Medal of Honor: Underground

This sequel follows the French woman Manon who gave you invaluable intel in the first one, this has her working for the Resistance(of her own country) and the OSS. You go on 7(well, 8 if you count the bizarre epilogue) missions(taking you through Europe(villages and a capitol or two... you "get to" find your way through the labyrinthine catacombs of Paris) and North Africa, and each of them is bookended by narrated real-life archive footage from the conflict, letting you know the historical significance of what you're about to do or what you just did... with that said, I personally never really got into the story), all of them consisting of roughly three levels(that take between 10 and 25 minutes to complete(and the three difficulty settings determine how much, if any, health is restored between them)... all put together, this took me 6 hours to get through, not counting the failed attempts which would add one, one and a half to that number), following the basic structure of infiltrate, assault(sabotage, gather intel, etc.), exfiltrate. It culminates in a fairly satisfying conclusion. On occasion, there are cool background elements, such as one example, when you take out anti-aircraft batteries, Allied bombing planes will assist you a little. While you never get to drive a vehicle in this, you may find yourself(rarely) in a friendly one, where you blow away foes as the other person drives. We get a compass and a hit detector, something that was not common when this came out. The multiplayer is two-person splitscreen deathmatch(timed or first to x amount of wins), with a handful of weapon sets, half a dozen character models(the graphics are fine, still somewhat polygonal, and when you go to a new country, you can tell from the uniforms, if the environment and climate calls for it), and 4-6 arenas(depending on whether you've beaten the SP portion or not). And that, I'm afraid, covers all of the positives, so let's ease into the negatives. They botch the several machine-gun emplacements(in fact, I'd suggest playing Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, the third-person action-adventure, for such, over this... yes, a licensed game got something more right than this...!), by the recoil(which always afflicts you, and never, not once, those you are up against) preventing you from hitting some of them, to the point where you disengage it and just take them out with what you're carrying(can you think of a bigger failure of such a sequence?). In fact, the accuracy of anything you've got is an issue. Well, except for the pistols(with their minimal clips making them useless when you're facing more than a single adversary at a time), the crossbow(so slow that it's not worth the effort unless you only have to take one shot at a stationary opponent), and the sniper(which, as everything else in this, can't see as far as the Nazis; and in addition, they managed to mess up the sniper scope - which is the only way you can adjust where it fires - in a way that makes me think they meant to: Its zoom(which you have to be standing still for, by the way... you can't move and aim(the latter you do using the thumbstick, by the way... why does anyone play FPS' on consoles? And no, the original one did better, because it didn't have the other side rush you like this... that one was fine for what it was), because, hey, just because every enemy can, why should you? Fairness, what's that?)is just slow enough that you shouldn't even try if anyone nearby knows you're there, *and* fast enough that you can't get a good shot before it's done(and it restarts whenever you stop using it for just a second, if you move or not... also, it overcorrects, it's not sensitive enough). Anyway, the SMG is your best bet to even wing anything - though it spreads the bullets so much that it makes a pathological liar out of the crosshairs - and the shotgun isn't much better. This could be OK if this didn't send so many troops against you. Every single bullet you exchange with them, you're just hoping it'll actually find their target. And you can't even always tell if someone is dead or not; sometimes they slump over, or continue moving, and they'll either die or... continue attacking you. Numerous of them take an obscene amount of lead poisoning before perishing. If these two were at least limited to the last guy you face in an area, that would be perfectly fine. But it can happen with two out of the three you are trying to defeat, and it typically leads to your demise. This is one of the most frustrating VG's I've ever tried, not to mention one of the least fun. Our protagonist apparently takes glue baths, because she certainly sticks to every vertical surface(including walls and ladders) that she comes into contact to, which can make a mess of any good-hearted attempt at a retreat. AI is spotty, to put it mildly. You will hear the shouts or sidearms of guards before either party makes visual contact, they'll roll around on the floor or duck when it offers no protection, heck, they even blow each other and themselves up(however seldom that may be). Allies will run right in front of you, blocking your path while antagonists try to take them out. At least they do somewhat defend themselves(the ones that can). Realism is combatted by the Spaghetti Western style that casualties move in(screaming, leaping into the air, jumping over a railing, etc.). Stealth is nearly gone, and sorely missed. On the whole, it appears that this was developed for the PlayStation, though it feels more like a bad port, from PC to PS, as it is, on the PS, it's nearly unplayable. There is disturbing content and bloodless violence in this. I recommend it only to those masochistic gamers who take pleasure in getting through abusively challenging titles. 5/10

I would like this better if I could get past the second stage in at least 5 tries. This is on easy mode, by the way. This difficulty should be for the later levels, not the second.

The follow-up to the classic first-person-shooter is little more than a mission-pack add-on to the original, but that's fine with me - why mess with a winning formula?

The game has some new features: you are occasionally teamed with a non-player ally, and are given the opportunity to commandeer and ride in vehicles. These segments help break up gameplay that remains pretty much the same as before.

Where this game scores is in the build-up of atmosphere (admittedly at the expense of the authenticity of the original), some of the castle levels are truly terrifying to play, despite the inherent silliness of suits of armour coming to life and dogs carrying machine guns!