Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is set in a realistic-boasting World War II setting. I've only played their superb sports games, so I was excited to see how they would handle such an intense theater like World War II. I really wish English were a more descriptive language so I could express my pleasure, but may I simply put that the graphics on this game are top-notch industry leading. The environments are absolutely perfect! Trees sway to the wind's invisible hand. Buildings are made of brick so real, you can see the mortar. The lighting and shadowing are better than any game I've seen. The player models are perfect, with each soldier's uniform perfectly replicating the fatigues of the era. The weapon models are actual WWII weapons and they don't fail to impress. Things like the Colt .45 to the Bazooka have all had special attention paid to their rendering. The weather effects are absolutely perfect as well. One level has you set in the snow going after the enemy, and you honestly can get lost, and even placated, watching the snow drift down in the cedar forest. Of course nothing jolts you back to reality like the treads of a Panzer tank in the background, but we'll save that for the sound portion. The explosions and wartime effects are magnificent as well, often sending brilliant color flashes into the sky, while smoke plumes so real frown outward spreading over the hilly countryside of Southern France. The only thing lacking is the actual smell of the gunpowder. The death throes and bullet holes only add to the solidity of the graphics. Probably the only foreseeable drawbacks are you have to have a decent video card (16 mb recommended, 32 mb preferred), and there is absolutely no blood. Granted, I'm no fan of over-gored blood fests, but how can a war game so realistic not have blood? In defense of
MOHAA though, I ran it on an 8 mb card! (while I did have to turn all the graphics settings to 'Low,' or 'None.') and it looked pretty decent. Still, nothing looked better than putting it on a nice video card like an
nVidia GeForce 3 , or a
Hercules card with the GeForce 3 chipset. These cards made a huge difference, and made the game turn from a raw, uncut gem to a highly polished, sparkly diamond. If you've absolutely got to have blood, there are 'blood MODS' available from www.planetmedalofhonor.com that you can download, but will have to have a utility like
WinACE* to extract.
* available at www.winace.com
Again, I'm limited by language when it comes to pegging the sound. Suffice it to say that the sound is an experience in itself. Every detail has been paid to the aural masterpiece that MOHAA ultimately is. As mentioned above, the ambient background sounds are enough to keep you on the fringe of war...just when you may be taken away from it. My case in point is there are often times when I'm sneaking around a ragged, bomb-gutted city and stop. If you listen, you can hear the wind's whisper faintly ruffling your equipment belt. Birds chirp, and for a second, the war is over. All is well. Then the bombing run of an airplane roars overhead and jerks you violently back into the mortal game of chess. If you sneak upon an unsuspecting group of Germans, you could hear them speaking perfect German over a game of spades. They also chuckle as they discuss what they'll do if they ever take over the world. Fancy that. Fortunately the crisp rat-a-tat-tat of my Thompson sub-machine gun firmly plants round after round into the bad guy. Even the death 'scenes' sound real. It was kind of funny, being that there's no blood, but running by a dead body gets you a resounding splash as I just stepped into a puddle. I was fortunate enough to play it on a 5.1 surround sound system, and boy oh boy was it nice!? Butter, absolute butter. People's to my left foot treads would resound to the left. People shooting behind me would send my rear speakers wailing in warning. It is absolute bliss to play such a visually stunning game that has sound so good, you're almost there. One more thing: Wait until you get to level 3, which is the Omaha Beach level. You think Saving Private Ryan was realistic?
