Medal of Honor Heroes Review for PSP

Now this is more like it. Now the PSP has been around for a year or so, the programmers are getting to grip swith the system, and EA’s latest FPS action game, Medal of Honor: Heroes proves that. It’s a continuation of the MEdal of honor series of WWII games, and it builds on the stories of the previous PS23 release, rather than try to create a new character and storyline. In a sense this isn’t going to matter to the majority of players - they’re just there for the levels, but for peopel who follow the game series, it provides instant comfort.

The graphics in Medal of Honor are some of the clearest of any FPS on the PSP. They’re not photo realistic (but that’s over-rated in any case), but they are clear, and it’s nice to see a difference in the same construction when levels are played at night or day. Dark corners appear at midnight where teh sun would clearly light them. The level design is supereb, and unlike the plodding linear design in SOCOM, you are free to go through the level sin any order, and this is clear right from the first airfield level.

I’m disappointed in the number of levels, with only 3 campaigns of 5 levels each, but if that’s the price to pay for good level design, then so be it.

And I can’t not mention the Skirmish mode - or should that be the deathmatch mode! You can set this up against a field of Computer AI driven opponents, in exactly the same was as the PS2 players could fight in their Medla of Hono. Get in a room of PSP owners and with a touch of Wi-Fi you can all be involved. Fast and frantic, althgouh for a mobile game I do wish you could tweak the respawn delay of ten seconds into something shorter.

MEdal of Honor: Heroes is a tour de force on the PSP, and it is the PSP’s best FPS Action Game as of today. Worth buying.

What also provides comfort is the control system. EA have managed, in the ‘Commando’ choice of controls (you have a few styles to choose from), to find the best control layout for a first person shooter, with the shoulder keys controlling the sighting and firing of your weapon, the D-Pad for actions, analouge for movement and the right hand buttons for looking around. Sure the PSP would benefit from a second analouge stick (and I hope that PSP v2 does have one) but this is the best solution yet.

Tags: psp, game, reviews, medal of honour, heroes, ea, fps