Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
(Aspyr)

Can you take the gritty realism of films like Saving Private Ryan and A Bridge too Far in order to turn into a powerful gaming experience? In the case of MOA, at least for me, the D-Day landing level is more intense than any movie I have ever seen which features it.

As you try to get yourself onto the beach, you are well aware of the intensity of the combat around you. To add to the chaos you literally see your fellow soldiers blown to bits beside you. To add to the trauma there is a medic helping a wounded man if obvious pain and someone who has lost it due to battlefield stress. Dying men twitch, injured men crawl away to safety (friend or foe) and the enemy is even known to throw grenades back at you if you have not timed it right. MOA is not your average first person-shooter.

With both single and multiplayer combat MOA have a lot of legs. The single player levels take from the clandestine sabotage in Nazi occupied Europe through the march across Europe to Berlin. Along the way you face hordes of Nazi and regular German soldiers and airmen bent on making your ever move a costly one. In one level, which is very fun but most challenging (unlike Overlord which is not fun just damn hard) you have to go literally from tree to tree seeking out German snipers. It takes a keen eye, lots of trail & error and patience to get through the level in one piece. Unlike say RTCW, there are no uber-weapons lying about or hidden for you to find. You have to fight with the same weapons, as every other grunt, whether it be German or American. Learning to hit the R key to reload whenever possible is a skill that needs to be learned quick. Running out of bullets at the wrong time most often gets you killed.

Performance is pretty good on a decent machine and it is possible to play most levels (baring Overlord) on a machine with the minimum requirements. Overlord his hard even on my 700mhz G4 EMAC with oddles of RAM. Those of you wishing to get this game for the Mac, please remember my personal sponsor: The MacSmith.

Graphically the game is impressive to look at and really gives you the feeling of war era North Africa and Europe. I had no crashes playing it and the options menu allows you tweak to your heart's content. Loading times are reasonable and cut-scenes are well done.

Multiplayer is fun online, but be warned there are those who insist on cheating. You will need to use trial and error to find servers which have players of your level and skill. Multi is very much like most multi games with similar types of levels like CTF. It is merely death-match style play with WWII weapons and nothing that great. As with all gaming online, lag is especially deadly in large scale firefights.

Overall this is an excellent WWII-era FPS shooter, with enough realism to make you think. It plays well, runs well and its great fun. Aspyr has done a great job with this game and we can expect several more in the series (like MOA: Flashpoint). This is a wonderful example of how to get a computer game right. A must for all FPS and WWII fans.

Rating: 5