Medal of Honor: Rising Sun Review

Me playing this game was completely random, I heard that the game wasn't that great but then I recently got told that it actually was good so I finally decided to play and come to my own conclusions, and I'd say, it's pretty good, I'd say it's probably the last geniunely good MoH game before the series would start to get experimental with European Assault and then just become a generic Call of Duty clone with games like Heroes 2, Vanguard, and Warfighter.

The game opening sequence on Pearl Harbour is pretty memorable, in large part because the player starts right in the action rather than choosing to select a new game and difficulty before starting, the whole thing is very bombastic and very intense especially when this isn't even the first fight with infantry and is mostly shooting down planes, I'm also not sure if this was intentional but you rarely get health pickups up drinks either which might've added to the tension.

Other good things is that this is before the release of the original Call of Duty meaning that levels still require you geniunely aware of the levels and look around to know where to go next, it isn't railroaded like CoD and the later MoHs. You still got look around to complete objectives and to get to the level exit. Some parts require you to get x amount of something while others are more bombastic, the fact that you have to look around mixed in with more over the top levels makes this more involving than the later MoHs. There is one mission late game where you will be infiltrating a summit of sorts, then the game gives you a lay of the land with the building you infiltrate and then you will get caught later which after you will be fighting enemies through that building.

The characters while not anyone you will remember for years to come by any means are at least entertaining enough to keep moment to moment gameplay entertaining in between all the mowing down of enemies. Characters like Tanaka being an example.

Final positive is that the Japanese do a good enough job at standing out from the Nazis, where the latter will often just run into and gun them down, the Japanense will hide, run at you ambush you, shoot from high places, or go up close and try to take you down that way, they feel like a more dynamic enemy compared to the Nazi soldiers of previous games. Your allies are pretty useful too, not too useful, but aren't mindless either, they can occasionally kill an enemy for you.

Issues might make a break the game for some, but here is the thing MoH Rising Sun, you will spend at least spend a good portions of the game with no machine guns like Tompson, MP40, or Type 100, this is in fact a console shooter where a good amount of the game is spent using precision weapons like the Springfield and Welrod which both will need you to require firing one shot and then reload again, this would be all fine and good and mouse and keyboard but this is a console shooter with analog sticks, so if the very sound that is offputting then stay away from this game. It was surprising to me just how much of the game is spent using precision guns. You do get shotguns and machine guns more the game goes on, but some levels will push your tolerance for console stick aiming to it's fullest even my patience was being tested at some points.

It even forces pistols on you too, which was surprising for a hitscan human enemy shooter like this game is. Usually you are primarily using machine guns but now precision weapons and pistols is what you will be using for at least a good 40-45% of Rising Sun.

Rising Sun can be a little glitchy and unpolished at times, sometimes allies and enemies will just pop in out of nowhere which can be immersion breaking.

The final issue that levels can be a big, a little too big, which is interesting since it feels like the devs wanted to push the power of 6th gen hardware but this also means you could spend hours wandering around not knowing where to go, and there isn't stuff like green lights or any kind of lights to guide the player, I surprisingly didn't need to look up a walkthrough but I can picture people who's not used to this style of level design might get lost. They also FEEL like they can take a while to complete due to the player's slow movement speed too, I see Youtube vids where you can beat them in under 30 minutes but levels just FELT longer than that, mostly likely due to the slow movement speed. Making the player's base movement speed faster could help fix this issue.

Overall, Rising Sun is a good game and is probably the last solid MoH entry before the series just went on for the sake of it and made me realize it barely any staying power left as a franchise.