First game i've played in six
months, and to be honest the realistic war shooters
are starting to get repetitive, and I'm only
up to Medal Of Honor 2 so far!
The problem is that it felt
just like Vietcong, with improved graphics having
been released 1.5 years later, but with fewer
set pieces. Much of MODPA felt like extremely
linear corridors of jungle. Move from one little
village with a few huts thrown in, through some
tight jungle paths to the next village. The
graphics, of course, were better than its predecessar
MOD:Allied Assault and the mission packs, but
with the repetitive design and lack of memorable
levels, it doesn't stand out as a great looking
game to buy against other releases in 2004.
Having said that, the Tarawa
Beach sections (which probably made up 1/4 of
the game), were definitely the highlight in
atmosphere. They were a big improvement on the
intense but bland Omaha Beach sections of MODAA.
The sad thing is, however,
that the average design is still MODPA's strong
point, because the gameplay was full of flaws.
At the forefront, for me, were the atrocious
weapons. Of course you can only handle two at
a time, and normally you don't get much of a
selection. There are a few good weapons in the
game, but you rarely get to use them because
unless your enemies are carrying the same weapon,
you'll soon run out of ammo. What I was left
with for the majority of the game were slow
reloading, slow firing and extrememly inaccurate
broomsticks. The rifle, for instance; there's
a one second pause between firing, and a three
second pause while reloading. You can point
the thing perfectly at an opponents head, and
still somehow miss. You can stand almost point
blank and fire one into his chest... watch him
stumble, then get back up again like nothing
happened. There's no such thing as a headshot
in MODPA, because the weapons are just too unreliable
to even attempt it.
Gameplay is also very unbalanced
in terms of difficulty. In playing on medium
(although i'm well above medium in skill) I
normally don't have much trouble getting through
a game. But at times some of the fights were
ridiculous, and forced god mode. The turret
machine gunners are far too difficult to kill
without being mowed down by bullets within seconds
of revealing yourself. And no matter how well
hidden you were, they always seem to find you
almost instantly. There's a few times where
you've got 2/3 machine gunners at once. Problem
is your guns are hopeless at long range and
you can't even see the enemy manning the gun
to even aim at him. He could be standing on
either side of the gun.
Tarawa Beach, as well, was
far too difficult with poor weaponry and not
enough ammo. In one jungle scene, your given
a sniper riple (for the only time in the entire
game) with one bullet to take out four enemies
hiding high up in trees. I'd already run out
of bullets with my other gun, so what's a man
to do? God mode, noclipping up to the tree top
and bashing them with my gun was the only solution.
Let's not forget the section where your forced
to man a plane, supposedly whilst drunk since
the handling of the plane is rubbish. They inverted
the up/down of the mouse aiming for the plane
section, so when you finally return to two legs,
your aiming ability is corrupted as your moving
the mouse down to look up! This entire plane
section was painstakingly frustrating and boring,
and should never have made the cut in a first
person shooter.
So my overall thoughts; average
design and average gameplay, thanks to some
inconsistencies in difficult and useless weapons,
makes MODPA a far inferior game to the original.
I hope MOD: Airborne makes up for it in 2007,
but from what I've heard already, I might have
to wait till the fourth MOD in 2010 for a good
game again.
