| Product: |
Medal of Honour Underground (PS) |
| Date: |
10/07/01 (472 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Really exciting gameplay, Intelligent enemies, Varied levels and tasks
Disadvantages: Annoying pop up at times, Seen better graphics
Medal of Honour Underground is the second game in the Medal of Honour series for the Playstation. Both games see you taking the role of an ally during the war, and infiltrating enemy lines to undermine the German War effort. Requiring a little luck, and a lot of skill, it’s you against seemingly the entire German Army, so you’ll need to have your wits around you. You play the part of a female French Resistance leader, who joins the Secret Service in order to try and thwart the German War effort.
The first game was magnificent, so this one had a lot to live up to, and it lives up to the standard set and surpasses them. A bit of background first – it’s a first person shooter, divided up into eight missions, each mission sub-divided into three or four smaller tasks, all-leading to the culmination of the mission. As well as taking out enemy soldiers trying to prevent you reaching your goals, there are a number of objects you must also either retrieve or destroy in order to complete your mission. To aid yourself on the way, you can pick up addition weapons and ammunition on the way, mostly discarded by the German soldiers you dispose of along the way. Each shot you take takes away some of your energy, get hit too many times and that’s your end up. However, you can pick up medical packs along the way, as well as picking up German soldier’s canteens they drop when you kill them.
Like the first game, you have a variety of missions to get through – from undercover missions, recovery missions and also missions where you have to destroy some items to prevent them falling into enemy hands, or destroying enemy items to hinder their effort. Each task has become a little longer, and the levels more intricate than the first game – there is more to see and do on each level, more passages and nooks and crannies to hide in, or for enemies to jump out at you from. The first game had a slight sense that the levels where a
little static and fixed, with just one way through each level, but this time round there is a lot more freedom in each level. This makes find or destroy missions more difficult as it is often harder to find the object you’re looking for, as it’s hidden away in some small room in the corner, easy to walk by. Again, the undercover missions are often the most exciting, having a stolen identity and walking amongst enemy soldiers, unable to draw your weapon for fear of being discovered, and having to take action with a silenced pistol when their back is turned.
As the levels have improved, so have the enemies. They are a lot more varied and intelligent than the last game. While they where smart in the first game, this time they run for cover, jump out from behind walls, windows and move from cover to cover and make last ditch attempts to take your life. Not only do the soldiers move more, you’ll also find moving objects to destroy, such as the first level where you must take out the tanks before they take out you. This adds a whole new dimension to the game, as it requires a lot more skill to pick them off, as they’ll duck and dive out of the way of your gun, with the soldiers more often than not taking a swing at you with your fist when you get too close for comfort, making the game a lot more realistic.
You have the same basic range of weapons as the first game, from pistols and rifles, to machine guns and bazookas, to petrol bombs. There are advantages to each weapon – rifles are good for long-range shooting, machine guns for when there are many enemies and accurate shooting is not requires, bazookas for taking out large amounts of enemies or objects at distance. You must choose the right weapon for the task, or you’ll be in trouble. Pistols are useless at distance, and the shots will have the guards running towards you, guns blazing. Bazookas are great, but not in confined areas where you’ll paint the walls
with your insides. Again, tactics are more important than simply running around shooting – sure you’ll get the enemies, but you’ll soon be out of enemies. It’s far easier to sneak into a room, bring up the sights and pick off the enemies before they catch a sight of you, making it safer for you. You always have to be careful, as you never know when someone is going to drop out from behind you, and they’re as good at sneaking around as you can be, as the first you’ll know about it is when you’re being shot at.
Control of your character, is simple, using either the directional pad of the joypad, or the analogue stick (if you have one). The top buttons are used for moving from side to side, bringing up the sight, or for crouching down. It’s very simple to pick up and easy to use, nice and instinctive and effective. All the data you require is one screen, a dial displaying your current energy level, and compass, which indicates the direction you are going and also from which direction you are being attacked from. You weapon and amount of ammunition is in the top right hand corner. Any messages flash up in the middle of the screen as you complete each objective on your task. Pressing the start button pauses the game and also allows you to see which objectives have been completed.
The graphics are sufficient, not the best you’ve ever seen, but not the worst. The levels are on the whole dark and moody, creating a real atmosphere, which keeps you on the edge of your seat. There is a little pop up, where soldiers can shoot at you, but you can’t see them until they suddenly pop up as you gradually move forward, making it difficult to aim at far away soldiers until you bring yourself closer to the danger. There is also a little slow down when there is a lot of action on the screen, especially when there are large objects moving, but this is quite rare.
The soundtrack is just as good as the
first game, there is a quiet but rousing track in the background, creating a little tension while you can hear the enemy moving around and shouting at each other as you move around. It’s essential to listen to the sound effects when playing the game, as you get an idea of when soldiers are coming towards you, and when you have alerted the enemy to your presence. It really works, sneaking around in the game often leaves me with my heart in my mouth and I have jumped on a number of occasions when a guard has jumped out on me.
It only requires one space on the memory card, and there is the opportunity to save at the end of each task, which is necessary as they quite quickly start to get difficult. The levels are noticeably harder compared to the first game; the enemy soldiers are a lot more ruthless and accurate, and more adept at ganging up on you from all angles. There are three difficulty settings, but these do not reflect the difficulty of the opposition, but the amount of energy you begin the level with – easy you get fresh energy at the end of each level, with hard you start with the same amount of energy you ended the last level with.
At the end of each level, you are assessed on your accuracy, and amount of shots you took. If you are sufficiently high, you are awarded an excellent – complete a mission with all your tasks as excellent, then you’ll unlock bonus codes, which unlock new levels and characters for the two-player mode, or new modes to play the one-player levels in (e.g. infinite energy). You can go back and play previous levels again in order to try and boost your rating.
The two player mode makes no real advance on the first game – there a limited choice of levels and characters from the game, and the object is simply to kill your opponent either a specified amount of times or as many times as possible is a set length of time. The levels are quite small and it isn’t as good as the likes
of Goldeneye, but good for a quick laugh, but it is actually more exciting to play the single player mode.
The game is exceptionally well presented – at the beginning of each mission; you are given a brief by the commander, accompanied by a video of some of the things relating to your mission. Should you complete your mission, you’ll be shown another video, showing the result of your mission and what it has accomplished. At the start of each task, you role is very clearly laid out, with what you need to do, the tools you need to complete it and the way to do it.
In my opinion, it’s the best game I’ve played on the Playstation to date. It’s highly atmospheric and exciting to play, very challenging and will have you playing for a while, trying to complete that level “one more time”. It’s very easy to pick up, but very hard to put down, the intelligence of the enemy is so realistic, and it’s also great to knock a few of them off to take out a little frustration!
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T-Boy67 - 21/07/01 I won this in a competition and haven't played it yet. I'll have to sit down and have a go. |
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