Medal of Honor Timeline
In anticipation of Electronic Arts' upcoming reboot of their Medal of Honor series for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, we take a look at the entire history of the popular shooter franchise, which has seen a dozen games in the ten years it's been around.
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- March 08, 2010 08:59 AM PT
Electronic Arts published a dozen Medal of Honor titles prior to its reboot of the franchise and typically focused on specific individuals to highlight their honorable conduct during World War II. All of the prior games take place between 1941 and 1945, with the vast majority concerned with Allied operations toward the end of the war. Medal of Honor games appeared on every major platform since the original PlayStation, with only the DS being left out of the action. Two Medal of Honor games were started but later canceled, to the best of our knowledge. The first was Medal of Honor: Fighter Command, a PlayStation 2 dogfighting title set in the South Pacific that EA canceled in 2001, and the other was Medal of Honor: Rising Sun 2, also for PlayStation 2, which EA canned in 2004.
The majority of the games were well received by the media, but critical reception for the franchise noticeably declined over the years, which led to the suspension of the annual release calendar in 2007 and the eventual reboot. The low point is undoubtedly Medal of Honor: Vanguard in 2007; critics skewered the Wii version for its lack of atmosphere and clumsy controls. The game earned a Metacritic score of just 56. Interestingly, the original game is still the most critically acclaimed, something that new Medal of Honor Executive Producer Greg Goodrich and Senior Creative Director Richard Farrelly are focused on changing with their upcoming reboot of Medal of Honor.
- 1999
- Medal of Honor
PlayStation
Metacritic score: 92
The original game in the Medal of Honor franchise was a joint project between Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks Interactive (which EA later bought and folded into its L.A. studio) and was reportedly intended as a spin-off from the director's 1998 movie, Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg received a director credit on the game, which tells the story of OSS (Office of Strategic Service, the wartime intelligence agency that later evolved into the CIA in 1947) agent Lt. Jimmy Patterson as he attempts to undermine Nazi efforts in Northern Europe toward the end of WWII. Medal of Honor, like all but one of the games that follow it, is a story-driven first-person shooter.
PlayStation/Game Boy Advance
Metacritic score: 86
A prequel to the first game, the 2000 release of Underground sees players taking on the role of French Resistance fighter Manon Batiste, who's loosely based on real-life OSS agent Helene Deschamps Adams, a noted spy who saved American paratroopers from capture at drop zones in France and helped Jewish families escape to Spain. Members of the development team said that they intended the game to feel more intimate and personal than the first, with less emphasis on military organization and more on the grit of underground fighting.
PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube
Metacritic score: 88
The franchise's fourth game carries something of a misleading title. Despite being called "Frontline," the majority of the missions are actually covert. Frontline sees players again taking on the role of OSS agent Lt. Jimmy Patterson in a story that actually fits between the third and fourth missions of the original PlayStation game. The story concerns Patterson's attempt to steal the prototype of the Horten Ho 229 "Flying Wing" jet-powered bomber as well as the events leading up to the Allied military operation in the Netherlands known as Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Sgt. Jack Barnes from Allied Assault: Spearhead makes a brief cameo.
PC/Mac
Metacritic score: 91
The third game in the Medal of Honor series is also the first developed for Windows PCs. It uses the Quake III: Arena engine and simulates infantry combat in the North African and European theaters toward the end of WWII. Players take on the role of U.S. Army Ranger Lt. Mike Powell as he participates in the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day as well as rescuing OSS comrades from behind enemy lines in occupied France. Two expansion packs supplement Allied Assault. Spearhead, based on Sgt. Jack Barnes (voiced by Gary Oldman), a paratrooper of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, sees players holding the line near Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Breakthrough, the second expansion, stars Sgt. John Baker of the U.S. 34th Infantry Division and tackles the Battle of Kasserine Pass, the turning point of the war in North Africa. It also features the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, the Battle of Monte Cassino (also known as the Battle for Rome) in 1944, and finally the landings and the defense of the beachhead at Anzio, south of Rome.
Game Boy Advance
Metacritic score: 80
A mission-based shooter bearing a striking resemblance to old-school arcade shooters like Commando, Infiltrator is a Game Boy Advance exclusive that sees players fighting through 15 different levels spread across three different theaters toward the end of the WWII. Though much of the game is a top-down scrolling shooter, it also features some brief first-person segments that involved shooting down enemy planes from the tail gun of an aircraft.
PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube
Metacritic score: 68
The franchise switches theaters to the Pacific in Rising Sun, the fifth game in the Medal of Honor series, and to assert this point from the get-go, it kicks off with a frenetic depiction of the attack on Pearl Harbor. As Cpl. Joseph Griffin (later promoted to sergeant) of the U.S. Marine Corps., players must survive the attack before OSS recruits them for missions in Singapore. Rising Sun was originally intended as the first chapter in a two-part story that was to follow both Griffin and his younger brother, Donnie, who'd been captured by the Japanese. The second game, which was to focus on Donnie, was later canceled due to the poor critical reception of Rising Sun.
PC
Metacritic score: 80
As Pvt. Thomas Conlin, a U.S. Marine in the Pacific theater, players face action at Pearl Harbor, Makin Island, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of Tarawa, making this the first Medal of Honor to tackle battles that took place several years apart. As with all of the other PC and console-based games, Pacific Assault is a first-person shooter, but it also includes one level in which players take control of a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber during a dogfight. This serves as something of a precursor to the helicopter gunship missions in the 2010 franchise reboot.
PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube
Metacritic score: 73
Unlike previous Medal of Honors, the fiction of European Assault is less grounded in reality; John Milius, the screenwriter for Apocalypse Now, wrote the story. Originally titled Dogs of War but later changed due to a translation issue (the French term "chiens de guerre" means "mercenaries"), the game takes players to St. Nazaire, France, where they participate in the raids on Nazi submarine pens, before moving to North Africa, the Soviet Union, and finally Belgium. The climax sees players, as hero Lt. William Holt, rescuing Medal of Honor: Underground's Manon Batiste from prison in a Belgian farm.
PSP
Metacritic score: 71
The first Medal of Honor on PSP takes key characters from previous editions of the franchise and casts them in three different campaigns led by Lt. Jimmy Patterson, Sgt. John Baker, and Lt. William Holt from Medal of Honor, Allied Assault: Breakthrough, and European Assault, respectively. In an unusually intimate moment, a cinema after the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 shows Patterson proposing to Underground's Manon Batiste. Heroes also resolves a narrative issue caused by the cancellation of Rising Sun 2 and reveals that Joseph Griffin successfully rescued his brother.
PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/PC
Metacritic score: 78
The first "next generation" Medal of Honor, Airborne is an Unreal engine-powered shooter that includes insertions in Italy, Northern France, the Netherlands, and Germany. A core element of Airborne's gameplay is the way it inserts players into the action. Rather than simply showing up at the beginning of a level, they drop in from a Douglas C-47 Skytrain (often called a Dakota) and can parachute down to the battlefield. This mechanic means that players are able to affect where they would begin a mission, promoting a less linear experience. As with many other games in the series, Airborne includes segments that tackle Operation Market Garden, Operation Overlord, and at the end of the
game, Operation Varsity.
Wii/PlayStation 2
Metacritic score: 56
Vanguard is the 10th Medal of Honor game, and it's the first for the Nintendo Wii. The game casts players as 82nd Airborne Sgt. Frank Keegan and throws him into Operation Husky in July 1943, Operation Neptune on D-Day in June 1944, and Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Keegan then transfers to the 17th Airborne Division before participating in Operation Varsity, a joint British-American assault on Germany in March 1945. Operation Varsity is notable as the largest airborne operation conducted on a single day in a single location.
Wii/PSP
Metacritic score: 73
Unlike the first Heroes, which takes its name quite literally and bundles together the heroes of the Medal of Honor universe, Heroes 2 breaks tradition in two ways: It's only about one character, and that character is one that hasn't appeared in any previous games. Heroes 2 is distinct in two ways. It turns out that it's the last game in the franchise set in World War 2, and it supports up to 32 players online.
Comments [3]
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- Mar 09 2010 at 01:44:24:PM PST
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I played up through Rising Sun, and have the remaining on my pile of shame, having bought the "box set" for PC that EA came out with a while ago. I do want to give Allied Assault, Pacific Assault, and Airborne a try sometimes.
Truly the lowest point in the series is the GBA adaptation of Underground, which is probably one of the worst games I own, for GBA or any other platform. Infiltrator is pretty hard to find these days,
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I haven't played many Medal of Honor games after the first two. I even re-downloaded them on my PSP and they play great, and are still fun to this day. I played one or two other ones, but the franchise grew old quickly. I enjoyed the latest one, Airborne, and thought they did a really good job bringing it to the next generation.
I really hope they can pull this new one off and make something special. DICE is handling the multiplayer, which leaves the other team more time to focus and perfect the single player. I think they can pull it off. Let's just hope that it doesn't simply rip-off Modern Warfare and add absolutely nothing new to the franchise. I really, really, really hope that they know simply copying Modern Warfare isn't going to cut it. I already have Modern Warfare, I want something fresh, new and exciting. There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration, but I do not want it to simply be Modern Warfare on a new engine.
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