by:	July 06, 2005

I will be honest in saying that I have not really been a big fan of any Medal of Honor games on any of the consoles yet. The only ones I actually found to be any good were Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault from last year, both on PC. After playing Medal of Honor: Rising Sun a while back, I was left with a horrible taste in my mouth and really just wasn’t too excited about Medal of Honor anymore. While I did get to play some MOH: Frontline and get a good idea that MOH could be good on consoles after all, I gained some hope for European Assault. Fortunately European Assault follows in the footsteps of Frontline in the fact that is actually good. Almost everything about this game is good except for one huge missing factor that easily knocks the game down on my list and score. There is no Xbox Live support!

Story
You are US Army Lieutenant William Holt, hand-picked by William “Wild Bill” Donovan to be amongst the first field agents of the newly formed Office of Strategic Services—the OSS. Your missions will take you through daring commando raids, brutal winter conflicts, and historic battles as you become the driving force in the struggle to liberate Europe.

Throughout the game you pretty much travel all across Europe and even parts into North Africa and Russia. The most intense and memorable battle you come across is the Battle of the Bulge in Europe, which consists of three intense, winter-torn levels. You also go through France in the early parts of the game under St. Nazaire, which consists of four different sub-levels. Ultimately, the whole game leads up to one final confrontation with a notorious German commander named Von Schrader who you basically follow throughout the entire game getting as much intelligence on his actions as possible. While the final level in the game is spectacular and extremely intense, the final battle (final boss), Von Schrader, turns out to be nothing more than a chase scene where you eventually kill him if you get enough shots in on him…which ultimately is not very climatic.

Gameplay
Here is where a World War II game must excel because the whole point of a good WWII game is to make it feel as realistic as possible. MOH: European Assault definitely excels in this one of most important categories that decides the fate of not only WWII games but also shooters in general. MOH: European Assault is a first-person shooter that allows you to wield weapons and equipment from the WWII era in an attempt to liberate Europe from Hitler. The weapons throughout the game are quite impressive in their level of accuracy of how well they are recreated from their actual counterparts. Each gun has a certain level of recoil when shots are fired and each gun has a certain level of reloading time as clips and/or shells are used. Some guns require the loading of each individual bullet which normally takes a little longer to reload while others simply require the replacing of a magazine of bullets which of course makes reloading much faster and allows for more shots to be fired in a shorter period of time. However, each and every gun is balanced in a certain fashion as to where if it has a strong point than it has a weakness in another point. For example: The M9 Bazooka is extremely deadly and powerful but takes a very long time to load and reload as well as use the attached scope. The same concept goes for the Sniper Rifle meaning that it has extremely long range and is almost always a one-shot-kill but takes a while to reload and doesn’t carry a lot of ammunition in it’s clips.

Medal of Honor: European Assault brings an entirely new feature to the series called the “Adrenaline Meter” which allows for abilities only true heroes could possibly accomplish. Actually…no, it allows for abilities that no one could possibly accomplish because they don’t exist. After you kill an enemy, complete a task, take fire, or heal an ally, your Adrenaline Meter fills up and when it is full you enter a “Hero Mode”. This “Hero Mode” allows for character invincibility, unlimited ammo, and increased firepower but slows your character down a bit and blurs the screen as well for a short period of time. This is a really cool feature and it comes in quite handy in tight situations but with Medal of Honor always trying to be the most realistic WWII experience ever, this new little side feature is far from reality and at times takes away from the true, factual, historic mood the game otherwise is very successful at setting.

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