In this review, we go undercover in the Game Boy Advance game Medal of Honor – Underground. We find out how well this first person shooter (FPS) game plays.
This game was released in 2002. It is a port from the Playstation.
You play as a member of the French underground while Nazi’s occupy Paris in the 1940s. After a few missions, you’ll eventually be contacted by the OSS where you take on various missions for the American’s as well.
You start with a pistol. It’s a simple weapon, but it’s generally better than nothing. As you make your way through the levels, you’ll also obtain petrol bombs, a machine gun, and grenades to name a few weapons. The machine gun will definitely be your best friend throughout.
The first part of the game gives you an escort mission. However, after this, you’ll be given a number of objectives that revolve largely around either destroying something, activating something, or collecting something. You’ll even get a few missions where you need to photograph something as well.
Most objectives have an indicator when you are near it. This is actually useful given the graphics level in this game because it can be easy to miss something you need to do. So, keep an eye on the small messages at the top of the screen.
In a few instances, items of interest for objectives have a red target over top of it. This generally means you need to destroy it.
There are a number of enemies throughout the game. While the colour of their clothes can vary from time to time, they are all pretty much the same for the most part. They are only alert if you happen to be near them or shooting them. This can be advantageous to you as it makes sniping them with just about any weapon easy. That leaves only closed spaces which require some careful looking around corners from time to time.
If you get hit, your health indicator goes down. To replenish, pick up some health kits or canteens to restore your health.
On a few missions, you can use a camera. Select the camera and guards won’t attack. Even if you set explosives in plain view in front of the guards, they won’t give you a second thought. Just calmly walk away, let the explosives do their work, and guards won’t know what happened (they probably won’t even react to various trucks being blown up near them).
The ultimate objective after completing the other objectives is to find the green target icon. Pass through this to complete the level.
Between levels, you’ll be greeted with a slideshow. This gives you ideas and advances the plot throughout the game. Alternatively, you can just blow through the text and get your objectives through the start menu. They choice is up to you.
That’s really the game in a nutshell.
This game suffers from a lot of problems. The first, as alluded to earlier, is enemy AI. They are extremely touch and go. While they behave rather abnormally, half the time, you can use this to your advantage. You can mow down a bunch of enemies with your machine gun and only a few of the survivors will even realize you are attacking. Sometimes, however, enemies can see through walls from time to time and go after you. So, the faulty AI is a double-edged sword here.
While it is impressive to see a first person shooter on this system, the sluggishness of the frame rate really holds this game back. Your turning is reasonable, but moving forward or back, you are capped at a really slow rate it seems.
Additionally, controls are also sluggish. Just try firing with the pistol to see why. You’ll hold down fire and, sometimes, you might actually fire that pistol. Ultimately, you’ll find yourself fighting with the responsiveness of the controls more than anything else. Good thing the AI of enemies are pretty dodgy. Otherwise, you’d have quite the disadvantage here.
Also, you can’t save in this game. Instead, you get a password system that you can use to get to whatever level you left off. Having seen many games on this system utilizing a saving system, the fact that this game doesn’t even use saving at all is pretty out of place.
Ultimately, I did complete the first three missions and gained access to the fourth, but I was so turned off by the game, I just powered the game down. It’s virtually unplayable in the end.
Generally speaking, the controls are sluggish, the responsiveness leaves a lot to be desired, and the movement is also slow. While there is certainly a decent display of stats and helpful hints along the way, some of the better features seem to be an effort to cover up a lot of the shortcomings of this game.
Graphics ultimately hurt this game severely. The frame rate alone is painful to watch. In some areas, I’ve seen the game drop down to the butter smooth rate of about 2 frames per second. The frame rate hinges on what is on screen, of course, but it’s like the system is just huffing and puffing just to render simple scenes. What’s worse is that the textures are so badly pixelated, items, and even enemies, almost vanish completly in the mess. Card passes look like rusted steel drums even. When I read reviews saying that this game is headache inducing, they weren’y joking.
Audio is not up to snuff either. The music relies on a mix of samples and chip tune sounds to fill in the rest. Think of it as a mashup between the regular Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance. It’s rather subpar if you ask me. Sound effects are basic and the speech samples are minimal. So, for me, this game doesn’t hold up on this front either.
Overall, this is a game I would recommend to avoid. The controls are sluggish and unresponsive, movement is painfully slow, enemy AI leaves a lot to be desired, and the frame rate gets in the way of gameplay. It’s not a matter of if you’ll stop playing, but when. Graphics are abysmal and the audio just doesn’t hold up. So, a pretty big flop if you ask me.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Completed mission 3 and started mission 4, level 1 before I quit outright.
General gameplay: 12/25
Replay value: 2/10
Graphics: 2/10
Audio: 2/5
Overall rating: 36%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
