Medal of Honor™

I came into Medal of Honor 2010 expecting EA to hand me a CoD knockoff with a fresh coat of desert dust, and honestly, that's mostly what's here, but the campaign half of this split-personality game earns more respect than it gets. The setup is genuinely interesting: Danger Close (the renamed EA Los Angeles) handled the single-player using a modified Unreal Engine 3, while DICE, yes, the Battlefield studio, built the multiplayer on Frostbite. Two separate studios, two separate engines, one box. That structural seam was visible at launch and it never fully healed. On the campaign side, you rotate between four different roles: Navy SEAL DEVGRU operator Rabbit, Delta Force sniper Deuce, Army Ranger Specialist Dante Adams, and an AH-64 Apache gunner. The perspective swaps keep the pacing alive. The cover-slide mechanic built on UE3 is snappy, crouch during a sprint and you glide into cover, which is more satisfying than it has any right to be. The two-weapon carry limit with a separate sidearm and grenades keeps loadout choices honest. Missions push you through hostage rescues, airstrike coordination, and a sniper stretch on a frozen mountain that's still one of the better long-range sequences from that era. The campaign runs about five to six hours and then unlocks Tier 1 Mode: no checkpoints, slower health regen, no crosshair, no aim assist, and a ticking clock that only pauses on skill kills like headshots and melee. That mode alone gives completionists something to grind. The sound design, scored by Ramin Djawadi with a full string orchestra, hits harder than most people remember. The problems are real though. Enemy spawns during defend-until-extraction sequences are relentless and mechanical rather than tactical. Friendly AI holds up in firefights but breaks down the moment scripted events kick in. The campaign is built on teamwork, not heroics, stray from your squad and you die quickly, which is either a design virtue or an annoyance depending on your tolerance for being herded. The environments in Afghanistan are geographically accurate and atmospherically correct, but they are also a lot of beige, brown, and grey for five hours straight. As for the multiplayer: it is dead. EA shut the official servers down in February 2023. There are community workarounds documented on PCGamingWiki, but you are not buying this for online play in any practical sense. When the servers were alive, the DICE-built mode offered three classes, Rifleman, Special Ops, and Sniper, with per-class XP progression unlocking new weapons and customization. Tactical support perks like mortar strikes and rocket attacks rewarded kill streaks. Up to 24 players, eight maps. The time-to-kill was short, respawns were fast, and the whole thing played closer to an infantry-stripped Bad Company 2 than anything that could challenge Modern Warfare 2 on its own terms. It was functional and not embarrassing, but it was never the reason to own this game. With no live servers, that verdict is permanent. For a PC shooter collector or someone who missed the 2010 military FPS wave, the campaign is genuinely worth the low price it sells for today. Go in expecting five tight hours of coordinated special-forces action with good sound, a passable story, and a harder-than-expected replayability mode. Go in expecting a multiplayer component and you will be disappointed before you even reach the server browser.

Fred · Scout Team

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