It's December 7, 1941. The gentle waves of the pacific ocean crash upon the peaceful pristine shores of Hawaii. Sailors are heading to church, and some are just finishing breakfast. Everything seemed perfect when suddenly, without warning, one-hundred and eighty-three Japanese fighters and bombers broke through the cloud cover and dropped bombs on every ship in the harbor. That’s where you come in, soldier. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun opens up with the explosive battle that kicked off the U.S.'s involvement in World War II. After dodging your way up the damaged battleship, the USS California, you take control of one of the anti-aircraft guns and spit some lead at the enemy. It looks great, and its loads of fun. You truly get the feeling of being right in the middle of that horrible conflict.

After the incredible opening level, I had extremely high hopes for the rest of the game. Sadly, the game never reaches this level of excitement again. It almost seems as if EA worked very hard on the opening of the game, but forgot to put as much effort into the rest. While the graphics were quite pretty in the opening, the rest of the game looked nowhere as good. Some of the environments get repetitive after a while as well, with most of the game taking place in jungle areas.

The sound however, is a pleasure throughout the entire game. Bullets, explosions, and shrapnel sound so great it's almost like you are actually on the battlefield. This combined with the intensity of some of the jungle levels give the game a high sense of realism. You start to actually feel the fear allied soldiers felt during the Pacific campaigns. While this game is a little rough around the edges, you can’t deny it has some great moments such as creeping through jungle foliage and having your head blown off by a Japanese sniper hiding amongst the trees, or rushing up a mountain to take out an artillery cannon, dodging grenades, rifle fire, and bayonet attacks all the way. Japanese officers are all armed with swords, and they are not fraid to use them in close-combat.

All these this would be wonderful if they happened all the time. Sadly, the enemy A.I. is so inconsistent. Sometimes, Japanese soldiers will be so smart it's scary. Other times, they will be seemingly brainless. Sometimes they will stand right in front of you and just stop for a few seconds, or they will run at you with their bayonettes from 10 miles away, giving you plenty of time to shoot. The same goes for your allied partners as well. They have a tendency to run around in front of you while you're shooting! Surely, it wouldn’t have been so much trouble to make the A.I. smart all the time, would it? Maybe the A.I. budget ran out or something. Whatever the reason, it an series known for smart enemies, we shouldn’t have to deal with this. Another problem that bothered me is the difficulty of enemy soldiers. Normally, this wouldn’t be problem, but if I have to put two bullets into the chest of a Japanese soldier only to watch him stand up and return fire, something is wrong. Bullet collision has some serious issues, making sniping incredibly hard. Coupled with jittery control, this really made my skin crawl.

The multiplayer can help add to the replay value a little, but it also suffers from nagging problems. The co-op levels are fun, but the framerate goes belly up. Same goes for the deathmatch and other multiplayer modes as well. I would almost prefer it if the developers had trashed the multiplayer and thrown in a couple of extra missions. The missions do have some fun moments, but just not enough of them. The game ends way too quickly as it can be completed in around 5 hours if you have any FPS skills at all. This is way too short. While it might take a little longer to go through and get all of the medals and unlockables, the game should have been longer.

When all is said and done, I don’t suppose that Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is a bad game. It's just not what it could have been. Considering the fun I had in Medal of Honor: Frontline, Rising Sun just isn’t on par. The game seems rushed -- like the developers spent all of their time on maybe one or two of the levels and didn’t work much at all on the rest of the game. There is no excuse for laziness with a series that has enjoyed the success Medal of Honor has. It might be the greatest World War II series on consoles, and maybe for the PC as well.

All in all, Medal of Honor: Rusing Sun is a good rental for anyone looking for a new experience. Medal of Honor fans should be cautious of the game's longevity. Only the most serious MoH fans should fork over the green to buy Rising Sun.