Skip it. Nuff said.
Gameplay: 4 / 10
To start, the AI is as dumb as a pile of bricks. Maybe more so. I literally knifed my way through an entire Taliban stronghold...pathetic . An AI controlled enemy would simply just sit there behind a stack of crates or a doorway and pop its head into sight. If I happened to miss them, they'd take cover, but then they'd appear back in the same spot. EXACTLY the same spot. So all it takes to win is to wait them out. They don't attempt to flank, or team up against you. They don't attempt to throw grenades to get you to move or anything to that effect.
The inevitable comparison (like it or not) is to Activision's Modern Warfare 2. In MW2, the AI does all of these things, and poses a serious threat. If you camp out you're generally not to going to make it very far. MOH was like returning to the days of arcade style "Lethal Enforcers". People pop out from behind some object, and *bang!* they drop, you move forward, rinse and repeat. There was really no challenge in MOH's single player campaign.
MOH poses no threat to even the newest of gamers. It holds your hand through the storyline, the AI is horrendous and the extreme linear progression makes the game feel like it's on-rails. This game is not much fun to play.
Graphics: 8.5 / 10
MOH is a gorgeous game. Not the best I've ever seen, but certainly very well done in the visuals department. The character models are excellently detailed, have decent animations and the textures help make the models come to life. The game feels gritty and dingy, like you're running around in the streets of Afghanistan. One of the parts I sort of oooo'd and ahhh'd over was when you have to reach for your buddy so he can pull you onto a ledge. The textures in his clothing and gear were really impressive.
One gripe I did have about the game's graphics were the infrared lasers seen while using night vision. It appears as this perfectly uninterrupted green colored skinny cone that points to your target. Nice to have a laser sure, but it looked like it was a raw 3D model that had absolutely no thought put into it or time spent refining it. It cheapened the quality and felt pretty slapped together. Laser aside, the night vision itself did feel authentic.
While this game really shines (no pun intended) in the day time, the night time missions are a bit bland. The day time missions show the details very well through excellent lighting and shadows, dust etc. The night missions however, feel drowned out with a shallow mix of matted colors. While you may think "it's night, it's not supposed to have a lot of colors", it didn't feel like a proper transition between day a night. Almost like more time was spent making the daytime graphics look amazing and the nighttime graphics were sort of tossed in there before release day.
Finally, some of the cut scenes in this game were just pitiful to look at. The character models in them were very machine-like in movement, some of the facial models were stale and lifeless, and all sort of looked the same with some slight variation. The clothing used in the cut scenes looked like they were wearing a stretched rubber bag. The overall quality of the cut scenes were laughable and were obviously not a focus during development.
Sound: 9.0 / 10
The sound in MOH is hands down the most impressive part of the entire production. Whoever was in charge of the sound production needs a promotion. The muzzle fire, the echos, the falling debris hitting the ground after an explosion, all of them were top notch. The sound of the weapons alone made the weapon feel more real than the recoil, or the weapon model itself. The voice acting was also very well done. While I didn't feel that the voices matched the look of their character very well, the voices felt real, the over the radio voices had an authentic feeling hiss and crackle etc.
If I had to make a gripe about the sound, it would not so much be the sound itself, but the execution of the "home theater" setting in the options menus. It felt very muted and not correct in terms of directional feedback. Almost as though the 5 speakers were completely segregated zones and if a grenade goes off directly in front of you, the center channel gets 100% of the sound, and the front right and left channels get none. Overall, however, the sound was one of the most redeeming qualities about MOH. It just felt right.
Presentation: 5 / 10
Believe it or not, the presentation was the worst part. The serious lack of attention to the details in MOH made me conclude that it came down to releasing the game with enough time before the release of COD: Black Ops to make some sales before gamers' attention shifted focus. MOH showed it's rushed nature from the very start. I generally try not to find bugs, or "break" the game on purpose, but the bugs in the single player campaign were so prevalent it was literally impossible not to notice. One example was when a fellow gunman was supposed to run up from behind you and kick in a door in order to progress the level. The guy did run up to the door...and kept running against the door when he got there. I thought to myself, luckily EA didn't forget to make the door impassible or he may have run off into oblivion. He never actually kicked the door. Eventually after trying (and failing) to open the door on my own, I had to shoot him a few times so his animation would restart. And so we progressed.
The game also has serious frame rate issues. While I generally don't notice minor drops in frame rate nor do I have a way to actively monitor it, MOH made it too easy to notice. The game's graphics and sound would stutter during plot sequences, during game play, during loading etc. Even when one of my teammates would run in front of me, every so often the guy would skip along its intended path as the game hiccuped along. It is truly a shame because it takes any chance you have in feeling immersed in the game and grinds it into the dirt. MOH needed far more polish and QA testing prior to release.
Final Thoughts: 6.5 / 10
MOH feels like a game that was well on its way to being a good game. The teams at Danger Close & DICE obviously have talent in producing a good looking and sounding video game. However it also appears that this talent was heavily, and I mean heavily, rushed at a place during the development cycle that was so crucial to giving MOH a fighting chance at competing in this market. It felt like a half finished game so I'm tempted to say it deserves half a score. However due to the generally pretty graphics and stellar sound, It may deserve a little better than that. The lack of attention to detail in some areas, the obvious bugs, the stability of the game, the AI, or lack thereof all make this game one to pass on.