Medal of Honor: Vanguard

Medal of Honor: European Assault

Electronic Arts Los Angeles, Budcat Creations (Wii), Savage Entertainment (multiplayer)

images c/o GameFAQs (Wii version)

I’m just going to be honest: I think Medal of Honor as a franchise has been mostly mediocre to bad. The early games were all about atmosphere but were hamstrung by a combination of bad design and hardware constraints; the later games — including the "modern warfare" reboot — were constantly playing catch-up with Call of Duty yet struggled to understand what made Call of Duty successful. There’s a reason we’re all still playing Call of Duty, while Medal of Honor is effectively dead as a series, that weird VR entry notwithstanding. Medal of Honor: Vanguard is so far removed from the series’ original design ethos that it’s good simply by virtue of not being like a Medal of Honor game.

The year of 2007 was a banner year for video games, with titles like Bioshock and Team Fortress 2 making a big splash and PC gaming reaching a sort of turning point after the long dark night of the early to mid-00s. Amidst all this, Electronic Arts, blissfully unaware of the coming juggernaut that was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released not one, but two Medal of Honor games. For seventh-generation consoles and the PC, Medal of Honor: Airborne promised an authentic experience as a member of the United States Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. Medal of Honor: Vanguard promised the same thing for the PlayStation 2 and the Wii. But don’t get it twisted: Vanguard is not merely a sixth-gen port or demake of Airborne; it’s an almost completely different game. You play a different character, the levels are different (and progression is linear, unlike Airborne’s more open-ended design) and you don’t actually jump out of a plane every mission.

In terms of gameplay, it’s pretty much just Call of Duty at this point. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Regenerating health, full-scale combat scenarios with no OSS funny business, noise, ADS, the whole bit. You still can’t move while aiming down the sights, and ammo is still semi-universal, but it’s just fundamentally not Medal of Honor anymore. Playing this immediately after playing the original Medal of Honor can be a real trip; with just eight years’ difference, they don’t feel like the same game at all. And that can be good or bad, it just depends on what you prefer. I think Vanguard more easily achieves what it set out to do than the original. Part of it is the better hardware, but part of it also is just that Vanguard’s mission designers just had better design sense.

The real problem with Vanguard is that it is shockingly short, even as these things go. I beat the game in just three hours, and at least half an hour was spent with the game paused. You will tear through the game’s ten short levels in no time, especially on easier difficulties. While the parachute sequences allow for a bit of choice on how you start a given mission (and in fact you may want to pick certain landing zones for their tactical advantages) it’s still pretty straightforward: land, go here, shoot those guys, go there, blow these things up. The story is pretty perfunctory too — you’ve got a couple cardboard cutout regulars, you’ve got a commanding officer who gets a little bit of characterization only to die before the game’s half over, and so on. Your character even gets a promotion, but still gets told what to do by his own guys… because that’s what games like this are about: doing what you’re told and killing as many Nazis as you can in the process. It’s not a bad thing, but it does kinda feel incongruous with the idea that you’re any sort of squad leader. For all its flaws, the Brothers in Arms series proved it could be done, but Medal of Honor: Vanguard doesn’t even bother.

All that aside, I like Vanguard. It’s a nice, bite-sized experience with some fun shooting, gorgeous graphics for the aging PlayStation 2, a little bit of novelty with the parachute sequences, and a nicely tense last level where you spend most of it alone behind enemy lines before joining your buddies for a last stand. All in all, it’s probably the best Call of Duty on the PlayStation 2.

-june❤

Part of a series on Medal of Honor 

Medal of Honor	Medal of Honor: Underground
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
MOHAA: Spearhead	MOHAA: Breakthrough
Medal of Honor: Frontline	Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault	Medal of Honor: European Assault
Medal of Honor: Heroes	Medal of Honor: Heroes 2
Medal of Honor: Vanguard	Medal of Honor: Airborne
Medal of Honor (2010)	Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond