There isn't a single hardcore gamer out there that didn't get goosebumps when Nintendo unveiled the Wii remote. Once the concept of how the system's unique controller would be used was revealed, players went crazy with the thought of how Nintendo's system would change the way gamers were played. One of the biggest genres in our minds was the first-person shooter, as the ability to aim at the screen and have true pixel-perfect accuracy was all but guaranteed. The launch games released, however, and we quickly saw that Nintendo's Wii would have its work cut out for it in the control refinement category. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption then raised the bar, and now Medal of Honor Heroes 2 -- a seemingly unimpressive "Wii-make" title brought over from PSP as a pocket developer's premiere console effort - again pushes the genre to its limits, as EA's latest WWII FPS has easily become the most responsive and customizable FPS experience on Wii.
We've been covering Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for months now, so rather than throwing down thousands of words of recap at you, we'll launch right into what works, and what doesn't. If you want more on the basics of the game, check out our previous hands-on coverage. Essentially the game is a return to the series roots, as you'll take the role of an OSS agent who is dropped behind enemy lines in the heart of the Nazi force. It's just you and them out there, with the occasional help of a few US troopers.
First things first. Medal of Honor Heroes 2 isn't a perfect game; far from it. It has its moments of greatness, particularly those dealing with customization and pure FPS control on Wii, but it also shows some amateurish inklings as well, many the result of being the developer's premiere effort on the system. Others become apparent when looking at the limitations of the PSP system, which was of course considered during the team's multi-system development. This isn't a PSP game though, not by a long shot. Textures look great, the framerate locks at a steady 60 for the majority of time (small hiccups do occur), and it's a generally beautiful experience on Wii, easily trumping the previous Medal of Honor title and Call of Duty as the best looking first-person experience under Prime.
What it is, however, is the best controlling, most entertaining first-person shooter on Wii, and a no-brainer for hardcore gamers. Everything from IR sensitivity, horizontal and vertical look sensitivity, and dead zone (the amount of space the IR can move without beginning to push the screen) is fully customizable, allowing for near-perfect control via the Wii remote. With a few minutes of tweaking, most players will find their sweet spot, though with the options always on-hand we ended up making fine-tune changes throughout our entire first playthrough of the game right up until the review. Now that we've found exactly the right feeling though, we're deadly, and it was well, well worth the time it took to tweak it; online results are proof enough of that.
Medal of Honor Heroes 2 is packed with content as well. Some of it is, of course, more polished than others though, and what it really boils down to is figuring out exactly what you want in an FPS, and deciding if MOH provides it. As far as control options go, players can use either the Wii/nunchuk controller or Zapper configuration. Rather than beating around the bush with the topic of Zapper control we'll just come right out and state that it could be gone tomorrow and we'd never shed a tear, and that goes for any game out there that supports it. It's not a knock on Heroes, it's a knock on the peripheral itself, as it only proves to slow down your aim (twitch control is best done with the flick of the wrist, not by pivoting a huge chunk of plastic) and poorly simulates a light-gun experience. We get it, the Wii is our weapon; no need for the shell itself. Some casual gamers may get a kick out of using it, but for us - hardcore gamers that we are - we just don't see the appeal.
As part of the Zapper support, however, Medal of Honor Heroes 2 has not only included a control scheme for online and main gameplay, but also created an entire light gun experience in "Arcade" mode. Arcade mode is a fun addition to the main game and online play, but it essentially works as a remixed mode of play based on the already-made levels in single player campaign. Akin to games like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Ghost Squad, players aim a cursor and let the game do the rest, as you'll be expected to gun down hoards of troops. Our only complaint to an otherwise entertaining (and surprisingly long, at a few hours total) bonus mode is the zoom function, which zooms the screen from its center point rather than from where your cursor is. This means that you'll be aiming at a Nazi trooper in the upper right of your screen, need a bit of extra zoom to tag him, hit the button, and have the screen zoom to the center point, cropping out your view of the target. For enemies inside the 70% of the screen that is still seen after zooming, this control works fine. For the outer-ring targets, however, it's a bit frustrating. All in all, however, arcade mode is a fun addition to the main game, and is certainly worth factoring in to the overall value of the game. Most teams struggle to create a single experience on Wii, but Team Fusion essentially made a game and a half with Heroes 2.
The campaign will of course be the bulk of the experience for most gamers, and it's pretty rewarding overall. Enemies can be extremely tough at times, forcing you to really hunker down and play using strategy, and the game's impressive controls allow you to do just that, as precision shots can be made from literally anywhere on the map. There's some definite optimization going on that helps keep the game running at 60 fps though, so you'll notice that killing enemies from farther away will result in a lower-frame death animation, rather than a fully animated one. It's all part of the smoke and mirrors that make up a high-frame game, so as long as players take these situations - like the disappearing bodies post-kill - as necessary drawbacks, it'll prove itself to be the right choice, as the game looks good, and runs extremely well.
Rather than just creating a run-and-gun experience, Team Fusion included a ton of event gameplay as well. It never gets as crazy as vehicle driving or para drops - things we've seen in previous Wii FPS games - but it is seamless with the rest of the gameplay experience as well. You'll blow up targets with a bazooka, destroy objects with rail guns, snipe enemy squads with the Springfield sniper rifle, man .50 Cal turrets, and rain fire down on enemies with mortar blasts. Each of these situations is motion-based and entertaining, though in a few situations they do run a little long. The .50 Cal MG nests, for example, often trigger upwards of 35 enemies spawning off-screen for an attack. This means a ton of stationary shooting. These events add some much-needed diversity to the world, though, and are great fun to play with the motion controls.
As the final portion of the MOH trifecta, online is an impressive first effort on Wii. The game runs with 32 players online and does so with very little interruption. With the option of playing deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, players will have a decent list of options to work with, resulting in easily the best pure online gameplay on the system thus far. Simply log on to EA Nation, create an account (used instead of friend codes), find a lobby, and start playing. At any time you can initiate a vote to kick players or change the map, as well as outfit your soldier with different weaponry or change control style, making the experience extremely seamless for Wii's first online FPS. Since EA Nation also supports friend lists and quick-chat commands, MOH also allows for these options, so when logging on you'll instantly be able to tell which friends are playing where.
A huge annoyance for us - one that couldn't be avoided, it seems - is the lack of online voice chat. It seems as though Nintendo isn't ready to allow gamers the option to interact with friends or random players, so the experience remains generally void of player-to-player interaction. A few quick commands can be issued, but you'll need to hit the 1 button to do it, which often takes too much time to pull off, and is far from comparable to other online communication systems. If voice chat isn't in the game's future, we'd at least suggest a command wheel or faster way of getting commands to players, as the current method is too slow to be effective. As another downside to the Wii online experience, the general "chat" function included in the PSP version of Heroes 2 online - basically a quick in-game chat system that lets you type custom messages - was removed since you're interacting with non-friend players. Typing on PSP is a bit slow anyways, but with Wii's on-screen keyboard and IR typing messages could have been quick and easy. Instead, it was pulled due to the threat of potty-mouth online gamers; that's a shame.
We've been covering Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for months now, so rather than throwing down thousands of words of recap at you, we'll launch right into what works, and what doesn't. If you want more on the basics of the game, check out our previous hands-on coverage. Essentially the game is a return to the series roots, as you'll take the role of an OSS agent who is dropped behind enemy lines in the heart of the Nazi force. It's just you and them out there, with the occasional help of a few US troopers.
First things first. Medal of Honor Heroes 2 isn't a perfect game; far from it. It has its moments of greatness, particularly those dealing with customization and pure FPS control on Wii, but it also shows some amateurish inklings as well, many the result of being the developer's premiere effort on the system. Others become apparent when looking at the limitations of the PSP system, which was of course considered during the team's multi-system development. This isn't a PSP game though, not by a long shot. Textures look great, the framerate locks at a steady 60 for the majority of time (small hiccups do occur), and it's a generally beautiful experience on Wii, easily trumping the previous Medal of Honor title and Call of Duty as the best looking first-person experience under Prime.What it is, however, is the best controlling, most entertaining first-person shooter on Wii, and a no-brainer for hardcore gamers. Everything from IR sensitivity, horizontal and vertical look sensitivity, and dead zone (the amount of space the IR can move without beginning to push the screen) is fully customizable, allowing for near-perfect control via the Wii remote. With a few minutes of tweaking, most players will find their sweet spot, though with the options always on-hand we ended up making fine-tune changes throughout our entire first playthrough of the game right up until the review. Now that we've found exactly the right feeling though, we're deadly, and it was well, well worth the time it took to tweak it; online results are proof enough of that.
Medal of Honor Heroes 2 is packed with content as well. Some of it is, of course, more polished than others though, and what it really boils down to is figuring out exactly what you want in an FPS, and deciding if MOH provides it. As far as control options go, players can use either the Wii/nunchuk controller or Zapper configuration. Rather than beating around the bush with the topic of Zapper control we'll just come right out and state that it could be gone tomorrow and we'd never shed a tear, and that goes for any game out there that supports it. It's not a knock on Heroes, it's a knock on the peripheral itself, as it only proves to slow down your aim (twitch control is best done with the flick of the wrist, not by pivoting a huge chunk of plastic) and poorly simulates a light-gun experience. We get it, the Wii is our weapon; no need for the shell itself. Some casual gamers may get a kick out of using it, but for us - hardcore gamers that we are - we just don't see the appeal.
As part of the Zapper support, however, Medal of Honor Heroes 2 has not only included a control scheme for online and main gameplay, but also created an entire light gun experience in "Arcade" mode. Arcade mode is a fun addition to the main game and online play, but it essentially works as a remixed mode of play based on the already-made levels in single player campaign. Akin to games like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Ghost Squad, players aim a cursor and let the game do the rest, as you'll be expected to gun down hoards of troops. Our only complaint to an otherwise entertaining (and surprisingly long, at a few hours total) bonus mode is the zoom function, which zooms the screen from its center point rather than from where your cursor is. This means that you'll be aiming at a Nazi trooper in the upper right of your screen, need a bit of extra zoom to tag him, hit the button, and have the screen zoom to the center point, cropping out your view of the target. For enemies inside the 70% of the screen that is still seen after zooming, this control works fine. For the outer-ring targets, however, it's a bit frustrating. All in all, however, arcade mode is a fun addition to the main game, and is certainly worth factoring in to the overall value of the game. Most teams struggle to create a single experience on Wii, but Team Fusion essentially made a game and a half with Heroes 2.
The campaign will of course be the bulk of the experience for most gamers, and it's pretty rewarding overall. Enemies can be extremely tough at times, forcing you to really hunker down and play using strategy, and the game's impressive controls allow you to do just that, as precision shots can be made from literally anywhere on the map. There's some definite optimization going on that helps keep the game running at 60 fps though, so you'll notice that killing enemies from farther away will result in a lower-frame death animation, rather than a fully animated one. It's all part of the smoke and mirrors that make up a high-frame game, so as long as players take these situations - like the disappearing bodies post-kill - as necessary drawbacks, it'll prove itself to be the right choice, as the game looks good, and runs extremely well.
Rather than just creating a run-and-gun experience, Team Fusion included a ton of event gameplay as well. It never gets as crazy as vehicle driving or para drops - things we've seen in previous Wii FPS games - but it is seamless with the rest of the gameplay experience as well. You'll blow up targets with a bazooka, destroy objects with rail guns, snipe enemy squads with the Springfield sniper rifle, man .50 Cal turrets, and rain fire down on enemies with mortar blasts. Each of these situations is motion-based and entertaining, though in a few situations they do run a little long. The .50 Cal MG nests, for example, often trigger upwards of 35 enemies spawning off-screen for an attack. This means a ton of stationary shooting. These events add some much-needed diversity to the world, though, and are great fun to play with the motion controls.
As the final portion of the MOH trifecta, online is an impressive first effort on Wii. The game runs with 32 players online and does so with very little interruption. With the option of playing deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, players will have a decent list of options to work with, resulting in easily the best pure online gameplay on the system thus far. Simply log on to EA Nation, create an account (used instead of friend codes), find a lobby, and start playing. At any time you can initiate a vote to kick players or change the map, as well as outfit your soldier with different weaponry or change control style, making the experience extremely seamless for Wii's first online FPS. Since EA Nation also supports friend lists and quick-chat commands, MOH also allows for these options, so when logging on you'll instantly be able to tell which friends are playing where.
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