WW2 #12: Medal of Honor (mobile)
A forgotten title from the Java mobile game era
This review was originally posted to Twitter on September 24, 2018.
Initial release: October 2006
Platform: Mobile
Developer: EA Romania
Ah yes, the mid-00s, a time when Neurotically Yours was ascendant, the War on Terror was in full swing, and Questionable Content was just entering its best era. An age of CD wallets, World of Warcraft, and the last gasps of video rental stores. A bygone era, when “mobile games” were these weird SNES-looking things you had to play on flip phones. Welcome to Medal of Honor (no subtitle), a game that, like its brethren, is borderline lost media for how much trouble I had finding it.
Getting used to the controls can be difficult, especially if you’re using an emulator (free2jme in my case, which has no documentation about what keys correspond to what phone buttons, arrrgh.) But once you get it sorted, though, it’s quite playable. But there isn’t a hell of a lot to say for it, though. I’m not even sure why I’m writing this review. It’s essentially a sidescroller where you’re a one-hitpoint wonder vs the axis. Survival mostly depends on how quickly you can hit the shoot button as soon as an enemy is on screen.
The basic loop is shoot enemies, pull switches, find the exit. Extremely simple, though you’ll get to do stuff like blow up a couple of trucks, kill machine gunners and turn their MG42s on the enemy, stuff like that. The presentation is very sparse: almost no music, and even fewer sound effects. If not for that, it would pass very nicely for a SNES game; its pixellated graphics are crisp and well-animated. If nothing else, it’s a good way to pass the time — if you’re reading this in 2006. (And if you’re reading this in 2006, invest in Amazon, start saving money now, don’t buy a house for a few years, your job will never reward your loyalty, and 2014–2020 will be just the worst. Oh, and those clothes will never be in fashion again.)
