Review:
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Reviewer: Cliff Hollis
Edited by: Mike Dixon (12/19/02)
Mac publisher: Aspyr Media ($49.99 est. retail price)

WOW! After playing years of first-person shooter (FPS) games, I had reached the conclusion that the FPS had seen its glory fade. This game changed my mind quickly.

The game loaded fine, but slow. This seems to be normal for games. It may be confined to the Tibook's CD-ROM speed. I started the game and tried to raise the video settings. I cranked it up to 800x600 resolution with high textures and effects. This slowed the game down quite a bit. So I set things back to 640x480 and medium textures and effects. This had a negative effect on the look of the game. Gamers will have to experiment for best results.

There is a strange auto-save feature that pops up when you have made progress. This causes serious lag and I died a few times from it. When the game lags, you have to stop so you do not walk into a firefight or trap. Other than this the game specifications seemed to fit. There was a updater at Aspyr's support page for this game. I ran it and still noticed no benefit. You really need a three button mouse for this game and my Microsoft optical worked fine.

The game is amazing. It fills a niche that has been missing with recent games. It combines several things I have not seen in any game. I say that with years of "shooters" behind me from the original Wolfenstein game, or any of a dozen other PC and Mac games. You start with the standard training mission with weapons training and explosives practice. The heads up display (HUD) for this game is slightly different, with a compass always in the corner and a objectives checklist you can bring up with the tab key. You progress through several missions from simple, rescuing a SAS dude, or complex like stealing a Tiger tank. None are easy even with the easy setting. I found myself taking a "dirt nap" more than I would have liked. Comparisons are inevitable to recent films made about the WWII experience. My son watched a commercial for this game on TV and said he thought it was a movie trailer. The movie feels like a film. Everyone who would play this game has probably seen Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. This film certainly feels like BoB with the explosions and bullet hits looking like the real thing. The story is fairly linear with each mission building on the previous one. With this framework, the developer has included some new elements and some traditional ones. One traditional element is rail shooting levels. You find yourself in a jeep, and driving on a pre-determined path. With that traditional element you have some new elements like driving and destroying parked planes.

Other things I have not seen in previous games included stealing a Tiger Tank with a wild ride, and sabatoging a sub after you steal papers. The most interesting thing to me in the game is the screen that comes up at the end of a mission that details your successes. It tells you your hit percentage and where those hits occurred. My percentages stayed around 33%. This reminded me of what I have read about how many thousands of rounds it takes to kill the enemy during war time. That brings us to the realism of this game. It is what separates this game from so many others. With your five round clip in the M1 empty it pops out with a distinctive ting and only when completely empty.

There are cheats available which was seemed unique to the Mac version. I used some near the end of the game and they worked fine. This is a cheap way to be more successful but sometimes is needed. The only complaint I have with the game is the usual dumb enemies that stand around instead of shooting. You also have the magic dead spots that neither you or the enemy can shoot each other. My other complaint is personal, on several missions you are chased by dogs! I hate that!

No real bugs to report. Some bad artificial intelligence was mentioned earlier in the review. The auto-save could be considered a bug by some, but that is more a design flaw. The games seemed to run well. A few places showed graphics dropping out but no real problems.

This is a great game. The best of the recent FPS available in my opinion. This includes Soldier of Fortune II and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. This would not pass for a history lesson but you can go away from this game with an even greater appreciation of the folks that fought WWII and lived and died for that privilage. I was actually nervous waiting to get off the landing craft to hit the beach at Omaha.