Hands-on: Medal Of Honour Multiplayer Beta

The Medal Of Honour multiplayer beta launched on PC and PS3 on June 21, with anyone pre-ordering the game getting a taste of the action even earlier. The reboot of Electronic Arts' classic first-person shooter series shifts the action from World War II to the dusty, dangerous and still ongoing conflict in modern day Afghanistan. The game's biggest fight, though, will be in attempting to unseat the ubiquitous Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and EA's own Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in the FPS multiplayer stakes. EA Los Angeles is developing Medal Of Honour's single player campaign, but the multiplayer is being handled by EA DICE, makers of Bad Company 2, and so the early signs look very promising. Digital Spy signed up to the beta and headed out to battle to see how things are shaping up.

It's very clear from the outset that Medal Of Honour is a much more realistic and tactical shooter than its contemporaries. In the game's frantic 12 vs 12 player matches, charging out into battle with guns-a-blazing is a very quick route to a bullet-ridden end. Instead, the game is more about getting dug in and tactically judging how to gain multiple kills without tasting the sweet release of death. The game's more realistic approach to warfare is not a showstopper by any means as it provides an interesting contrast to Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, which could prove really appealing to some players. However, there are some niggling issues that will need to be addressed first, but more on that later.

In the beta, two maps were available - Kabul City Ruins and Helmand Valley. The Kabul map is basically a shattered urban settlement, with lots of broken down buildings, wrecked cars and tight bottlenecks. There are plenty of vital hideaway points for snipers, along with corridors for tense firefights and a market area for more wide-ranging battles. In comparison, Helmand Valley has much more open spaces and rolling hills, punctuated by a bunker, two small settlements and a village. The map provides a good range of terrain, especially in objective-based contests, but it can feel a touch empty at times, even with 24 players in full effect.

Essentially, the game is split into two player categories - coalition and insurgents - with each side having three classes. Riflemen pack AK-47s for the insurgents and M-16s for the coalition, while Snipers have Dragunov SVD rifles for the insurgents and M-21s for the coalition, and Special Ops get AKs74u or M4 carbine rifles respectively. All classes have pistols, grenades and melee knife attacks as their default weapons, while there are also grenade launchers, rocket launchers, C4 and smoke grenades available. The game features drivable tanks, which are particularly fun for two players - one driving and the other handling the guns.

The beta featured two modes - Team Assault, basically team deathmatch, and Combat Mission, which is a staggered objective mode. In an open match, Team Assault is chaotic fun in a rather every-man-for-themselves type way. However, getting together a custom match with a group of friends makes it a lot more coordinated, with some great battles available, particularly on the Kabul map (although the join-friend feature must be improved in the final game). Combat Missions involve the coalition forces trying to advance to specific objectives on a map and the insurgents attempting to stop them. On Helmand Valley, that involves the coalition first breaching a roadblock and then taking a hillside dugout before raiding a bunker and ending the match by storming a village. The push and pull of the mode is great, but it's rather more fun to play as the coalition since the insurgents have a somewhat thankless task.

As we reported in our single-player preview, there are issues with Medal of Honour which are a touch worrying ahead of its October release date. The hit detection sometimes feels a bit off, with there being moments when the game seems to be missing hits or being overly generous with others. Another issue is that the insurgent weapons feel quite underpowered compared to the coalition. After using the M-16 and then switching to the AK-47, for example, the difference is noticeable and can make the insurgents much less fun to play as. While it is realistic that the rebels would have worse weapons, it's probably not wise to overly reflect that in the game.

The respawning system is good, but it seems strange that attacking teams respawn next to their teammates in Combat Mission, while defending teams do not. Overall, though, the game does a good job of making sure that the player always quickly gets back into the action as death comes fairly frequently (well, it did for me anyway). The game's heads up display (HUD) has been designed to be sparse, with just a few green numbers and symbols in the corners of the screen. However, the HUD has also been given a strange fuzziness, which feels like a case of style over substance. It's often hard to read vital information at a glance, which can be the difference between life and death in combat as dangerous as this.

Players get ranking points for kills, headshots and kill assists, with the system offering a pretty good range of rank upgrades, along with weapon and character customisation options. The sheer toughness of the game, though, could make it very hard to reach the hallowed Tier 1 status. Multiple kill streaks bring in-game perks - referred to as Tactical Support Actions - such as targetable air strikes. The system is strong, but it is sometimes a bit confusing to know when perks are available, mostly because of the weak HUD. The game merely uses a sound effect to alert the player when perks are ready, which is not as clear as in Modern Warfare 2 and it's sometimes easy to play a match without even noticing that a perk is ready for use. In contrast, the game runs a banner right across the middle of the screen every time the player scores a kill or headshot, which seems a touch excessive.

Graphically, the two maps are rich, detailed and really well-recreated. It's clear that a lot of care has been lavished on the whole presentation, which bodes well for the final product. The in-game mini-map is good and the sound effects are really nice, with voices echoing over the maps to add a genuine sense of realism and weight to the matches. It's a shame that despite the multiplayer being made by DICE, the environmental destruction capabilities of the Frostbite engine are not in full effect. The lack of destructible buildings, walls and cover is a shame after gamers were so spoiled by Bad Company 2. It's not a showstopper, but it doesn't serve Medal Of Honour particularly well either.

Even though I didn't see any major issues, there have been reports on the web about texture glitches and graphical problems in the beta (including some quite humourous videos posted on YouTube). A patch apparently rolled out in North America on June 25 to fix in-game crashes (of which I had one during my beta sessions), along with measures to resolve "scoreboard access bugs and support actions received while using an AK47 or AKs74u". The patch also apparently improves matchmaking configurations and addresses the join-friend issues mentioned above. However, as the patch has not yet rolled out in Europe, it's impossible for me to comment on how much improvement it has made.

Overall, there is much to admire about Medal Of Honour's multiplayer, particularly its tense and realistic battles that will provide a stern test to even the most seasoned players. However, there are also some significant areas of concern. Considering that DICE is behind the offering, it's a shame that there is not more environmental destruction. More importantly, though, issues relating to aspects such as the HUD and hit detection need to be addressed. Hopefully the development team will take on the massive amount of feedback that is already surfacing around the web and ensure that the flagged problems do not make it into the final game. If they can do that, then Medal Of Honour's multiplayer and very promising single-player campaign could ensure a successful return for the classic FPS series.