365//365: Day 079 – Medal of Honor (PSX) [Quickie]

When it comes to FPS, I’d rather play through a modern or futuristic setting than anything to do with a time period before the year of my birth. Over the last ten plus years, we have witness an over saturation of FPS taking place between World War One and the Vietnam War, to the point where the changes are so vague, they all begin to feel like the same game in a slightly different time period. The Medal of Honor series is definitely guilty of feeling recycled and uninspiring. However, that’s not to say every MoH title was bad. Two in particular were the must play titles of the series – Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, which had, from an emotion invoking standpoint, one of the most breathtaking scenes in video game history, and Medal of Honor on the Sony PlayStation, which introduced us to some very important elements to the FPS genre.

MoH is a pretty well detailed FPS for the 32 bit era.

First off, don’t even try to play without a Dual Shock controller. Without one, aiming is clumsy and the pace feels slowed down because of it. Even with Dual Shock controls, it takes a little bit to get used to. Lack of on screen cross-hairs can throw some people off, and holding a button to get them and fine tune your aim stops your forward progress. So aiming will be a bit hit or mess, literally. For a PS1 FPS though, they are functional enough, as the few FPS before it, truly defined clunky controls. Although the game looks rough, with a very low draw distance, the animation is impressive. When you’re in an area with enough of the environment and enemies around, MoH looks passable enough. It doesn’t try to do more than what its capable of.

The two biggest draws though, comes in the form of enemy AI and the audio. Gun fire, ricochets grunts, explosions, they all sound crystal clear, and faithfully represent what they are supposed to be. But the orchestral pieces throughout the game convey quite a sense of emotion while playing. Impressive throughout, however the most impressive aspect to MoH has to do with enemy AI. While not perfect, the AI flashes some brilliance, some of which were innovated from this very game. Enemies that fire at you when you appear, only to run a corner when you fire back and come closer, luring you to an ambush. Enemies picking up or kicking grenades that you threw at them, right back to you. How they just drop to the ground and roll around every so often, making it harder to hit them, is just flat out impressive. Shoot a guy in the arm, and he reacts accordingly. These are some major milestones that MoH developed, some that even today’s FPS titles are missing entirely.

Aiming isn't the easiest thing in the world in MoH, even with practice.

Fans of the genre owe Medal of Honor quite a bit of thanks for introducing several key enemy AI routines, as well as some great music, and the blueprint for creating a functional control system for console FPS on dual analog controls. A meritorious addition to your library, and at the same time, a huge shame that with all the innovations and ground breaking Medal of Honor produced in its initial installment, not much more were made for the next ten plus years.

Rating: 7.8