As columnists we don't always know which games we're going to review and if the responsibility for a particular title will be entrusted to us or to some colleague.
I admit that when I was given the review of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond I had almost lost hope of diving into it, and had spoiled enough elements from other people's reviews, surprised to see ratings ranging from poor 6 to 10 (with a worrying downward trend on VR sites).
Ero a little frightened from putting the helmet on my head during D-Day in a game that elicited such mixed opinions in colleagues, but I did, and I was thrilled.
At the heart of the war
The campaign Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will make the player retrace the salient features of World War II in Europe, starting with the French resistance to the Norwegian cold, passing through the trenches and the Normandy landings.
At first glance, the game doesn't look great: the first scene serves as a narrative expedient to tell why our character does not speak, but instead stands out for something that we will find every now and then in the game. We are talking about the player's body, injured, it is placed in a horizontal position, different from the real one in the game.
It doesn't look good at all, and it never will in the (few) times this dissonance is presented. After this initial hat, and made the choices on the settings (which are to be promoted both for customization and for implementation) you are finally catapulted into what is the real action.
Here too, at the beginning the game does not seem too convincing: if on the one hand it is fun and well thought out, with weapons to be reloaded manually in a faithful way and an aim that in VR makes everything extremely difficult, the various scenes are very much interspersed, too, from mini uploads.
Every ladder you climb, every mini cutscene with a talking character, every time an action ends, there is a mini-loading, which will make you think of a continuum more frustrating than anything else.
Fortunately, the problem fades with the progress of events, and when you reach the middle of the game you almost begin to thank for the opportunity to rest your arm every now and then.
Once you have passed the initial adaptation, which as seen involves some effort due to a not exactly fluid design, the game takes on a new form, and becomes a satisfying, strong experience, which enters the head and increases the heartbeat several times. .
The plot is well thought out even if a little stereotyped, but it is difficult to innovate in the narration on a trite subject like the Second World War. However, we must recognize the ability to put together coherent and continuous recurring characters with funny extras.
The narrative could have been much more fluid instead of bouncing from scene to scene, but net of some empty passages that only scream "wasted time", the story and characters of Above and Beyond are worthy of an AAA game.
Engaging, but at what price?
As per tradition, also this chapter of the saga nothing is missing: aerial combat, armored vehicles passing overhead as we crouch in the trenches, and even first-person landing on the beaches of Omaha Beach.
All strong images, which in VR manage to excite as hardly seen on a computer. On more than one occasion I have had the instinct to lower myself quickly shouting unhappy words. The game involved me so much that at one point, after receiving a greeting from my superior, I replied with a nod of my head before walking away.
Yes, I responded to a greeting from an NPC in real.
Aside from my proven inability to distinguish the real from the virtual, I admit it's a miracle that in this succession of actions the Motion Sickness was almost completely absent all the time, even after sessions that exceeded one hour.
And for a game where you jump on trains or jump off planes, it is a great source of pride.
I will discuss the problems related to virtual reality gaming in a dedicated piece shortly and playing Medal of Honor has done nothing but confirm one thing: being immersed in a virtual world can have significant psychological risks.
Although I particularly like war games, I tend to be, outside the virtual world, an overly sensitive person.
When in the initial tutorial he asks to calibrate his sensitivity, I said to myself “well let's try to see how the maximum level is”.
I shot a German soldier placed in front of me, knowing full well that he was a virtual human, but the realism of the sounds, of the fall, of the environment around me, made me sick for a moment, just as I had a jolt the first time I heard the sound of being hit.
Contrary to what I thought, what makes this initial phase strong from a psychological point of view is its isolation, when you then go on stage in real war theaters these feelings are dampened by everything else. The fact remains that you have to be careful with your sensitivity, playing in VR is not like playing on the PC, and you have to give credit to Medal of Honor for offering a highly customizable system to mitigate possible unwanted effects.
Not just the countryside
Digging into the initial menu, in pure 3D but not exactly intuitive, the game features much more besides the campaign.
Aside from survival mode, the classic wave arena, there is a bel reparto multiplayer in which you can play various modes against other virtual avatars (pact to be able to find them, given the scarcity of players in the attempts made).
The really cool thing though are the footage recorded with real conflict veterans, where many issues are addressed from a human rather than a historical point of view. The videos with the veterans are beautiful and exciting, a very welcome addition that deserves a lot more attention.
The game should have done something to include them as part of the narrative, or even give the player the possibility to choose whether or not to look at them in the points of the campaign that lead back to that particular testimony.
Technology
The technical workmanship is of a high, very high level, even if with some smudges too obvious to be true.
The tutorial is required but it really remains a punch in the stomach as for the suspension of disbelief, while the rest of the interaction with the world is textbook.
You can interact with many objects, and the weapons have a simplified way to the right point to give the feeling of reality in the hands without complicating their handling, making everything very intuitive.
On the other hand, collecting objects is not always so simple, due to collisions not really well thought out and objects placed too close together, you can hardly ever pick up the object you want if it is close to other objects.
A similar argument can be made for the graphics sector, which has remarkable peaks of excellence and tremendously flat elements. There are elements that have a crazy level of detail, like some vehicles or interiors, and others that seem rushed, a little at the last moment.
In general, I had the feeling that some elements were developed by veterans with experience in design for virtual reality, while others have suffered from the lack of testing or "conscious" supervision.
A shame, because where the game excels, it does it better than just about anyone.
Final judgement
All in all, the Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond experience is much better than expected, but it still brings with it a long list of things to review. For being the first AAA game built specifically for virtual reality, there are so many elements that deserve applause, but it also sports a long list of issues that tomorrow's designers will have to find an answer to. After all, VR was born when we dreamed of living this type of experience in an immersive way, and this is only the first attempt of what we hope will be a long series. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer.
