3/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Medal of Honor: Frontline.

Now breaking into the PS2 Medal of Honor era, we have Medal of Honor: Frontline! This released around the same time as Allied Assault, and it honestly shows. The first mission being almost identical to the D-Day missions in AA is very telling. However, the game splits off into its own thing from here on out. And there are really fun ideas here! But a lot of this fell flat to me. Which sucks, because I know this game is beloved by many. Gameplay-wise, this plays almost exactly like the PS1 MoH games. After playing AA on PC for so long, this took some getting used to. Though, I swear the aiming controlled better on the PS1. I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn in this game. It didn’t help that I had my crosshair turned off for half the game, but the camera movement was just so inconsistent! Movement felt fine and all, just didn’t feel as fluid as previous titles. Technically speaking, this game runs great! Granted, I played the PS3 remaster from 2010, but character models and environments look great here! This game also has great sound design and a near perfect soundtrack from Michael Giacchino (his last one until Airborne, I believe). The main menu is even really engaging, continuing the tradition of still images going into motion when hovered on. The “Next Mission” icon being a pistol loading is so satisfying when continuing your game. This truly feels like the appropriate upgrade from PS1 to PS2 in every way. Story wise, you play as Jimmy Patterson from the first game again. You start on D-Day and move on to more solo operations later in the game. Ultimately, you are trying to stop a particular German official while foiling any of their advanced R&D plans. Between the weird controls and odd difficulty spike, this game got HARD! So much so, I spent over 2 hours on a mission before I had to accept defeat and lower the difficulty to Easy. Yes yes, I had to take the walk of shame. But I care more about beating the game than my honor in maintaining the difficulty. Also, stealth/espionage is almost non-existent in this game. If it is in a level, it’s for no more than 2 minutes before your cover gets randomly blown for no reason at all. I can accept that in the PS1 games, maybe I was just bad at stealth and that’s why it “didn’t work”. But here, you are briefed the mission will be stealth, and the level starts with enemies blasting you immediately, or as soon as you walk around a corner. Even in a disguise, your cover gets blown right away. This sucks, because the stealth and espionage in the original titles were so fun to attempt, and have the option of doing. This game has 1 way of doing things, and no room for flexibility. This is the definition of linear. Normally, I wouldn’t mind. But taking away freedom that was given in previous games feels like a step backwards to me. All in all, I don’t have much else to say about this one. I’m certainly glad I played it, because it did have its moments. The next to final level was exciting for me because I had almost no health the entire time, which forced me to rethink how I played the rest of the game. I went prone the entire time and snipped my way to the end, scavenging what little health I could before turrets would light me up. It felt exciting and genuinely fun. But between weird control issues and missing stealth sections, I can’t give this anything higher than a 6/10 in good faith. It’s still better than the reboot games, but that’s not saying a whole lot. Next game, Rising Sun, will ACTUALLY be on my PS2. So here’s to playing on original hardware for once, since I’ve played the PS1 games and this one all on my PS3, haha!