medal of honor: vanguard. take a lap.
final verdict:
6.0 Average. Nothing that even casual players haven't seen before.
5/10 Concept - a WW2 fps? haven't seen one of those before.
6/10 Gameplay - controls are hard to get used to.
6/10 Graphics - not bad. not great, either.
6/10 Sound - gunshot, gunshot. screaming. not much to go on, but the opening music was good. main character's voice was highly annoying.
7/10 Entertainment - relatively enjoyable once you get the hang of it.
i have to start with: i never really liked fps games. it seemed a little dull to me; shoot, clear an area, move on. do it again. and again.
that being said, i have to follow it with: i'm changing my opinion of fps games but not because of medal of honor: vanguard.
the story
the game starts out with an annoying voice over of your main character, frank keegan, a paratrooper in the 82nd airborne division. i wanted to mute his voice, it was so annoying, but i was afraid i might miss something important.
you're on the coast of sicily, about to jump out of a plane, when it's hit with enemy fire. mission: kill bad guy. isn't it always?
the controls
the wii gives you a quick crash course on steering your parachute jump but it still manages to contradict its explanation when it comes time to put it to use. after landing, you're given another tutorial about how to control your character. unfortunately, the nunchuck is used for everything. standing. crouching. laying down. reloading. turning about face. you keep flicking your nunchuck in the air in an attempt to stand up, but you keep turning around and reloading instead. how annoying is that when you're trying to move quickly?
the wiimote is your line of sight and your gun. i hate to brag but i will: i have excellent aim. medal of honor: vanguard does not. it takes about three or more shots to kill off a character and god forbid they be in the distance. the rule isn't a two way street, however. i was picked off a few times by characters so far in the distance their bodies were just outlines against buildings. once i figured out where the game required me to aim, i was down to killing characters in one or two shots but something seems off about aiming a foot above their head for a head shot.
the only other problem i had with the wiimote was that my character would sezuire every once in awhile, and instead of turning to look right i would turn upward, all the way up, around and then aim at the ground. of course this would happen in the most pivitol of situations, like the moment i choose to come face to face with an enemy. i closed the blinds in our living room and that seemed to help a bit, you can also alter the turn sensitivy in your options if keegan keeps sezuring out too much for you.
the graphics
i'm not playing this game for graphics, but i've heard from more than one source that the wii version outshines the ps2 version. there was nothing particularly brilliant about the graphics, but nothing so bad that it really diminishes gameplay. i'd show you an image but they're pretty impossible to find (with a 30 second google search they were anyway, and that's all the time worth devoting to it.)
i really wanted to like this game. i had a blast with cod3 for the 360,
and i figured, "a fps where your controller acts as an actual gun?
sounds like fun to me."
unfortunately, while the premise is good, vanguard doesn't pull it off in the end. stick with call of duty.
Anything You Can Do GAME REVIEW by Jill.
Comments
Hey, I have those exact metal dice!!
I'm not a fan of the no capital letters thing. It is just a personal preference but for me, capital letters make things easier to read since you can see where sentances start and stop better.
The worst is when people type things in all caps. I've seen studies that show that you actually have to read slower to get all of the words because they all look so similar.
I got Call of Duty 3 for the Wii but I have not done very much with it at all. I just got waaay too many games at Christmas to properly play them all. And news games that I want to play still come out and there are old games that I never finished that I try to eventually get back to.
I read a few reviews that said that Call of Duty 3 was a bit of a rehash of CoD 2 and that the levels were not as inspired. I don't know how much you have played of each of them. So, that was part of the reason why I have put off getting into CoD3.
Yeah I saw that someone beat the game under a profile there. And I noticed the difficulty level :-).
The control scheme is the same but the game responds better. Hit detection for shots against enemies is more accurate. Even getting into melee (eg. hitting someone with the butt of your rifle) registers a successful hit more often. I also found it easier to return grenades in Call of Duty 3 than in its predecessor.
A nice feature, though in some ways limiting, is that you play as fewer people in Call of Duty 3 and mostly follow two soldiers named Nicholas and Doyle [coincidentally, the last names of two of Jill's co-workers - ed]. Narratively, this kept me involved because in Call of Duty 2 the player spends so little time with so many characters they never have a chance to get invested.
- Jack
Along the same vein, you'd think people would get tired of shooting Nazis! But, I remember reading that everything always goes back to Nazis since they serve as our bar for everything evil, so I shouldn't be so surprised.
I'm not saying that I feel like Call of Duty 3 protagnosists are movie quality at all. Just that by spending more time with the characters you get to see them interact with other people, learn more about their friendships, and see them grow as heroes.
It's an exceedingly rare thing in shooters of any kind, almost completely overlooked in something like Gears of War - which feels like something Fox TV would call "Riveting. An action classic!" when it's really the same game wrapped in shiny, new plastic. It's still fun though, just not revolutionary.
"You'll make them pay for your pet rabbit, Daisy."
I'm dead serious. I swear to god I am.
- Jack