Medal of Honor Heroes 2 Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 25th March 2008

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World War II hits the Wii in this Medal of Honor game.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 Details:

	First Person Shooter
	Nintendo Wii
	EA Games
	EA Games

16+

Out Now

N/A

The Medal of Honour series of games has found fame on most platforms, and is seen as one of the best war first person shooter series, along with the Call of Duty games. Heroes 2, is the first outing for the MOH series on the new Nintendo Wii.

You are thrown into action on the front-line during the Second World War, as an American special officer from the secret OSS to stop the Germans from finishing their research and development of an atomic weapon that would win them the war.

There are two main single player modes in the game, they are arcade and campaign, and both modes use the same levels but are played slightly differently. The arcade mode is pretty self-explanatory, it plays like an arcade version of the campaign mode, and your character automatically moves, you simply have to worry about shooting the enemy. This mode is basically like a light gun game in the arcades, you point with the Wii remote and shoot by using the B button trigger. You can make your character crouch and take cover, and you can switch between weapons using the D-pad on the remote. This mode is quite simplistic and won’t hold your interest for very long, due to the linear nature.

The campaign mode is a more traditional approach and reverts back to the normal FPS formula. You move your solider with the analog stick on the nunchuck, and aim with the remote as in the arcade mode, but you have much more freedom, and can tackle the enemy however you fancy. You need to use the scenery to protect yourself, and pick your moment to move or shoot. You can look down the barrel of the gun by holding the A button and you can still move the remote to aim as usual but this allows greater accuracy, and enables you to get head shots more easily. A nice touch is that when you are taking cover you can tilt the nunchuck left or right to lean around the scenery and fire at the enemy. Reloading is done by flicking the remote downwards, although this does have a habit of not working and instead makes you stare at the ground, which is not useful at all in the heat of battle. You have primary objectives in each level which need to be completed to finish the level. There are also some secondary objectives to complete, these are not essential but they will give a better overall rank at the end of the level.

The enemy AI on the lower difficulty is quite poor, they frequently expose their backs as they come out from their covered positions, and they are quite inaccurate. You are occasionally completing the missions as part of a team with AI controlled teamates and thankfully they appear to be more accurate and more intelligent than the enemy.

A few times during the mission, you have to use specialist weapons like a mortar launcher, or a machine gun. These have unique ways of controlling them to take advantage of the Wii’s unique control system. In the case of the machine gun, you have to swing the control and nunchuck in the same direction to aim the machine gun, like you were actually holding the machine gun and moving it. The mortar is more difficult to aim with and it can seem a bit hit and miss when you are required to hit enemies or convoys with it. You use it by directing the barrel with the nunchuck control stick and then flick the remote. The sniper rifles work quite well, with the remote to aim, the nunchuck becomes the zoom, you change the zoom by twisting the nunchuck, and you can then lock the zoom with the touch of a button, and fire as usual. These special weapons are all tricky to handle at first, but once you get used to them, they are a nice change of pace from the normal running around and shooting action of the game.

The major problems with the game is its simplicity and shortness, there are only 7 levels to complete and you can easy get through all of them on the easier difficulties in a day. The levels are also far too linear to play, the scenery pushes you along a set path in the level and you can’t jump so the game feels very restricted. There is also no local multiplayer mode, only an online multiplayer mode so unless you have a broadband connection you will not be able to utilise the multiplayer features at all!

The graphics are definitely not up to the standards of the Xbox360 and PS3, but they are still quite detailed and it has a smooth frame-rate. The levels themselves aren’t fantastically varied, but are fairly realistic. The animation of the enemy and your team mates is pretty good, if a little basic. There are some nice touches such as the screen blurring for a short time when a grenade goes off nearby. The voice-acting is pretty good! The air is constantly filled with Germans or Americans shouting and gun sounds are pretty realistic as are the explosions.

Overall though this is a decent shooter, the foundations are there but it lacks the depth that people have come to expect from this franchise, so fans of the series may find this a disappointment.