Medal of Honor: Allied Assault War Chest

Medal of Honor Allied Assault was at the peak of the FPS genre over 13 years ago, but nowadays it can be tough for gamers used to newer and better games to get into it. It's not a classic that anyone can pick up and play like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo, or Call of Duty. Rather, Allied Assault is something you really need to give a chance before passing judgement. I was skeptical after reading negative modern reviews and playing the demo, but eventually I bought MOHAA on sale and I learned to like it. Allied Assault has a heart and soul, which is something I can't even say about the best COD titles! Allied Assault often gets compared to Call of Duty 1 since the development team went on to form Infinity Ward, but that's unfair. It's closer to EA's James Bond titles from the early 2000s with emphasis on espionage over all-out warfare. The surprisingly non-linear "The Command Post" is the best example of what this game has to offer. Unfortunately, MOHAA has stiff movement, imprecise weapons, and hilariously-bad AI that is completely blind and deaf from long distances on most of the maps. Maps like "Battle of the Bocage" show why this game was too primitive to attempt the gameplay that COD would perfect one year later. Allied Assault has a lengthy campaign of 34 maps (with a secret map accessible through the maplist) spread across 6 missions that span from sneaking aboard a U-Boat in Norway to blowing up a mustard gas facility in Germany. In addition, there are two expansions included that add an extra 20 maps between them. They both make huge improvements to the movement, gunplay, and AI. Spearhead has really nice proto-COD1 gameplay, whereas the less said about Breakthrough, the better. For $9.99, the War Chest is definitely a good purchase. For $3.99, it's a steal! If you liked MOHAA, I also recommend picking up the terribly-underrated MOH Airborne. It's one of the handful of modern FPS games to have open, non-linear level designs.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was one of the very first games i played on the gaming pc I built when I was back in school. So many memories and such a great game to play, never ages!

Released a few years before the end of the golden age of the FPS genre, MoHAA kickstarted the trend of military shooters, while also maintaining the feel of more retro games. The game is not particularly story-driven despite being written by Steven Spielberg. You get dropped in each level with a bunch of simple objectives to complete, indicated by a quest marker (that's the modern part) and a ton of enemies to kill (that's the retro part). Despite this linearity, you are constantly thrown in different combat settings: the game cleverly alternates between infiltration, tactical long-range combat, and fast-paced corridor shooting, which works really well and never gets tiresome. While not particularly good-looking for its time or even its graphic engine, MoHAA makes up to this by having large and believable environments, and creating of sense of historical accuracy to the period it depicts. The atmosphere is grim, with a lot of war fog and missions taking place at night, which really reinforces the impression of realism it's going for. The AI is not bright, and the difficulty mostly comes from the sheer amount of enemies and their bullet-soaking superpowers. Unfortunately, they are often deliberately hidden so that they will shoot you before you can even see them - my advice for a happy marriage: finds someone who loves you as much as Germans in this game love to hide behind poorly rendered foliage. And yeah, fighting the Axis in real life was hard, but this still comes across as cheap and frustrating. The "Breakthrough" expansion is notably plagued with this, and couples it with a ridiculously low amount of ammo and medkits, as well as a lot of hard-hitting enemies: it is really underwhelming. It may not be the greatest shooter of its generation due to these shortcomings, but MoHAA still delivers on key points, while also providing memorable sequences, like the infamous Omaha Beach level. It's a worthy experience which I would recommend to all fans of FPS games.

I never played it back in the day outside of a demo. I didn't have a gaming PC as a young kid, only a PS2, so my experience with Medal of Honor was Frontline and Rising Sun. Allied Assault and Frontline shares some maps but overall are seperate games. It was running fine in original resolution but the textures wouldn't improve no matter what I changed in the options. If I increased the resolution beyond a certain extent in the menu, the game would play in a tiny window. If I ran the game off the desktop, it would stutter like crazy but not if I ran it out of GOG GALAXY. Making the game run at 1080p with max quality settings takes editting the .ini files. For some reason it completely messed up the game. I had to completely delete the game and reinstalling it, and then editting the config file. I get this weird effect when turning the camera, something I also get in RTCW. Like there's some weird kind of... stutter or something. I don't know what it is. It isn't the type of stutter i was getting when running of desktop, it's like the textures stutter. I suppose its a Quake3 engine problem. The game is a lot fun, however there's some incredibly frustating issues. The distance you can see in front of you, especially in the snowy maps is too short. Tryinjg to find an angle to shoot tower gunners, but from too far away, even if you shoot there exact spot, if they're not present in your vision you don't hit them. The enemies can be ridiculously aggressive. Felt like I was always backing up and in the middle of reloading when enemies just charge into me. Reload animations take forever. Further more, taking damage causes the screen to shake. If you're aiming at an enemy and taking damage you will miss. This is very frustrating in places where you are slightly overwhelmed. It feels like you are surrounded at times, and cannot get through many engagements without losing huge HP. I reccomend it on sale.

This is occassionaly tough as nails, turn of the century, WWII shooter that benefits from its melodramatic score more than it does from spikes in difficulty and merciless enemy placements. Its most infamous moments are intact - bombastic, exciting and frustrating - and are deftly punctuated by the cinematic roar of the expertly cranked up sound design. Turn up the graphics in the advanced options and it doesn't feel particularly ugly either, though level geometry and AI are decidedly of the dated variety. Shame about the expansion packs (for which you pay for with this version) that, try as I might, did not launch once. The base game is still long and varied enough and definitely a treat for any shooter fan not completely spoilt by snap-aim fluidity of modern FPS games.