Medal of Honor: Allied Assault War Chest

I play a lot of old FPS, I love that era of gaming. Allied Assault is.. okay.. but it's not worth picking up if you're not nostalgic for it (i.e, grew up playing it). You can understand why genre fatigue was reaching critical mass at this point. Without the seamless narrative of a game like Half-Life, the combat sandbox of Halo, or the outlandish fiction of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (all games that released before this) you're left with a very dry WWII game just seemingly going through the motions. It's a very simple run-and-gun shooter with often frustrating level design that relies too heavily on sucker punches. Constant machine gun nests, respawning enemies, snipers hidden in bushes, and in general an enemy AI that fires at you before they've finished rotating to face you. It's not terrible, it can still be fun, but this isn't a must-play despite what many people who grew up with it will tell you. I picked it up on sale (75% off) and I'd say that's really the price you should pay for this these days.

It's been 20 years since Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was originally released so I thought I'd revisit it once more for a bit of nostalgia and to see if it's stood the test of time. There is still a good variety of missions here and despite it being a fairly linear experience, it doesn't feel on-rails or hamstrung by scripting like some modern FPS games have. Combat feels impactful and getting hit can also be punishing. It's also pretty immersive thanks to a brilliant soundtrack. Sadly it has not aged well in places - character models look very dated as do the environments. The game also declines into some horrible trial and error missions in the latter stages which feel incredibly rushed and are frustrating to play. It's a shame because the rest of the experience is way better. Overall, MOH:AA will always go down as a classic of its era and was an incredibly influential game. Warchest is a great pack but parts of the package have aged worse than others.

Allied Assault is one of the best classic WWII FPS ever made, and it's a satisfyingly long game. But in the War Chest edition, you also get its two expansions. Even at the full price of $10, this is a great deal.

Annoying vehicle sections aside, the game stars off pretty strong, the level design is decent, doing covert missions and mowing down whole platoons of nazis is fun, and the orchestral score is as epic as I remembered it. Then I'm dropped into one of the most legendary missions in the FPS genre that single handedly kicked off the whole WWII shooter fad, and it's actually still pretty decent. "Man, this game is pretty awesome" - I think to myself. Unfortunately, however, right after Omaha, the quality takes a nose dive and the rest of the game is an excercise in frustration and poor design. It's incredible how badly it aged over the years. The first and second half are like two completely different games. The lowest point obviously comes during the sniper town mission where the only way to get through it is to save scum and hope you'll be able to figure out where the shots are coming from before you run out of patience. And don't even get me started on the ending. It was bad even back in the day. I didn't even touch the expansions yet but I'm already dreading playing them because I distinctly remember that the difficulty level drove me crazy even when I played them all those years ago. Honestly, if you want to revisit this game, don't bother playing it past the Omaha Beach mission.

At last! MOHAA is one of my favorite games of my childhood. Hope they also release Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and Medal of Honor: Airborne which continues the franchise for PC.