With Call of Duty seemingly forever hogging the limelight with its Michael Bay-coded story campaigns and celebrity-endorsed skins, it can perhaps be a little too easy to forget that Activision’s contemporary FPS juggernaut was predated by EA’s Medal of Honor, a much more comparatively po-faced shooter series that emphasized historical conflict and theatres of war. Seemingly largely forgotten by gamers and apparently by EA itself, now is as good a time as any, on the series’ 25th anniversary, to ruminate on the history of Medal of Honor, its peaks, troughs, the major titles within its franchise and its impact on the FPS industry at large.
Medal Of Honor (1999)
Buoyed by Steven Spielberg’s landmark big picture foray into World War II with the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan, the first Medal of Honor for Sony’s beloved PlayStation console was a commercial and critical hit. Developed by Dreamworks Interactive (a studio that was founded by Steven Spielberg himself), Medal of Honor manifested during Spielberg’s work on Saving Private Ryan and was somewhat inspired by his son’s experiences playing Rare’s legendary James Bond FPS tie-in, Goldeneye 007.
With Spielberg’s newly formed games studio behind the wheel, together with an epic orchestral score by famed composer Michael Giacchino, and Dale Dye joining the project as a military advisor (Dye would serve in the same capacity in the HBO-produced Band of Brothers and Pacific television series, too), it was clear that such talent meant that Medal of Honor was going to be something quite special indeed. Casting players as an OSS agent amid Second World War Europe, Medal of Honor was a much more considered, stealthy first-person shooter that was dripping with atmosphere as players snuck behind enemy lines, brandished fake ID papers, assassinated enemies in the dark and punched a hole in the Nazi regime. It was simply fantastic stuff which not only wore its Goldeneye 007 inspirations proudly on its digital sleeve but alerted gamers to the idea that the Second World War could be as captivating in video game form as it was on film.
Medal Of Honor: Underground (2000)
Building on the foundations set down in Medal of Honor just one year earlier, Medal of Honor: Underground once again leaned into the subterfuge-laden gameplay that defined its predecessor by casting players as Manon Batiste, a commander in the French Resistance. Starting in 1940 and concluding in 1944, Medal of Honor: Underground unfurled an ambitious narrative that would whisk players from Western Europe to Northern Africa and back again in a globetrotting clandestine FPS that was every bit the full-fat continuation to Medal of Honor that players wanted.
Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault (2002)
With the proliferation of the PC as a powerhouse gaming platform, it wasn’t going to be long until Medal of Honor would make the leap from its PlayStation digs and that’s precisely what happened in 2002 with the PC-exclusive Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Leveraging an early version of the id Tech engine that would ironically be the mainstay graphics technology used by the Call of Duty franchise later on, Allied Assault was the most epic Medal of Honor title to date, taking players from the hell of the Normandy beach landings through to a range of clandestine operations throughout Western Europe. A mammoth shooter in every way, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault would also lay down the framework that the early World War II set Call of Duty games would follow when that franchise launched in 2003. Not only that but Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward was also made up of developers who had worked on the Medal of Honor series, so the design throughline in this case is certainly clear to see.
Medal Of Honor: Frontline (2002)
Marking the series’ return to PlayStation, Medal of Honor: Frontline swapped out the subterfuge of previous entries for a big old dollop of war-is-hell bombast, casting players as one of three different soldiers taking part in the American, British and Soviet theatres of war across a set of spectacle stuffed missions. One of the best-selling titles of its era, Medal of Honor: Frontline would set the tone that the series would follow going forward and which, somewhat sadly, drifted away from the more considered and slow-paced beats of the series’ earliest entries.
Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun (2003)
Switching to an entirely new theatre of war, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was a measurable downgrade in every way from what came before it. Though the shift to the sweltering Pacific was welcome, the lack of polish, dunderheaded AI, poor visuals and a general lack of interesting mission design was not. Arguably, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was the clearest indication that the once roundly impressive series was now firmly on the decline and a world away from the Steven Spielberg passion project it started as.
Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault (2004)
Essentially the PC version of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun which was released on the consoles of the day a year earlier, somewhat surprisingly Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault turned out to be much better than its console counterpart and took full advantage of the PC platform. With many more levels, improved visuals and general shoring up of bugs and polish, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault turned out to be a decent enough World War Two shooter, it just never aspired to be anything more than that.
Medal Of Honor: European Assault (2005)
By 2005 it was clear that Medal of Honor as a franchise was running out of steam and perhaps that was nowhere better illustrated than in Medal of Honor: European Assault. An utterly unremarkable shooter, Medal of Honor: European Assault puts players in the boots of an American OSS agent who finds himself whisked off to theatres of war in France, North Africa, the Soviet Union and Belgium. Though the return of more subterfuge-minded gameplay was welcome, such as stealing plans and sabotaging infrastructure, European Assault nonetheless felt shopworn to the point of tedium. We had seen it all before by this point and there was nothing new to keep players compelled – especially as Activision had launched its mega-successful shooter sequel, Call of Duty 2, in the same year.
Medal Of Honor: Airborne (2007)
With the series’ fortunes on the downturn, it’s clear that 2007’s Medal of Honor: Airborne needed to do something different for the franchise to stay relevant. Thankfully, Medal of Honor: Airborne did just that, even if it was somewhat underappreciated in its day. Taking ample inspiration from both the real-life airborne troops of the Second World War and HBO’s superb Band of Brothers television show, Medal of Honor: Airborne had players performing parachute drops into locations throughout the European and North African theatres of war. Where Medal of Honor: Airborne really separates itself however, is in how it allows you to land anywhere you like and pursue the completion of your objectives however you like as well, lending the game a sort of non-linearity and openness it had lacked up until this point. Throw in some impressively clever AI, a real sense of scale in the maps and some satisfying shooting mechanics which allowed you to lean around corners and cook grenades, it became clear that Medal of Honor: Airborne was the best thing to come out of the beleaguered series in years (and is long overdue a remaster in the opinion of this humble scribe).
Medal Of Honor (2010)
With Call of Duty embracing a more contemporary brand of war with its breakout 2007 effort Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it probably shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to see EA follow suit with its 2010 Medal of Honor title, either. Rooted firmly in the opening days and weeks of the real-life Afghanistan conflict of 2001, in some ways, Medal of Honor felt like a step back from Airborne as it reacquainted the series with the more decidedly linear trappings that it had left behind – and which Call of Duty was now actively embracing on a yearly basis. Still trend-chasing aside, the impressive Unreal Engine 3-powered single-player campaign visuals, coupled with an entertaining adversarial multiplayer mode (which ran on the totally different Frostbite engine, oddly), still made Medal of Honor worth the price of admission.
Medal Of Honor: Warfighter (2012)
Just two years later the Medal of Honor series once again found itself in dire straits, thanks to 2012’s deeply uninspiring offering. A direct continuation of the events chronicled in 2010’s Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Warfighter follows the same Navy SEAL unit as they face off against a terrorist threat that extends from Bosnia to the Philippines but manages to do absolutely nothing new or notable in the process. With a jumbled storyline, dunderheaded AI and lack of imagination in both its mission types and its cookie-cutter online multiplayer modes, Medal of Honor: Warfighter felt like a new nadir for a once legendary franchise that, at this point at least, seemed like it was about to check out for good.
Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond (2020)
Thankfully though, Medal of Honor did not check out for good and its next major title would be something entirely unexpected. The first Medal of Honor title in nearly a decade and the first to be transplanted into the VR realm, Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond felt like a throwback to the earlier titles in the franchise, once again casting players as an OSS agent tasked with aiding the French Resistance to unseat the Nazi Vichy government. Though clunky in places and lacking in some production values, Above and Beyond should still be credited for attempting to return this once legendary series to its secret agent chicanery, rather than just falling in line and becoming yet another tonality schizophrenic, brain-voided shooter. Plus, blowing up bridges, sniping enemies and sneaking out key intelligence documents feels rather good in VR, too. Here’s hoping that Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is the beginning of a resurgence for this once revered series, rather than symbolising its death knell. Over to you, EA.
