Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Review

Playing this game after playing both the PS1 games and Frontline and also playing the CoD games is a rather peculiar experience. Playing the first 2 missions of AA was really nice and the improvements felt noticeable right away. Mouse aim, WASD controls, quick selecting, bigger levels, no short draw distance and all of this felt really great. It geniunely felt like an evolution over what in the PS1 games. The 2nd mission in particular where start off in a snowy empty area sniping enemies from afar and then all the way to end where you sink a U Boat and the escape might just be the greatest Medal of Honor mission ever. Then the Omaha Beach level happens and I am going to be honest and say that I never got the hype for this mission at all. There could be something I am missing but trying to avoid the bullets firing at you felt impossible and I could never get the rules down for this sequences at all. I was stuck on this level for hours because I could never figure out what I was supposed to do to avoid or minimize damage. It's one of the most frustrating levels I have ever played in a video game. The Omaha Beach level felt less frustrating in Frontline since there were health packs litered all over the level.

Luckily the game does get much better from there, but I won't deny that these parts parts of the game feel less like PS1 MoH and Frontline and feel more like a precursor to what you would find in CoD. I won't deny that the increased enemy count does make more exhilirating and fast paced fire fights compared to the smaller skirmshes in the PS1 MoHs but at the same time, I did really wish the game gave me the ability to hold medkits considering so much of the game's challenge comes from getting ambushed by hitscan weapons. So as a result so much of the game can feel like quicksaving, get hit, memorize enemy locations, and quickload to minimize damage until you reach the next medkit or pickup a health drink. I still think the level design is solid and the one man army doing everything is approach does make for interesting level design than the scripted nature of CoD but I really did wish the game allowed me to store medkits or drinks for later use like the later game in the series European Assault would since hitscan is something you can't reliably avoid. This is actually later CoDs kind of circumvents with regen health but that has it's own issues. Other issues include how stealth could've been better handled, I did wish the game gave you a better sense of awareness when dealing with the line of sight of enemies since it can get inconsistent. Something I can surely say later CoD games did better. The silenced pistol is also satisfying to get headshots with all though also inconsistent. I also don't like how the game seems to break it's own rules regarding alarms. During the stealth parts, you can turn off alarms after they are triggered to avoid having enemies spawn, but during the mandatory sequences where you will get caught, you can turn off the alarm and then it will become raised 10 seconds later, I am not a big fan of this but this system seems to be introduced late game so I can sort of forgive it and I don't mind this as much as forced action parts in actual stealth games.

The weapon feel and enemy damage animations all do a decent enough job even if this is something the PS1 games and Frontline kind of did better since enemies were more expressive on where they got shot in the body.

Overall, MoH AA is still a solid game but it can be rough around the edges at times. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is still the best WW2 fps but this game is at least a good 2nd or 3rd.