The grenade bounces off the wall in front of him and falls at our feet. “Grenade!” the computer-controlled character yells, diving out of the way. I shake my head and sigh as the ordnance explodes. That shouldn’t have happened.

Medal of Honor, released Tuesday for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, is full of nasty bugs like that one, many of which force you to restart checkpoints or reboot your Xbox 360 (the version I played). That’s a strong indication that Electronic Arts’ answer to Call of Duty was rushed out the door.

And yet my virtual war buddy’s mistargeted grenade escapade was the only time that Medal of Honor’s single-player campaign took me by surprise. Otherwise, it’s an utterly predictable adventure without a modicum of real conflict.

I didn’t imagine this game would be a thoughtful, introspective look at how war affects human beings, but I expected it to be deeper than Virtua Cop.

Instead, al-Qaida and the Taliban are reduced to a virtual shooting gallery, a limitless font of moving targets. Our guys are no less one-dimensional — everybody likes each other (except for one bristly general). It’s a story with no conflict and therefore no plot, so why have a story at all?

Medal of Honor Wins Military Porn Award

Sadly, Medal of Honor is pretty much just military porn, straight-up fantasy fulfillment for anyone who would like to imagine themselves among people who shout things like “Tango down!”

This includes a lot of us. It was hard for me to keep from grinning involuntarily every time I brought down another tango. There’s something exhilarating about being in a situation where people say “oh-600? when they mean “6 o’clock” and “6 o’clock” when they mean “behind you.”

But this is the solitary thrill of Medal of Honor’s campaign, a cheapo little adrenaline rush. It’s hard to shake the feeling that the new war game is a missed opportunity to go a little deeper.

Halfway through the fight, you’re up in an Apache helicopter using the Target Acquisition and Designation Sights system. It’s a slick replica of the real TADS experience, so much so that if you’ve watched the Apache helicopter footage that WikiLeaks dubbed “collateral murder,” it’s likely that this Medal of Honor level will remind you of it.

But in contrast to the unclear, fuzzy images we saw in the WikiLeaks video, everything is black and white in the game — every threat is really a threat, every RPG is an RPG and not a camera lens.

What if this level had introduced some element of uncertainty? What if you weren’t entirely sure that everything in your sights was the enemy? What if Medal of Honor attempted to replicate the snap judgments and serious consequences that those on the front lines have to make every day?

At the least, Medal of Honor should have aspired to be more than Whac-a-Mole.

See Also:

• EA Pulls Controversial Taliban Team From Medal of Honor
• Screenshots: EA Shows Tactical Medal of Honor Gameplay
• Need for Speed, Medal of Honor Headline EA's Testosterone-Addled E3 Showing

Authors: Chris Kohler

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