Medal of Honour: Warfighter Review

Hi,

My review for Medal of Honour: Warfighter is now ready to read, please check it out below!


Is Medal of Honor: Warfighter a worthy successor to 2010’s installment or has its honour been tarnished?
Story  

The story follows Tier 1 operators as they travel around the world to prevent a terrorist attack from taking place.  Whilst the story may sound fairly commonplace for a military shooter, what helps it to stand out is the emotional, family aspect of it, which sees protagonist Preacher trying to amend his marriage as he balances it against his military duties. 

Characters  

Due to the short campaign, you won’t have much time to grow fond of your characters but you’ll still feel a certain attachment to them because of the relationships they’ve formed together. The game never attempts to place you alongside the characters, but makes more of an effort to have you play witness to their story.

The team from the 2010 reboot appear again and are as likable as they ever were, with Preacher taking the spotlight, shining it on his family issues and life-changing choices.  New characters such as Stump are introduced, but you won’t have many interactions with them beyond playing a few missions and seeing them in a handful of cutscenes. Their brief screentime is enjoyable, but overall serves the purpose of padding out the team. 

Gameplay  

The gameplay is tight and has added weight as to not make you feel like you’re handling a toy gun, with every penetrating bullet rewarding you with a sense of achievement.   Melee is satisfying and you’ll be presented with a short animation showing you stealthily axing someone from behind or going in for a brutal kill before you can be spotted. 

The standout thing for me was the sniping; whilst it is simple, it takes concentration and tact to be able to successfully lay your enemies to waste. Warfighter takes realism one step further and adds bullet drop to the gunplay, forcing you to aim that bit higher when further away so that the bullet can travel the distance and make a hit.

There’s no customisation in the campaign but the weapons come fitted with standard scopes, suppressors, and more, and there is a large array of weapons to choose from including sniper rifles, assault rifles and heavy machine guns. All feel different and will come useful at different parts of the story, constantly encouraging you to venture out of your comfort zone to include more variety.

You can lean to aid yourself in making a quick shot and shift back down again but this isn’t half as useful as the sliding mechanic is. When utilised correctly, you’ll save yourself many restarts as you slide away from enemy fire. 

Graphics & Audio

Character models may look unpolished and rough but the guns, cutscenes, light, and weather effects look outstanding. Danger Close is clearly proud of this as many levels feature pouring rain, muzzle flares, spotlights and flickering lights and an abundance of explosions. Just be prepared to see a lot of rain and darkness. 

The CGI cutscenes could have benefitted from more time but they make a nice change of pace from the in-game cutscenes also heavily featured in Warfighter. They contain some heart-wrenching moments, particularly later in the story that wouldn’t have had the same effect with the games somewhat shoddy character models.

The graphics overall are quite strong and there wasn’t any noticeable screentear, despite how much may be going on at any given time, and everything runs smoothly.

The audio is best experienced with surround sound or good quality headphones, allowing you to catch the full effect as you’re going to constantly being surrounded by bangs. 

Multiplayer

Multiplayer plays it safe and offers standard game modes such as capture the flag, team deathmatch, and objective.  It has a strong focus on teamwork not seen in many other first-person shooters.   You’re assigned a fireteam buddy who will spawn on you and vice versa for points. You’re rewarded experience for co-operating and won’t find much room for being a lone wolf, especially when people are forming plans with their friends on how to win. This is a standout feature but isn’t unique to the series. 

There are 6 classes and you can pick what nation to represent but you’ll most likely head in to the game with a class in mind that you’ll be familiar with. Servers are good and there is minimum lag in a game of 20 people, making for a smooth experience. 

Lasting Appeal  

Although the campaign lasts roughly 6 hours on normal mode, you can look forward to the strong multiplayer which should see a healthy amount of players for the foreseeable future, just like the first installment in the reboot had and still does.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter doesn’t push any boundaries and doesn’t try anything unique, but it’s still a strong game in its own right and should be experienced, especially if you’re a fan of the series or enjoy modern day shooters in general.


Thanks for reading,
Mitch.