It's time to go loud

 My first impressions of Medal of Honor

Did you play Modern Warfare 2? DICE sure did and much like I did they loved it, except for a few nagging issues, so they decided to create Medal of Honor.
Now realize this is my FIRST impression, I've only played the first two campaign missions and now I'm posting from work so no I don't know anything new about the multi yet, I will tomorrow.

Ok so first the good, movement, MoH adds two very important movement options to the tried and true CoD formula, the first being the slide (dash and then hit crouch to slide into cover). The slide works great and I imagine I will be using it tens of thousands of times in multiplayer, it's fluid and bridges that gap between a true cover shooter (GoW, R6) and CoD's tendancy to treat cover like an independent obstacle. The second, Lean and Peek, by holding the Left Bumper you can lean left and right or peek up and down, this also works extremely well and adds a tactical option between total concealment and hanging you ass in the open. Also, not really a feature but sprinting out of crouch also feels really natural instead of two separate actions.

The guns are super realistic with a good amount of kick and some realistic accuracy and the grenades give me some real hope for this game. So throwing a grenade requires your character to pull out a grenade, pull the pin, cook as desired, and throw the thing.  Contrast this to CoD or Halo where your character apparently carriers a deadman frag at all times ready to sling it 60 yards and blow up an entire school bus, I applauded Reach for toning down the blast radius on the pineapples and MoH gets the same kudos.

The level design will give you CoD deja vu however they tend to be a little more open, It's a corrider but a wide corrider with lots of cover.  Now I play with subtitles on, I know some don't but I do and I think it really helps in this game, your squadmates (3 in the 2 missons I played) are chattering constantly about enemy positions, cleared areas, and where they would like you to go, I get the feeling that this is a true cohesive unit I've been dropped into and they act like professionals, the AI teammates WILL kill tangos and generally watch your six while competently leading you through a war torn afghanistan. Oh shit did I really say Afghanistan? Yeah I did and so does MoH, we can all drop the silly pretext of these modern war stories taking place in far off durka-durka-stan against the "opposing force", the words Taliban and Al Qaeda will be said and I appreciate DICE treating me like an adult, also I assume that this realistic grounding extends to the story arc and we won't be going off on any ridiculous 24 style tangents (looking right at you MW2)

Ok gushing aside let's talk about the parts the CoD did better (IW style COD anyway), MoH lacks some polish, the world is a little muddy and a little brown, it lacks that sheen you find on everything in some other shooters, if you've played Battlefield then you know what to expect. Headshots are clearly but unobtrusively indicated with a graphic in the bottom center of the screen and the full hug becomes visible with a button press but I miss the pure "celebration" of everything in CoD, Call consistently rewards you for playing well, the "ping" of a headshot, the brutal stab effect, the guitar riffs and big announcements when you complete some big goal are all gone in favor of what I can only assume is an attempt at immersion.  Here's hoping that multi treats itself more like a game and less like a war sim.

Story spoilers will be avoided in my blog but I'll continue to be posting my impressions up until launch day, so far I feel like this is money well spent, set to rekindle my fire for Modern Warfare by straining out the things I call "bullshit".  Feel free to PM me and I will answer anything I can.