Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was supposed to revive the traditional shooter brand and become one of the most extensive and best VR games. I succeed?
Above and Beyond has been in development since 2016 and is being developed by Respawn Entertainment, the studio that produced hit games like Titanfall 2, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. The expectations are correspondingly high.
You can read my impression of the single player campaign in the test for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. We’ll tell you next week how well the multiplayer mode is doing. There is more background to the game series in the article Medal of Honor: Rise, Fall and (VR) rebirth.
Road to VR: Banal Campaign
War has never felt so bland, thinks Ben Lang from Road to VR. MOHAB is at heart a shooting gallery that offers little variety in the fights. Every armed conflict feels the same, which is why the game quickly becomes boring. In addition, MOHAB constantly interrupts the flow of the game with its short levels and ignores established rules of VR locomotion in numerous game sequences, which could make some players sick.
While the campaign feels mostly mundane, the multiplayer mode does better and offers kentertaining entertainment for competitive shooter fans. Lang calls the world war documentaries in the “Gallery” moving. All in all, MOHAB does not meet the criteria of an AAA production.
Road to VR awards 5 out of 10 possible points.
IGN: A lot of content
Medal of Honor offers quite a bit of content, including detailed scenes from France and Norway, writes Gabriel Moss from IGN. The missions, which take around nine hours, are often weak. Nevertheless, VR experiences are offered here that a monitor cannot convey: for example, what it’s like to stand on a snow-covered Norwegian mountain or to control a tank.
However, it does not meet the VR standards of 2020: There is little in the game world with which one can interact, so that MOHAB is next to games like Half-Life: Alyx (test) and Saints & Sinners (test) downright primitive feel. The game allows VR users to relive famous World War II battlefields in VR, but the monotonous shooter mechanics mean that hunting Nazis is not much fun.
IGN awards 6 out of 10 points.
The Verge: Lack of game depth
Cameron Faulkner from The Verge calls MOHAB a “glorified rail shooter”. The game offers the arsenal of weapons and the locations that one might expect from World War II shooters, however lack intimacy: Because you can hardly interact with the game world, the places rarely feel real. Graphically, the game is not great, despite the surprisingly high system requirements.
The lack of game depth also affects the story and characters. The cutscenes are full of cliché chatter and take the game out of the pace. Faulkner misses the ability to move by teleportation, as flowing movement can cause nausea in some players.
MOHAB is on the well-trodden path and is not reason enough to buy VR glasses. Even if you meet all the technical requirements, it is not a game that you have to play.
4 Players: Detailed locations
Respawn failed because of its own demands to offer as much variety as possible, says Jan Wöbbeking from 4 Players. With a little more focus MOHAB could have turned into a really good action title. Instead, the game seems incomplete and not polished enough in many places.
The tester criticizes, among other things, the dreary hand-to-hand combat with weak AI, the sometimes fiddly weapon handling and the high hardware requirements and praises the detailed, sometimes tranquil locations, the lush arsenal of weapons, the orchestral soundtrack and the exciting, turbulent multiplayer matches.
4 Players awards 69 out of 100 possible points.
Tested: Not up to date with VR
Tested’s Norman Chan is “a little disappointed” with MOHAB. With its extensive campaign, survival mode, gallery content and multiplayer modes, the game offers enough content for its price. However, he is not sure whether the game can be permanently captivating.
MOHAB feels like a last generation VR game and do not advance the medium. It is a medal of honor through and through, but its claim is too much oriented towards the masses instead of picking up experienced VR players. Chan would have preferred a game with a smaller but better designed number of levels.
