The yet to be released Medal of Honor reboot that releases later in the year appears to be a very curious case indeed. With Battlefield: Bad Company 2 proving to be both critically and commercially successful, it’s strange that EA is adamant in creating a competing series as part of an assault on the massively popular Modern Warfare games. Judging from my time with the beta though, I’ve yet to encounter any positive difference between this re-vitalised reboot and the other games in such a hotly-competitive genre.

That’s not to say it’s bad per se, just little beyond competent. EA and Dice have clearly played their cards very close to their chests by making what is, undeniably, a first-person shooter existing in the year 2010. Yet, so far that’s been my biggest issue with the mutliplayer experience. Its controls, design and in-game objectives are the direct result of throwing Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 into a blender, extracting the juices that trickle out and forcing a desperate attempt at making an old dog seem relevant again.

Shouldn’t that be a great thing, though? During my five or so hours with the beta, the word ‘functional’ repeatedly popped into my head, which I found to be a decidedly definitive way of describing what’s on offer. Between both available maps and game types, there isn’t much more substance to the game than either of the other titles I’ve already mentioned. And the fact that one of them is made by the very same developer makes the situation seem even more weird.

It makes me wonder just who this game is really going to appeal to. MW2 implements the persistent kill-streak system with greater satisfaction and BC2 makes use of large terrain and vehicles more effectively. Maybe the maps they chose to release for the beta are poor representations of the entire package? It’s hard to say. But honestly, I personally can’t envision any of its target audience choosing to spend time with Medal of Honor as their primary shooter, at least not for a long period of time. It just doesn’t seem to have that je ne sais quoi that it needs to have in order to make it the better choice.

From a technical standpoint, the current online infrastructure is also extremely poor, even by the standards of an average beta. Playing on the PS3, I’ve had the displeasure of running into several hard freezes and significant lag issues; as well as a bevy of graphical hiccups. Whilst similar, the expected modern military aesthetic also comes of as way less appealing than its counterparts. Perhaps it’s not worth complaining about that stuff at this stage, but for me it only highlighted the unintentional ‘also-ran’ nature that seems to be the resultant vibe of this series refresh.

My hope is that the single-player campaign of Medal of Honor ends up being fun enough to redeem the lackluster impression the beta’s adversarial modes have left on me, because it’s mechanically sound enough to provide some potentially exciting action set-pieces. Even so, everything at its core feels painfully rote and shamefully devoid of anything new or innovative. It will also be interesting to see how its upcoming competitors – the most prevalent being Call of Duty: Black Ops – plan on maintaining popularity amongst the influx of ‘me-too’ hopefuls on the horizon.

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