MoHAA is by today's standards a fairly unique shooter. It wasn't so back in the day, but some key features like health pickups, no iron sights for most weapons and the fact that the player is in complete control for most of the experience make it stand out now. The first thing you might notice when booting the game up is the rather lacking texture work. Yes, this is 2002 and a lot of the game looks fine, but some walls and terrain just look muddy and rushed even for the time. Not that that's such a big issue since it's compensated fairly well by the fact that the weapons look and feel great. I'd say that the main draw of this game is being able to use these WW2 era weapons to mow down hordes of nazis. The music in the game is also superb and more than one track managed to wiggle itself into my brain after I had completed it. Now the gameplay itself is just a whole lot of shooting nazis while going from point A to point B and that is fine and fun for most of the game, but towards the tail end of the campaign there's a distinct increase in the amount of enemies. This the last couple of levels wars of attrition where you have to fight for every inch often times against enemies who hide and take a couple of shots at you before you can even fire back. The last mission especially just drags on and on and throws countless enemies at you and by the end all I could feel was some slight frustration because the game refused to give me a breather. Also, sometimes I felt like enemy placement and reaction time was rather unfair. Not Shogo levels of unfair, mind you, but sometimes I'd round a corner only to be shot instantly by a machine gun I couldn't see before. And this wouldn't be such a big issue if your crosshair didn't go all over the screen when you got shot making it impossible to shoot back. Quicksave often. In conclusion, it's a flawed game with some pacing issues, but definitely worth buying if you're looking to kill some time or if it's on sale.
Where to even begin with this game? I guess listing all of the potentially bad things is as good a place as any. For starters the game is a buggy mess, even with the unofficial patches which come preinstalled with the GOG version you can still find new and creative ways to crash your game, get yourself stuck, softlock the game and a whole host of other such fun activities. The combat is also lackluster, both the melee combat and gunplay feel underwhelming and more often than not unsatisfying. Enemies get knocked into invincibility frames all of the time and you can get stunlocked by a few enemies pretty easily. Alright, enough negativity, now for the good, the reason I gave the game 5/5 stars. It's simple, really and I can sum it up into one nebulous word: heart. The game has heart. None of the shortcomings matter when you can feel the effort put into the bits of the game that really matter: the story and roleplaying. Honestly, I can't think of a game with more roleplaying options than VtMB. There's so much here and two people can have two drastically different experiences with the story based on their clan, stats and dialogue choices. You can, in every aspect of the game, play it just the way you want it to. The plot is also pretty good filled to the brim with interesting characters and side-stories, dark secrets to uncover and absolutely stellar writing. The one negative thing I can say about the plot is that I don't like how the ending you get is purely dependent on a choice you make before the end and not on your actions up until then. And as much as I harped on the combat being lackluster I feel like it's worth mentioning that using your vampiric abilities feels great and at later levels you truly get to feel like a predator in the night toying with your pray. In conclusion, this game is a true diamond in the rough. If you can look past all of its shortcomings you will find a bright gem of a game and I simply can't recommend it enough.
There's quite a lot that this game gets wrong, especially by today's standards, but if you can get past all of its flaws you find a pretty fun game. The most glaring fault of the game and the one that bugged me the most is the fact that enemies in the on foot levels have a sort of prescience and lightning reflexes. They know where you are before you even see them and they will shoot your head off the moment they see even one pixel of it. Add to this an odd critical hit system where both the player and the enemies can randomly score criticals and you've got yourself one of the most unwieldy and random FPS experiences ever. The majority of the game just consists of quicksaving before every corner, getting shot by the three dudes waiting for you before you can even blink and then reloading and pressing the fire button before even rounding the corner so you get the drop on them. Luckily the enemies get stunned when they get hit by a bullet so it's easy to do crowd-control with automatic weapons. Then there's the levels you spend in your mech which usually take place within a city and honestly aren't that much different in gameplay from the on-foot levels except both you and the enemy can take way more punishment before going down. These levels are somewhat fun if only because of the arsenal you have at your disposal. The story in the game is rather uninteresting and very self-aware, one particular quest involving a cat is the highlight here, and that's not as bad as it sounds. The humour can be very hit or miss, but it got a chuckle out of me now and again so I guess it did its job. The game looks very dated by today's standards, but it's not ugly. The art does a good job of keeping the game from looking too hideous and aside from the low-poly count it really looks fine. I'd recommend this game if you're in the market for an old-school shooter. It's not the best of its kind, but I believe it has enough content and entertainment value to stave off a weekend of boredom.
