MOH: Rising Sun - hands-on!

Due November 28, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is the next in EA's World War II first-person shooter series on console, heading to PS2, Xbox and GameCube. You play as Marine Corporal Joseph Griffin, a soldier in the US Army who finds himself embroiled in the Pacific Theatre of Operations from the conflict.

Events in Rising Sun kick off with Griffin helping out in the US' attempts to stave off Japan's airborne attack on Pearl Harbour. Following this explosive opening, Griffin becomes further involved in the Pacific Theatre as he finds himself leading the assault in the notorious Guadalcanal and finally rescuing brothers from the clutches of the Japanese Army in the Philippines.

The recent arrival of preview code of the PS2 version of Rising Sun presented us with the opportunity to get a little hands-on time...

The opening sequences/levels from Medal of Honor: Rising Sun are easily the most impressive stuff we've seen from the game so far. The beginning of the title deals with the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, as mentioned, and events kick off with you as Griffin deep in the bowls of a battleship.

All hell is breaking loose, the sound of explosions outside and the ship rocking from the barrage, your vision blurs from impacts and fires are breaking out indiscriminately.

En route to topside, you have to grab a fire extinguisher and help put flames out, this not only cheering up comrades (one of the objectives is to save the crewmen) but also giving you access to doorways that lead to the open air.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire is definitely the theme here, as, once topside, you're immediately greeted a Japanese plane crashing into the deck of the ship and exploding in a ball of flame. The skies are littered with enemy aircraft and, hoping onto a machinegun mounted on the battleship, your finger is constantly depressed on the trigger as you attempt to repel several attack waves.

Enemy planes catch fire, crashing gracefully into the sea, torpedoes glide silently through the water to explode against the hull of the ship, sending up gouts of foam, other ships in your line of view are being attacked mercilessly and tilting onto their sides - it's intense, it's visually arresting, and the US Navy is definitely getting a good kicking.

Successful completion of this opening level results in a rather disturbing cut-scene of dead US soldiers sinking beneath the waves.

Indeed, this rather sobering image is enhanced ten-fold in the following section where, repelling further airborne attack while manning a turret on a gunboat, you can see a large quantity of those who have met their demise floating on top of the water.

Enjoying blasting Japanese aeroplanes out of the sky, you are suddenly greeted with these images of death, and strangely it leaves you pondering the reality of the events on which this part of Rising Sun is based.

It's linear in design, some of it is on rails, but there's no denying that this part of the game is both visually arresting and quite exciting.

Impressed then by the intensity of Rising Sun's opener we had high hopes for the following level in the preview code which saw Griffin on a mission to rescue his brothers from the Japanese Army in the Philippines.

Sadly, after a fantastic introduction, the Philippines-based level was a complete letdown. Back on foot and armed with Thompson machine gun, M1 Garand rifle, Colt 45 pistol and frag grenades, we'd obviously been here before. Fair enough, the setting is different, and the enemy has had a change of clothes, but essentially it simply felt as though we were playing predecessor Frontline.

While visually the Pearl Harbor sequence was quite stunning, the Philippines level looked a little drab in comparison. This may, of course, simply be down to the state of code, which we hope is also the reason behind the quite awful framerate drops we experienced in this later part of the game.

Near the beginning of this level you're required to clear out some structures and retrieve a tank part that, surprise surprise, makes operable a tank that is situated near the end of a bridge that you initially spawn on.

Once in operation, the tank rolls out, on rails, taking a journey through a village-type environment, and you're required to protect it from enemies that attack from both the ground and elevated positions.

Perhaps because we're not up to speed on our World War II uniforms, in the opening part of the Philippines level the enemy proved incredibly hard to differentiate from comrades in arms who were lending support.

Luckily, buddies, at least at this stage, are immune to your bullets, otherwise we would have ended up with a number of friendly fire incidents that would have been difficult to explain to superiors.

Our admittedly slightly brief hands-on experience with Medal of Honor: Rising Sun has left us with mixed feelings. That the game is linear and in certain sections on rails is no great surprise, but when employing this method of design it's imperative that levels/missions and atmosphere give the impression of scope and of the epic.

We always assumed that the Pearl Harbor section of the title would be fantastic, and we're extremely glad that we haven't been proved wrong. However, the nagging concern that Rising Sun would have essentially shot its bolt after the opener hasn't gone away, and it remains to be seen whether EA can use the remaining development time to make the initial intensity a constant throughout.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun movie (PS2, Xbox, GameCube)
Download here

Stuart Bishop