It featured several interesting characters (like Manon Batiste, who had made an appearance in the original Medal of Honor and was playable in Medal of Honor: Underground), a lot of action, a bit of espionage, and even some driving scenes. It had an almost chess-like quality to it.Įven though the multiplayer offering was so exceptionally well-built, MoH:AA still had a strong single-player campaign.
If someone was camping, generally you knew exactly where that person was and how to deal with them. This aspect made camping highly invigorating, yet made it dangerous enough that campers rarely became a problem. Players were often forced to work with their teammates in order to successfully breach the enemy's defenses.Īlso, most maps had camping points positioned so that each was easily counterable by opponents that knew the layouts well.
Grenades were powerful, killing an enemy in a single hit, generally making these chokepoints extremely dangerous to rush. For example, most of the maps in the game had three chokepoints. Multiplayer map layouts were exceptional, built around fairly strategic gameplay. Instead of a competitive mode that felt tacked on, Allied Assault included some very polished and well-thought-out multiplayer modes. Online play took the Medal of Honor series to a whole new level, and made MoH:AA the apex of the franchise. Yet Medal of Honor's splitscreen offerings never felt as interesting as the FPS classic that was still fresh in all our minds back then: Goldeneye for the N64. All multiplayer in the series before this point had been done via splitscreen. Previous iterations were originally exclusive to the PSOne, which obviously didn't support any sort of online play. MoH:AA's biggest influence on the FPS world, however, was introducing online play to the Medal of Honor series.
A good gaming PC was judged on how well it could handle MoH:AA, much how Crysis 2 is viewed today or how Battlefield 3 will most likely be seen by the end of this year. However, back in 2002, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was a benchmark in visual quality. Looking back almost 10 years later, it looks fairly dated.
One of the most obvious areas of improvement was its graphical strength.
It took the very strong formula built by its predecessors (Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor: Underground, both for the original PlayStation) and tweaked it ever-so-slightly to make it feel like a true PC gamer's game. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was a true classic of FPS gaming.