Medal of Honor: Frontline (PS2) 5/6/2025 (Part 2)

There's nowhere more dangerous then the frontline in this first MoH for 6th gen. It was certainly something of a culture shock playing through this, you forget how shooters used to be like when they didn't have magical regenerating health or strawberry jam vignettes to warn you of danger. Having only really played FPSs post Modern Warfare, as before it was a genre I had no interest in, going back to this has been an enlightening if not deadly journey. Here on the frontlines things are done the old fashioned way so that means no checkpoints, this combined with the fact that levels are more lethal then an invitation to the red wedding means you'll be replaying and inching your way through them like a minefield, trial and much error is the name of the game as you work out which guns work best for sections and exactly where the enemy spawn so be prepared for a lot of memorizing and on the fly speed run strats. Its not all doom and gloom though, yes the levels are more brutal then a prom rejection in the school cafeteria queue but sometimes its nice to knuckle down against a challenge and overcome it (can't let those Nazi win right!). They're also really well designed in terms of mixing things up, no two levels feel the same which is impressive for a WWII FPS, you'll go from storming the beaches of Normandy, to disguising yourself to enter a celebration party, to sneaking onboard a German U-boat heck there's even a minecart part which I did not expect. While entertaining the spectacle of the missions make you feel more like James Bond then a regular G.I.Joe and some of the set pieces look high school play quality by today standards so its not the most realistic when recreating the time but the weapons and equipment animations help make up for it by having accurate reloads and uses. The shooting is decent enough, it'd be great if you could actually use the iron sights on the guns but outside of snipers all you can do is zoom in the crosshair which makes having anything over a passable aim near impossible, just aim for centre mass and see what happens. At the start you may want to go for the head but by the end you'll be thankful to clip people in their legs, the number of nazis using crutches are at an all time high after you get through with them. There's not much of a story really, you get mission debriefings before each level which are well written but make it hard to keep track of where and why each stage takes place. It has some pleasing choir tracks that play during the more intense missions, they're nothing too memorable but accompany the levels well. Going back to pre CoD was jarring but on the whole it was a pleasant learning experience, the old schoolness of the aiming and lack of checkpoints is definitely something that belongs in the past but its not without its own charm. MoH may be dead and buried but this was a good reminder of its past glories.