Medal of Honor Heroes

"Finally a good FPS game for the PSP"

MEDAL OF HONOR: HEROES
Medal of Honor: Heroes is a very good first person shooting game. Probably one of the best currently on the PSP. Coded Arms was decent in my opinion, but it just wasn't up to my standard, and I'm not even a hardcore FPS gamer. MOH:H has many qualities that makes it a good game, and it offers a lot to the players. I know there are way too many World War II games out there, and many of them consist of FPS; however, I got to say, this is a game PSP owners should own or at least give it a try and rent/play the demo. EA Games is not one of my favorite game company, but I do enjoy MOH:H on the PSP.

Game Play
In Story Mode, you play as Lt. Jimmy Patterson, Sgt. John Baker, and Lt. William Holt, which I'm guessing are from previous MOH games on the consoles. Each characters are sent to different countries, Italy, Holland, and Belgium. There are total of 15 levels divided among the 3 characters, and they are accompanied by allied soldiers to help them throughout the levels, that is if they can survive through certain parts of the level. There isn't really much in a mission, it's usually sabotage equipments or capture areas and defending it in a level, or finding intels, and some times the level may have a time limit. There are secondary objectives, but they are just finding more intels. The levels are very well designed, and sometimes I feel like I can't explore the whole map in one play through. You can come at your main objectives from quite a few directions. In Skirmish Mode, you can have up to 16 "bots" to play with in a deathmatch. You are scored by the amount of kills and death you acquired in the 5-30 minute deathmatch mode with all the playable maps from the Story Mode. For more actions you can go online and play with up to 31 players in deathmatch, infiltration, domination, demolition, hold the line, and battlelines.

Infiltration is basically capture the flag. Domination is capture all areas in a map to win. Demolition is where one team's objective is to blow up 1 of 2 sites on the map, while the other team guess which site is the target. Hold the line is where both teams defend one area of the map until the time limit is up, the team that can defend that one area the longest, wins. Battlelines is basically like Hold the line, but with more areas to defend under a certain time limit.

Lastly, there is also an Ad Hoc mode, where you can play with up to 6 other players that have their own copy of MOH:H .

Controls
The controls work quite well on the PSP. I've been an old school FPS gamer where I move forward/backward and turn left/right with the same analog/d-pad back when Doom was on the SNES and Golden Eye on the N64. Now I'm so used to using 2 analog sticks, I now strafe left/right with the left analog stick, and since the PSP has only 1 analog nub, I use the face buttons as a "second analog nub". It's a decent substitute, and that is the default controls for this game. Hardcore FPS should feel right at home with the default movement, I mean if I can easily move so well in MOH:H, any FPS gamer can too. If not, there are other control set-ups.

Replay Values
When you're done with the Story Mode, you can go back and replay them in different difficulty settings. If you like earning and collecting all the medals from the Story Mode, you'll be playing through easy and hard mode right after you completed the normal setting. You can also unlock many skins for the Skirmish and Infrastructure Mode. In Skirmish Mode, you are also rewarded if you can kill a certain amount of bots and win matches several times in a row. Playing online is probably the real reason PSP owners would want to have MOH:H in their PSP collections. If you really enjoy playing FPS games, then you should know having a portable online FPS game is the "perfect" game for you.

Overall
It is a good FPS game for the PSP. I enjoyed the levels, controls, collecting medals, etc. Before I bought MOH:H, I had been playing the demo for weeks and I'm not a hardcore FPS gamer. That should mean something. One thing I should warn you about playing online. With the PSP, there are too people hacking their saved datas and they can easily glitch and cheat online. Just avoid those players and you should enjoy your time playing online.

Pros
Good graphics and sounds
Many weapons
Good replay values
Good controls
Decent load times

Cons
Some levels can feel a bit short
Not many different main objectives in the story mode
Enemies soldiers sometimes disappear around the corner
Soldiers sometimes lag as they run in the story mode
Cheaters and glitchers online

I give MOH:H an 8 out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/07