Review - MOH Warfighter

The MOH series has always been to me a WWII shooter on the Playstation back in the days, the graphics were blocky, and the game was very linear, but for what it offered at the time, it was an outstanding achievement, and i really enjoyed most of the releases. Also, the main theme was very memorable.. who could forget the fat kid with the falsetto voice who sang that tune? :p

 

Fast forward to 2012, and we have the 14th installment of the game; beginning with the 13th version, which was simply called MOH, the series jumped into the modern era ( i guess following the footsteps of the other FPS Call of Duty ). But before i start on Warfighter, i'd like to say i enjoyed MOH thoroughly; it was a refreshing change of pace from COD:MW, although some ideas were lifted here and there.
 

Warfighter follows the adventures of TF Mako, and a few other groups, and is a follow up from the previous installment. The game is now powered by the Frostbite 2 engine, which is also used for Battlefield 3. This is where the mileage will vary for some users; unless you have a good graphics card running the settings at ultra, don't expect to see quality similar to to what you saw in the trailers. The default graphics at high are still 'muddy' to me. I guess the developers of the game, Danger Close, still don't have a clean handle on mastering the frostbite 2 engine.

 

Ok, back to the storyline, single-player is truthfully a short affair about 10+ missions max, and some can get dragged out quite a bit.... then again, there's this Sniper mission which takes all of 5 mins... wth? Was this tagged on at the last minute to bring some credence to the "Inspired by Actual Event" tagline they're promoting?

 

There are some driving sequences which i feel are out of place too, and drag on for too long AND are sooooo obviously scripted... guess they want to have a 'action movie' feel for the game? Still, for a moment there i thought i was playing Need for Speed - Warfigher.

 

The game is also buggy in places ( there was a Day 1 patch, which usually doesn't bode well for the quality of the product ) and the AI is..... atrocious for both the Enemy and your team! There are times when the enemy can be right beside your teammate, and he's just... standing there... boooo! The AI doesn't suffer from Marksman syndrome, but still, they can shoot and hit you from the wierdest places without you even knowing, that's really annoying.

 

On my first playthrough of the first 5 levels, the autosave didn't work either! That really sucked ballz.

Spread out throughout the game are segments where you have to breach and clear a roomful of enemies, there are different methods of breaching which are unlocked when you do headshots upon clearing a room. The problem is, the breaching techniques are just visual differences in entering and clearing, there's no actual reward or difference once that animation is done. So after you've unlocked all the breaching techniques, you're just left.. kinda empty, and wondering what that was all about.

 

So, in spite of all that 'venom', the game was still rather playable. The characters are likeable and some sequences were quite fun. I suspect certain portions were rushed to cater to the Multiplayer portion (which i have not tried yet.).

 

I'd give this a 6/10, although i'll still stick to BF3 for now.

 

Next time Danger Close, more shooting! Less Driving. OR at least let us fly an apache again!