Before Call of Duty, there was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and before Allied Assault, there was plain old Medal of Honor. Although EA’s World War 2 shooter had its heyday storming the beaches of Normandy on PC, it was originally a PlayStation exclusive series, preceding Halo’s popularisation of the genre on console by a whole two years.
I remember Medal of Honor being both clunky as hell and like nothing else I’d ever played when I first encountered it at the age of 11, and those memories came flooding back thanks to Medal of Honor: Retro Remake. Created by developer Elber88 and released for free on itch, it’s a ground-up rebuild of the 1999 original that finally brings the FPS to PC.
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I played through the opening level of Elber’s remake, and it largely captures the specific feel of Dreamworks Interactive’s games. The early entries lacked the cinematic spectacle introduced in Allied Assault. Instead, they played more like survival horror games, with a smaller scale, a slower pace, and a greater emphasis on tension. You’re generally alone and behind enemy lines, plodding through hedgerows or ruined towns, with Wehrmacht soldiers ambushing you from around corners either alone or in groups of two or three.
While Elber’s remake runs much smoother than the PlayStation version, it retains that lo-fi, slightly watery look to the textures. The audio seems to have been ported over wholesale, everything from the bombastic orchestral score to the distinctive weapon sounds. Shooting the M1 Garand in this game sounds like striking a giant match. Pt-chooo!
The only misstep, in my opinion, is using Allied Assault’s animations, simply because the original’s animations were so particular to Medal of Honor. Enemies had very dramatic reactions to being shot, falling onto their behinds or hunching over as if they’d just finished running a marathon. They were a big part of what made the shooter work on console, not just because they looked cool, but because they compensated for the lack of responsiveness in the controls. At least enemy helmets still ping off in ridiculously over-the-top fashion.
In short, it’s not a bad way to experience the early history of World War 2 shooters, especially given how hard it is to acquire that game now. You can download Medal of Honor Retro Remake via its itch page, and the installation process is as straightforward as it gets.
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