Since finishing KOTOR, I’ve been playing Medal of Honor on the X-Box. As a WWII buff, I’m enjoying the period detail (and the array of weapons you get to wield!). It’s amusing to start with American weapons in the early missions, and then marvel as you get the much better German ones. The American sniper rifle, for instance, only has a 5 round clip, while the German Gewehr 43 has double that. Very nice when you’re in a jam.

The missions do a nice job of taking you on a tour of 1944 Europe at war. You start with D-Day and later fight through Operation Market Garden. As an OSS agent, you also get to infiltrate submarine bases and an armored train. I do have to wonder if the EA guys know what the word infiltrate means though. “Infiltrating” a train station meant killing everyone in sight. Ditto the submarine base.

My only real gripe with the game is that you can only save between missions. This means if you die at any point before finishing, you have to start the mission again. Goddamn, is that annoying. There have been multiple times when I’ve been killed in the very last room or encounter of a mission. I nearly gave up the other day, while trying to get through one of the “Bridge Too Far” missions. At the end you have to blow up a tank that’s protected by an MG42 and a bunch of infantry. It’s insanely difficult to dodge ripping shreds of MG fire while aiming a panzerschreck (and ludicrously, you have to hit the tank like five times at point blank range to take it out; one hit that close should do it). Up to this point in the game, it hadn’t taken me any more than three tries to finish a mission. Took me at least 15 times for that one and I was getting super frustrated! Finally, yesterday morning, I gave it a fresh start and managed to take out the goddamn tank. I really wish Medal of Honor used the much more sensible “checkpoint” system that games like Halo use. I didn’t need to re-fight the four other big combats leading up to the tank battle over and over again.

To sum up: killing Nazis good, no checkpoints bad.