Medal of Honor Frontline, which was originally released this past summer for the PlayStation 2, is a first-person shooter that tries to re-create the feeling of actually being on the battlefield during World War II. The Story line of Medal Of Honor: Frontline is quite simple. It places you in the role of Lt. Jimmy Patterson as you try to steal the HO-IX, a German weapon with enough power to change the course of war. The game starts you out off on the beaches of Normandy for the D-Day invasion, and the opening sequence has been designed to closely resemble to D-Day landing featured in the film Saving Private Ryan. As Patterson, you penetrate enemy lines in an attempt to destroy key targets, thereby keeping the troops on the front lines safe. The game features six main missions spread across a total of 20 different levels.



Although Medal Of Honor: Frontline as much more story and mission then you would expect in FPS games, it still is a FPS, and does little to deviate from the path it lays before you. In each mission, you are either briefed by text (which sometime contain up to 3 pages) or by voice. You go from mission to mission, killing every one and everything you see, just like in a Bond game. Certain mission will require you to disarm bombs on a bridge or even sabotage vehicle, but all that is needed to do so, is to find the bomb or vehicle, and simply press A. You do not have to make any decision on whether you will be going right or left, since all that is already decided for you. In some mission, you will have to decide what you are going to do, or how you are going to do it, but it's never a problem. E.g. In one of the mission, you have to meet up with an informant, but cannot talk to him, because there are Germans soldier all around you. Now this is where you have to make a decision. Will you walk around the room until an action button shows up, or do you press the back button, which will give you a hint on what to do? This keep things simple for inexperienced gamers, but for us experienced gamer out there, we would like to see some real decision making (well at least I do).

Sometimes, the enemy AI, or Artificial Intelligence gets in the way of reality. When you shoot a soldier, it will cause others near him to run and hide, but all that is needed to do is to wait, and they will come out eventually. The facts of the game include Stealth-based infiltration missions, but sometime I wish that you could be a little stealthier. By being a little stealthier, I mean being able to kill someone with a silent pistol, in an empty room, without warning the enemies that are literally rooms away. The enemy is not triggered by sound nor sight, but by the distance you are away from them. I could be standing in front of a soldier/enemy, without anything in between me and him, and he will never shoot me because I'm not close enough, but I could easily. This overly simple Artificial Intelligence behaviour damages the feeling of realism that Medal Of Honor tries so hard to maintain. Better AI routines would have made some of the battles a little tenser, but you battle so many soldiers you're almost glad they're not the best shooters. Some battles are intense, but this is due to the number of enemies, not the AI of the enemy.

The controls are like most FPS, the left analog stick move your character, while the C Stick is used for aiming your gun. Y is used for jumping; while X is used for crouching. A is to fire, and B to reload. While the game is very playable, the control could have used some more tweaking.

The game isn't too difficult to beat. You can press start anytime during a mission to see an objectives checklist, or press the back button, to get a hint on where to go, or what to do.