Medal of Honor is the video game equivalent of kicking a rather large hornet’s nest with a size 12 Doc Martens boot. The game has been making headlines well before it was even due on the shelves, with political and military leaders voicing concerns over EA’s hunger to be as authentic as possible. But is all this fuss and hysteria really justified? Read on to find out if Medal of Honor really is going to turn our nation’s youth into fanatical Middle Eastern combatants in this part of our Medal of Honor review.
Read the rest of our Medal of Honor review now
Medal of Honor review
Medal of Honor review: Online multiplayer
You say Taliban, I say Opposing Forces, let’s call the whole thing off. That really is the crux of the controversy surrounding Medal of Honor’s release. Just a few short weeks ago, EA dropped the bombshell by confirming that in the multiplayer portion of the game, players would get to assume control of Taliban fighters, and therefore get the chance to fire virtual bullets at digital representations of Allied soldiers.
This revelation regarding Medal of Honor’s online mode was greeted with the usual level-headed response from the mainstream media. Clearly, pretending to be a bad guy is only OK if you’re stepping into the leather jackboots of a Nazi storm trooper, because those guys never did anything wrong, did they? Alas, Medal of Honor’s transition from the mud-filled battlefields of 1940s Europe to the dusty deserts of 2002 Afghanistan hasn’t been at all easy, with the use of the word “Taliban” being the game’s equivalent of Modern Warfare 2’s infamous civilian-slaying airport stage.
In the end, EA relented before publishing Medal of Honor, and now in multiplayer mode, enemy troops are simply referred to as OPFOR – short for Opposing Forces. Nothing else is changed – the insurgents look the same, they carry the same weaponry and let out the same pained yells when somebody scores a direct hit on their posteriors with a rocket-propelled grenade. This makes the moniker-switch all the more absurd – it’s clear who the two sides in the conflict are supposed to represent.
Controversy, or storm in a teacup? We're thinking the latter
Clouding the issue further is the fact that Medal of Honor’s solo campaign remains unsullied by this politically correct nonsense. The enemy is still the Taliban – and is referred to as such.
War is always going to be a controversial subject, but Medal of Honor is no more inflammatory than any other recent FPS title. Possibly its biggest mistake is to replicate recent events too closely. Modern Warfare 2’s aforementioned airport level aside, Activision’s series has so far managed to skirt around the conflict in Afghanistan by using entirely fictional Russian (and even American) belligerents.
Check out our Best PS3 games Top 5 now!
The two Modern Warfare games are unquestionably flights of fancy – glorious works of fiction which attempt to include authentic tactics, weapons and settings. Medal of Honor instead tries to be as faithful to real life as is possible, and that’s probably why it’s upset so many people. The war against terror is still raging, and as we sit with joypads in our hands, pretending to blow up Allied troops as Taliban solders – sorry, opposing forces – the reality is actually occurring right now. In that regard, it makes it a little easier to see why people feel so strongly about the subject.
But as EA itself as commented over the furore, with every conflict there has to be a good guy and a bad buy. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, Jedi and Sith. To brand Medal of Honor as deliberately disrespectful to Western Armed Forces purely because it has (or rather, had) the temerity to acknowledge the name of the enemy is borderline ridiculous, and in our humble opinion here at Electricpig, the whole thing has been blown out of all proportion. The only thing you need to know is that it’s good, but not quite as good as Modern Warfare 2 – which we make clear during the course of our full review.
Read the rest of our Medal of Honor review now
Medal of Honor review
Medal of Honor review: Online multiplayer
