Medal of Honor: Allied Assault War Chest

This pack contains the original MoH:AA game and it's two expansions, Spearhead and Breakthrough. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a classic WWII shooter with some epic and iconic moments, but unfortunately I have to say that it hasn't aged that well. It's not bad, but the first Call of Duty only one year later blows this game out of the water in every single way. Still, worth a playthrough, if you like to shoot some nazis. The first expansion pack is Spearhead, which is short, but sweet. It's only 3 missions, so you can finish it under 2-3 hours. Basically more of the same. But most importantly, it's fun, adds new weapons, and new scenarios like larger scale tank battles. Even Gary Oldman makes an appearance, who voices our protagonist - so you can clearly see the effort put in here. Breakthrough is another story. The setting here is new, which I like - the missions take place in Italy, Sicily and Tunisia, so you can shoot italians for a change. The new, italian weapons are cool too, and I like the second mission, where you have to sneak into an airbase and sabotage the planes. But the other missions are complete dumpster fire. The main problem is that some idiot designer decided that the enemies are no longer drop ammo and health. Listen, I don't mind challenging games, but this is just bullshit and cheap. There is little-to-no health and ammo in the missions, the enemy count is just ridiculous, and they are spongier (they take 2 sniper shots to go down on normal...). There are hidden snipers everywhere, but even if you know where they are, you cannot really see shit, because every enemy just blends into the greyish-brown background. Of course they can spot you instantly. So savescumming all the way! The last mission is one of the cheapest, awfully designed crap I've ever seen - it's painfully evident, that nobody playtested this, because getting a vasectomy with a razerblade is more fun than this piece of shit level. Fuck this game. Forget this ever existed.

This game and its expansions were completed on HARD difficulty and this review will reflect that. Allied Assault is a romp that ends up being a mostly mediocre experience. I found some missions to be greatly enjoyable, but many were also simply slogs with rather frustrating enemy spawns and placements. It doesn't help that certain sections may as well be dead ends if you can't tank the damage, and one egregious section near the end of the game is so frustrating I ended up cheating, as if it were meant for superhuman reflexes and the luckiest RNG you can get. Spearhead is a more balanced but jankier affair. It is shorter but concise in its focus around set pieces that actually tries to wow you while giving much needed QOL updates, such as leaning melee, and allowing multiple weapons in the same slot. However, a few of these set pieces don't really work that well and come off as contrived. Thematically, it is all over the place, which is reflected in the constantly switching arsenals, but if nothing else it is welcome variety. Breakthrough however is the expansion I would recommend as it is the most polished and best of the bunch. It has much more variety and you're doing something differently every five minutes. One big difference is that enemies no longer drop ammo, but as long as you are conscious and not magdumping, this actually feels like an appropriate bit of balancing because it forces you to change your weapons while still scattering ammo around. The game still relies on savescumming though, so it is best practice to hit that F5. Ultimately, I give MoH:AA a 2 out 5, which is below my base recommendation, but I give it a rather tepid one just because there is some good in there. Spearhead is slightly better, but honestly, I would just outright recommend Breakthrough. It is a fun game in its own right and while you can play any game in any order, I'd certainly either leave it as best for last or make sure it is played one way or another.

MoH was a phenomenon in its time because it was the one and only decent WW2 FPS after Saving Private Ryan became a hit. While its impact on WW2's popularity as a video game theme is commendable, as a first-person shooter it's unimpressive from the mechanics themselves to the missions you have to play. The expansions are quite bland and even anticlimactic. It's not an exaggeration to say that the first Call of Duty did everything better, so Medal of Honor today caters mostly to nostalgic fans and game history enthusiasts.

Doesn't work on Win10. Don't Bother.

I had great memories of this game, but in 2020... Well... gameplay is really not great now: switching guns takes an infinite amount of time, and animations are not smooth. For nostalgic people. :) Played the entire game without any issues using wine.