The Second World War has been the subject of a huge number of video games that have used the conflict to set and justify, as a general rule, their first-person shooter mechanics. Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond takes the bloodiest war humanity has ever known to a new dimension and, incidentally, puts all its means at the service of the purest spectacle. Find out in our review why what’s new from Respawn Entertainment is a virtual reality must-have.
Younger people, who have grown up under the supremacy and near-total monopoly of the Call of Duty franchise when it comes to war games and first-person shooter, may miss that there was once an alternative. Medal of Honor, the saga created by Steven Spielberg had its golden years in the fifth and sixth generation of consoles. And it was in turn the root from which Infinity Ward was born after the launch of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault , which gave rise to the long-lived and preponderant saga of Activision.
This is history. The paths of these franchises have been radically opposite, with Medal of Honor having a reboot attempt during the seventh generation without being able, in any case, to compete in sales and public with Call of Duty. Thus, and after a generation without having absolutely nothing from Medal of Honor, we now live its rebirth in virtual reality at the hands of Respawn Entertainment. And the creators of the Titanfall saga have not shaken their pulse to create a title worthy of what the Medal of Honor seal deserves. Because if there is a word that can define Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond quickly and without missing the truth, it is spectacular. New from Electronic Arts synergizes the concepts of audiovisual entertainment in the purest Hollywood style and the video game in a single product: the video game at the service of the show or the show at the service of the video game. So much riding, because what really costs in this new Medal of Honor is to discern where one thing begins and the other ends, and this is an experience difficult to explain in words.
Adrenaline without limits
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In its campaign mode, the title offers the user an experience that exceeds 10 hours in the fastest laps. Packed with varied situations, no time to get bored , Medal of Honor does not know the meaning of the repetitive word. His effort is aimed at turning himself into an antonym of boredom and he achieves it without fissures, proposing in each of his 6 missions new mechanics to face. I have swam, skied, sled, fired from a tank, on a plane !, and even climbed in extreme situations. And they are just a few examples, but I do not want to say more because the grace is in being surprised and enjoying the “reality” of your taste for variety.
Sometimes we will have to solve small puzzles to continue advancing.
Campaign mode missions are the crown jewel in Above and Beyond. There is a lot of variety in its action, and also in the settings to which it transports us, with places recreated with great fidelity, dedication and attention to detail . All so that once you put on your virtual reality headset, you take a trip not only in space, but also time and be able to feel like a true combatant against the Nazi threat. For this, Respawn has developed an outstanding documentation work in which it has contacted some veterans of the conflict who have advised them when it comes to recreating situations and places. This does not stop there, since they have recorded these encounters and from the game gallery you can see each of its chapters.
Our generation will never be able to get an idea of the horrors of that war, and we hope that it will be so for many more years, but it is difficult not to get excited when seeing these nonagenarians relive those battles in a mixture of pain and nostalgia as only the residue of companionship. and the loss can leave a man. An invitation from Respawn to see Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, as a product that, inevitably, wants to become more than just a shooter.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond wants to become more than just a shooterIf good virtual reality invites something, it is not only to play, to entertain, but to feel the experience, to live the game , to look out of each door frame, kneel behind the cover, turn on yourself to eliminate the threat that stalks you from the other side of the room, fight for your survival … everything happens in the viewer, in your head and, finally, in your body. Although Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has a sitting mode to be enjoyed, this is a game that cries out for the total involvement of the player ; It’s not difficult to be completely immersed in their world as you reload or drain the last syringe of life knowing that the next shot is probably your last chance to get out alive.
All this is not easy to achieve, and to achieve it Above and Beyond gives us a body, a support on which to orient ourselves to quickly and precisely access different types of grenades, mission objects, a handgun on the hip right, and two long-range weapons on both shoulders. The ammunition is reserved for the left hip and the healing syringes on the wrist on the same side. These are precisely the two items around which its gameplay revolves. Ammunition, by an active reloading method that demands skill and speed from the playerto insert the magazine in a very agile and precise system, load the weapon, with one or another gesture depending on the arsenal that we have at all times. Syringes, because in this Medal of Honor we have opted for self-healing up to a damage limit, once reached, either by accumulation or by a critical impact we will have to use one of these syringes that we stick directly into the chest.
It may seem inconsequential, but the speed with which we recharge or are able to heal, instinctively assuming these mechanics, will in many cases mean the difference between life and death. But, what happens when we are the ones who seek the death of the rival? Well, the result is most satisfactory. Each of the weapons transmits completely different sensations, whether in the form of the grip, the dispersion of the shots or the cadence of the same. The aiming systems without a reticle make shooting from the hip effective at medium and close range but, when the target is far away, we will have to balance our shoulders , hit our elbows and aim with each of the own systems that this arsenal has .
The difficult thing in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is, at times, to shut your mouth.
The truth is that not everything is lights in this section and, despite its good general performance, the system for grabbing objects from our body can behave erratically if we are crouched. In addition, the aiming system with telescopic sights lacks peripheral vision , so when our eyes take the sight, the entire surrounding area is out of our control, something that, given the level of production that concerns us, should have been careful a little more.
Regarding the design of your scenarios in campaign mode, the game opts for closed scenarios when we have the ability to move freely, while the scenes in which we handle some type of machinery recreate more open landscapes to which we will not have real access. This becomes palpable in the disposition of the enemies that tend to appear in numerous points on the map always in front of us, rarely giving margin to flanking by enemy artificial intelligence. However, their behavior is usually successful and they do not give away their lives easily, choosing to take cover when necessary and always leaving this cover with some other unit exercising cover fire. In addition, each of the chapters that make up the missions has its own collectibles that invite you to get lost between shooting and shooting in order to find them all.
Precisely, this structure of short chapters in missions of an hour and a half or two in duration can be well justified from the point of view of giving the player possibilities to opt for short or medium sessions of play in favor of comfort. However, on some occasions these chapters may be too short or cut the pace with narrative arguments that fail to convey the same force as the documentation work carried out. Better development of the characters of our OSS squad would have been appreciated, who, although they accompany us with more less grace during the adventure, do not manage to establish a bond with the player as great as the rest of the game does.
The free displacement system suits the game wonderfully although I would have appreciated the possibility of executing smaller turning arcs at the 45º that it brings by default or the 30º that you can choose. The handling and interface options are customizable from the menu at any time, as well as the difficulty in three different levels , although the normal one already gives a fairly adjusted experience without being frustrating in any case.
Much content
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond doesn’t end the moment your campaign ends. The life of the game becomes infinite if you opt for any of the survival maps in search of improving our brand or that of our friends, a minor addition if compared to a good number of modes that this Above and Beyond brings when we refer to its multiplayer section.
With games of up to 12 players we can compete online in the Deatmatch, Team Deathmatch, Domination, Mad Bomber modes, in which we must put and deactivate bombs at different points on the stage and finally, my favorite, Blast Radius . Basically we are facing a free-for-all mode like Deathmatch, but the great incentive is that there is a ring that appears every so often for you to stay inside, giving you 5 times more points per death than if you are not. The downside is that being in the circle you are easy prey, so every time someone dies inside, a single-shot rocket launcher appears on their body. It is a tremendously fun mode .
The life of the game becomes infinite if you opt for any of the survival maps offered by Respawn Entertainment
To this good repertoire of more or less original game modes is added a selection of 10 specific maps that are brilliantly designed, offering a large number of opportunities with a very accentuated vertical component that makes danger can come from anywhere. As we progress through the story and in this multiplayer mode we unlock new skins for our character. However, some kind of development or improvement system for weapons is missing that makes the player return to this mode on a recurring basis.
It remains to be known how matchmaking is going to behave in the future since, as we will see in a couple of paragraphs, the high technical specifications of the game can lead to problems in terms of the number of active players and, despite its correct behavior , bots are not a solution. The point in its favor is that it has dedicated serversin each region, something that is always a guarantee. And since I have begun to comment on some details that, although I consider minor, I would have liked to see in the game, I cannot ignore the fact of not being able to equip a weapon in each hand or that the physics system for knives or objects Throwers do not achieve the desired effect in the most natural way possible. However, any object that we find in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is susceptible to becoming a weapon, even grenades thrown by rivals, which we can risk returning to them.
It is not a game available to everyone
Cinema and television have already taken us more than once to some of the scenarios that we see in the game.
If there is one point that has kept me in suspense throughout the analysis, it has been the performance of the game in Oculus Quest 2 using a PC with an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super graphics card, 32 GB of RAM and an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor. , the power recommended by Respawn to move the game. However, the customization options for the graphics from the viewer are very limited, limiting itself to adjusting the resolution from low to high including a dynamic mode. Even with this equipment and the latest version of the Quest 2 viewer installed (which allows us to reach frequencies of 80 and 90Hz and force the resolution), we have had to choose to ensure the stability of the rate of images per second using the medium resolution. Nothing to blame on the game at this point because, even in lower performance, it is still a work of high caliber.
However, and although I am not going to take this point into account when establishing a final rating, it seems to me that the minimum requirements that Respawn asks for this new Medal of Honor will alienate many potential consumers who, for reasons of team, they will not be able to take full advantage of the experience. It is understood that you want to reach new heights of quality in virtual reality, however, making your game accessible to the more people the better thanks to good optimization is something that should not be underestimated by the developers. The title comes with voices in English and German, as well as subtitles in Spanish. The sound effects are at a high level accompanying not only the shots of our weapons, but they help to make some of the most shocking moments of the game memorable . However, the musical section or the epic marches that sometimes occur during battle, although composed with enthusiasm and good taste, can end up being too similar to each other.
“Very good”
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is a show from start to finish, an experience that invites you to be fully experienced, to fully merge with it and the possibilities it offers us. In short: to be lived. Its great variety of missions, with a long-lasting campaign that invites you to revisit some of its best scenarios is its main asset. To all this adds its multiplayer and survival modes, something that makes the total package very complete.
- A breathtaking show from start to finish
- A huge amount of content both for single player and online
- Its handling is fluid and at the same time demanding with the player, achieving a magnificent sensation of immersion
- The documentation work that has been carried out is magnificent …
- … although it does not go beyond the documentary carried out for the gallery
- The recommended requirements to play it are too high
