The story is mostly trite, most maps are very linear and some enemies, especially bosses, are really bullet spongey without much feedback as to whether you're causing them any damage at all. Still, the variety in settings, the punchy weapons and the fire fights overall makes this worth a playthrough today. The game works fine on Windows 11 now.
I remember being very impressed by and completely immersed in this game when it first came out. Playing it again I realized that the things that wowed me at the time are exactly the stuff that don't stand the test of 20 years. It's an extremely linear shooter, with occasional sections where it might seem like you have a choice but then get arbitrarily punished for them. At the time this was great because the shortcomings of the level design was overshadowed by the cinematic design of the missions, but looking at it now, the things that make for a great cinematic experience—good visual effects, good sound design, good animation—well, games (including probably several dozens of WWII shooters) just do it much better now and this doesn't look good as my standards have changed...and frankly, the novelty of "cinematic" ultra-linear games quickly wore off for me. Personally, I will always compare this to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the more pulp sci-fi/paranormal themed WWII game released the same year. That has aged much more gracefully and remains a more unique experience. If you want what MoHAA can give you, there's been more than a few linear WWII shooters like it since that are basically just incremental improvements to its core. I sort of resent writing this review because I know how much I loved this game when it was released, and of course it's not the game's fault that the genre that it basically invented is such trite by now or that realistic graphics from 2002 haven't aged well.
