For a time, Medal of Honor was the king of the military shooters. It was a simpler time, when the only enemies were Nazis, and no one ever imagined that the World War 2 setting would ever get dull. Then, Call of Duty came along, and soon expanded into other realms, and became disgustingly popular. But, much like the old grandfather who insists he doesn’t need to learn how to use email when he has a perfectly good fax machine he bought ten years ago; Medal of Honor kept on doing what it did best, slowly slipping further and further into obscurity. Now it has finally decided to play catch-up, but is it too little too late?
Warfighter is actually a direct sequel to 2010’s title, simply named Medal of Honor. WWII has been replaced with the modern world, and the Nazis have been replaced with “terrorists” and “insurgents.” This usually translates as “people browner than the main characters.” One thing the series does not have going for it is political correctness. The style is that of Modern Warfare circa 2008, where the action takes place in the present, but the military (i.e. the player) has access to tools and weaponry slightly ahead of conventional technology.
The story is ultimately very forgettable, and involves bad people doing bad things and with our clean-cut square-jawed heroes doing their best to stop them. It was honestly so generic I have trouble remembering anything more. The question Warfighter never answers is why does it exist? It never tries to do anything different than COD, except that it’s doing those 4 years later. COD has already moved on; with Black Ops 2 it’s gone into the Cold War and the Future.
There is a multiplayer which focuses on playing as different elite units from nations around the world; although the modes themselves do not offer much more variety from the norm.
Warfighter is like a product made by a company when they wanted to beat Coca-Cola; so what they did was try to make their product as close to Coke as possible. By the time they made something even slightly close, there was no point, because everyone would prefer Coke anyway. What they should have done was try to make something different; something that would stand out in a separate way on its own merits.
But what we got instead was committee designed Military shooter number 457.
