Medal of Honor: Rising Sun Review - VGLN.com Xbox Reviews

Does Medal of Honor: Rising Sun retain the crown of best WWII based shooter for the series?

The newest addition to EA's popular Medal of Honor series attempts to bring gamers to the only other theatre of World War II the series has not covered, the Pacific Theatre of War.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun covers the events of the U.S-Japanese conflict of World War II, and although EA's attempt is only thinly veiled in historical accuracy, it is for the most part entertaining.

The beginning level of the game begins the whole experience with quite a bang, figuratively and literally. As explosions, and bulkheads collapse beside you, it's obvious you are on a ship during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The entire level is a survival experience as you fight to get to the top deck of your ship, all the while helping fellow sailors along your way. Once you get to the top, you can grab a turret gun and down Japanese Zero fighters out of the air. It's a very cinematic beginning to what has always been a very cinematic series of gaming, and even the most jaded gamer will cock an eyebrow at this wonderfully action packed beginning to the game.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the first level of the game is in fact the best level of the game in this reviewer's opinion. The rest of the game features very simple level design that simply serves as an arena for the player to blast Japanese soldiers with a seemingly unending supply of ammo and well placed gun butts. Don't get me wrong, the game is a shooter, and what most gamers will expect is a simple arena to fight and shoot within. However, after playing Activision's excellently built Call of Duty (coming to consoles later this year), it's hard to play Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and not make comparisons. For one thing, the objectives in Rising Sun are merely there for show. It's not like you'll actually have to work to complete objectives such as flipping an air vent switch, or finding a part for a broken tank. The natural path of the game delivers the objectives into your lap, requiring minimal exploration and work from the player's side. Compared to Call of Duty's beautifully fitted objectives that meant something to the flow of the game, and required that you actually do some work to accomplish them, Rising Sun pales in comparison.

Another area where Call of Duty is obviously superior to Rising Sun is in the way the game handles friendly A.I. I write the following with no offense intended to the programmers of Rising Sun, but the friendly A.I in the game is moronic at best. In one level, you meet with 4 other aussie soldiers who try and help you to your objective which is, unfortunately for the A.I helpers, blocked by a pair of Japanese machine gun nest. As I stood behind a rock and attempted to pot shot one of the nest and draw fire towards me, I watched as one of my aussie helpers attempted to engage the machine gun nest. Expecting a grenade to be thrown into the nest, and the subsequent scream of eliminated enemies, I waited. Much to my dismay, however, the aussie chose to fire off a single shot from his rifle, missing completely, then ran full speed right back towards my position. As the aussie attempted to push me from my hiding spot by continuously bumping into me for some idiotic reason, the Japanese machine gunner eyed in on the back of the aussie shooting him in the foot about 14 times, causing my friend from down under to dance quite a jig. I would've put him out of his misery myself, but unfortunately, friendly fire was not active.

Enemy A.I is not much better for Rising Sun either. Enemies can be tricked by some advanced manuevers, some of which include circling around them under cover of daylight, right in their faces. I literally laughed in one level in which I was placed inside the halls of an enemy aircraft carrier, and simply walked behind the backs of enemy sailors as they attempted to reload their guns, allowing me to shoot them unchallenged. Why doesn't the enemy A.I attempt to gun butt me, or at least tackle me to the ground therefore preventing his imminent death? Perhaps soldiers of this era were dumber than I originally thought or the A.I programmers of EA just didn't give soldiers of this era very much credit and gave them the cranial capacity of a moth. Obviously, it's the latter which is somewhat unforgivable, especially for a series of gaming which has had almost half a dozen iterations.

	Gameplay: [6.0] This is basically the same game the original MOH was 3 years ago. Except this time, the A.I seems even more buggy than usual. Still there is action packed gaming here for those who are fans of the series.
	Graphics: [7.0] The visuals are fairly good, but they aren't much of an improvement over past iterations of the game, and are certainly a step under the current crop of shooters.
	Sound: [6.5] While most of the ambient sounds are okay, the gun sounds are a bit underwhelming, even for a THX enhanced title. Voice acting during the cut scenes was fairly solid.
	Presentation: [8.0] The cinematic presentation of the game is still excellent, especially during the first level of the game. Too bad the rest of the game just doesn't maintain those initial standards.
	Replay Value: [5.0] Though there are multiplayer aspects to the game, it's too simple to be anything more than a five minute frag fest here and there.
	Global Score: [6.5] Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is an average shooter that should serve as a clear sign to EA that the series is beginning to feel dated, and must adapt to keep pace with the current crop of shooters.

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