isn't a wholly new mechanic in games, but there is a palpable psychological component to it: when your buddy is waiting to spawn, you stay out of harm's way so that your friend might arrive in relative safety, and there's joy in getting revenge on the opponent that gunned down your buddy just moments before. It's a good feeling to know someone's got your back.
A traditional class system glues matches together, though you need to sort through the game's improbably convoluted and busy interface to make sense of it. Everyone starts out as an assaulter, but it isn't long before you've unlocked every class and are well on your way toward earning medals (Congratulations! You've killed 30 players with primary weapons!) and various weapon modifications: barrels, paint jobs, optics, and so on. You also unlock variations of the classes, each associated with a particular nation, and within matches, you can perform offensive or defensive support actions (fly an Apache!) should you string together enough kills. There's a healthy progression system here that keeps the rewards coming.
Danger Close didn't tie up some necessary loose ends before the game's release: you might spawn outside of the map and into freefall, spawn into some environmental anomaly and struggle to unstick yourself, or even bang into an invisible obstacle. In the single-player campaign, enemies might clip right through walls when they aren't busy being generally dumb. Yet Medal of Honor: Warfighter's greatest handicap isn't bugs, but that its building blocks are snapped together into a shapeless hunk rather than an identifiable monolith with form and purpose. Still, you shouldn't dismiss the game as wholly unworthy: online multiplayer is good fun, and the campaign shows signs of life, occasionally letting you see past the me-too warfare and appreciate a brief flash of imagination. But on the whole, Warfighter leaves you thinking, "Yep, that's a military shooter, all right." Its heroes strive for greatness; the game they star in is merely serviceable.