BOOM!!

Welcome to Medal of Honour: Frontline. The Medal of Honour series is well established on both PC and PlayStation formats, but this is the first time it has seen any sort of outing on a Nintendo system. The first person shooter game is, quite obviously by now, set squarely in World War 2, with screeds of evil nazis to mow down from behind your (typically vast) array of weaponry. This is not a new formula, not even on the GameCube, so does it stand out? Is it worth your FPS dollar? Let's take a peek under the hood, as we attempt to discover the answers to those very important questions...

MoH:FL is a very story-driven game. While you could definitely take the old "run and gun" approach, ignoring the story in search of yet more bad guys to mow down, you would miss a large part of what makes this game what it is. There's lots of story elements which integrate nicely with the levels and graphical style of the game. It's not going to touch Saving Private Ryan as a story, but it does a pretty good job of spinning a yarn in amongst the carnage. The story never feels slapped on to purely explain the action, but rather complements it and helps lift it to the loftier realms of well rounded entertainment - instead of pure "shooter". That said, if that's not your thing, then this counts against it - if you aren't interested in the story angle (which incidentally is based on real-world events in World War II), some of the levels could easily have been cut or dramatically changed to improve the flow of the shooter element.

The controls - wow, are they unusual. It takes a long time to get used to the controls (either the standard method or the advanced option) and even then, precision is hard to acheive. Make sure you know this going in or you are in for a big shock. Once you get the hang of it, they aren't that big a deal, but it takes so long that it was well worth mentioning here. They are far from second nature and do not work as you would typically expect.

Graphically, it's a mixed bag. Sometimes, the graphics combine nicely with the action to provide some of the most intense and believable gaming environments ever seen. Sometimes, the view across a courtyard or bombed out village is just jaw dropping and well worth just looking at, let alone playing in. Yet sometimes, the quality of the textures or limited animation of the bad guys can really let it down, especially close up. Generally the game is very good though.