As previously mentioned, anyone who activated an EA Online Pass that came with new copies of Medal of Honor will get a new game type and two new maps free on November 2nd. Now we have word that on the same date the “Hot Zone” DLC will be available for $9.99(800MS points). Hot Zone is a king of the hill game type with the winner decided by whichever team holds the hot zone the longest. The game type will be playable across two new maps Hindukush Pass and Korengal Outpost as well as two maps already on the disc.

Medal of Honor’s single player campaign definitely feels as if it’s talking place right now in Afghanistan. You will see its barren deserts, its frosty cold mountaintops and everything in between. Developer Danger Close left no stone unturned in its attempts to faithfully recreate the country so you could blow it apart. I have never been to the Middle East, and I most certainly have never been to war, but I feel like there was definitely some consulting going on with the military to create the country’s landscape as faithfully as possible. The settings, from huts to cave networks to the sides of mountains, all feel right. You don’t take cover behind randomly scattered half-walls; you take cover as best you can against the landscape around you. It works really well, helping it to feel less like a game, and more like actual combat experience.

Also helping it feel like less of a game is its lack of a HUD. The designers took a cue from another EA property, Dead Space, and removed the HUD, only showing you elements you need when you need them. You’ll never see your ammo count unless you are actually firing a weapon. Your crosshairs are the only constant, and in dialogue heavy scenes, even that goes away. They even go so far as to take objective markers away from you, requiring you to press up to bring them back on the screen. It’s not only immersive, but can make things downright hectic when you get ambushed and lose track of the direction you should be heading in.

Speaking of being ambushed, the game also does a great job of never making you feel safe. When you are told to watch another character’s “six,” you better, or odds are there’s an enemy or two lurking around a corner. In most games, this never actually happens, in Medal of Honor, I died quite a few times not checking my blind spots.

The single player campaign runs on the Unreal Engine. Either it wasn’t optimized, or it just can’t handle the draw distances and fast-paced nature of the game. During a speedy ATV chase through the wooded mountains, I had the game constantly stutter on me, once for so long I assumed the game was crashing. When the game isn’t stuttering or glitching it looks…decent. The mood of some of the scenes actually reminded me of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Everything looks kind of shiny.

The game’s greatest achievement might be its sound design. It’s probably the best sounding game I’ve played all year. It’s also the single most important piece of the authenticity puzzle. Medal of Honor never stops using military jargon from beginning to end. It’s up to you to learn and adapt to the constant calling out of targets by code names and locations by clock face. “Tango’s at 2 o’ clock” is something you’ll hear more than a few times throughout your roughly five and a half hours in the game’s single player campaign. One of the coolest audio tricks in the game is when a member of your squad is talking into his mic to HQ, you’ll hear him twice. Once in his real voice, and then a split second later in your head through your headset. It’s pretty impressive, and you’ll wonder why no one’s thought of it before.

Medal of Honor is actually two games on one disc. No really, it is. Danger Close are the developers behind the single player campaign, but DICE handled the multiplayer component and used their proprietary Frostbite engine to power it. You’ve seen the Frostbite engine if you’ve played either of the Battlefield: Bad Company games. Not only does it handle the action of the game better than the Unreal engine, but it also looks better. Distance is handled better, and shadowing is a lot nicer. Overall, it’s just a nicer looking game. The problem is that it just feels like an expansion to Bad Company’s multiplayer. It’s nowhere near as addicting as Modern Warfare, or even Halo’s multiplayer, and the rewards for leveling are not choices. You just receive another thing for your weapon. There are killstreak rewards, but it took me a few games to even realize I had earned them. Then, once I had earned them, I had to figure out how to use them. The presentation is kind of messy, to say the least. The most addicting part of multiplayer, for me, was unlocking the achievements for playing certain game modes, or playing for a certain length of time. The game modes are all the basic FPS game modes that you’ve seen or played before: Deathmatch, objective unlocking, capture and hold, etc. There’s nothing here that would make you play this over that other modern war game you have sitting just a few spaces away on your shelf.

Overall, Medal of Honor tried to be a carbon copy of Modern Warfare 2, but like any good story about a clone, something didn’t copy over right. It’s not a bad game, it’s just unnecessary and does nothing to stand out from the rest of the pack. If you want to feel like you are in the middle of an actual current military campaign then go ahead and give Medal of Honor a try, and save your money for a game that isn’t trying to be a carbon copy.

PROS:

• Sound design is incredible.
• Level of authenticity is top notch.
• Some variety in mission types.

CONS:

• Single player is glitchy and relies heavily on scripted events that you sometimes miss or interrupt.
• Multiplayer does nothing innovative.
• The whole game feels like a rush job.

Final Verdict: Try It.

Get ready Medal of Honor players, your online pass is about to used for something. That’s right in grand EA tradition new copies of Medal of Honor came with an online pass, and that online pass is about to pay dividends on November 2nd. Not only will you be able to download two new maps, Bagram Hangar and Khyber Caves, but you will also be able to play a new game mode entitled “Clean Sweep”. Clean Sweep sounds like team elimination where you only get one spawn, and the team left standing wins.

EA of course would also like you to know that the game has sold over 1.5 million copies in it’s first five days on store shelves. Not too shabby.

EA has announced that amid pressure from families and loved ones of those serving in the armed forces they have renamed the Taliban to Opposing Force in Medal of Honor’s multiplayer. That’s it really. They changed it. So there you go. No word on whether or not this puts the game back on shelves at army bases around the world.

How bad does EA want Medal of Honor to be Modern Warfare 2? This bad. You might recall that academy award winning composer Hans Zimmer did some of the score for Modern Warfare 2, well now EA has hired Ramin Djawadi to score Medal of Honor. Djawadi did the scores for Iron Man, Clash of the Titans, and  Fox’s Prison Break. The press release claims he’s won awards, but it doesn’t actually say what awards. Oh well, at least EA and Activision get to keep playing “who’s dick is bigger” and we keep getting fantastic scores for video games. Thanks guys!

An open beta for Medal of Honor begins on the PC starting October 4th. The beta will allow players to play two game types. Sector control which by name alone seems to indicate that you will have to control sectors, while avoiding bullets and combat mission. I don’t know what combat mission is, but I bet you shoot guns. You’ll have until the 7th to enjoy the open beta before it closes forever. Then you’ll have to wait until the 15th when the game hits stores for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Well here it is, the 4 minute plus trailer for Medal of Honor which also debuts in it’s entirety for the first time anywhere the first single off of Linkin Park’s new album, which I guess is a big deal. I’ll hold off on telling you what I think of the trailer. It’s a mix of in game footage, cut scene footage, and some live action stuff that was directed by Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn who does the band’s videos as well. Also, something we didn’t get a chance to post about separately but is mentioned at the end of the trailer is that the limited edition version of the game includes beta access for Battlefield 3. All you have to do is be one of the first to buy Medal of Honor it’s nothing you have to pay extra for. Medal of Honor tries to take Call of Duty’s crown on October 12th.

• Medal of Honor Limited Edition is coming exclusively to the PS3. Comes with a up-rezzed version of Medal of Honor: Frontline (last gen’s first MoH game)
• Dead Space 2 Limited edition is also exclusive to the PS3. It comes with a Move-Enabled version of the (amazing) Dead Space Extraction

Achievements? Who needs em?