Publisher: EA

Developer: Danger Close

Release Date: 10/23/2012

Also Available On

Here we go again, another military shooter. First, it was World War II now it’s the Middle Eastern war. Warfighter is the sequel to the rebooted Medal of Honor. The first game wasn’t all that great, it had some good moments during single-player, but lacked the multiplayer greatness of other shooters like Modern Warfare and Black Ops. Warfighter ditches the Unreal engine and uses Frostbite 2 seen in Battlefield 3, but not as well as that game. Sure the game looks fantastic, but it doesn’t take advantage of DirectX 11 features like BF3 did.

Warfighter sees the old Tier 1 team coming out of retirement to stop a shipment of PETN explosives from shipping to Dubai, or one of those Middle Eastern countries, honestly the story had a few high moments, but they were rare and I could see this game had potential like the last game but fell short. There were some nice touching moments in the story like the stress between Preacher and his wife and kid, but it was so brief it didn’t have time to build up. The pre-rendered cut scenes look amazing, but the story is so short you won’t care in the end. The game has a touching ending, and Danger Close could have had more here. The same goes for moments during the campaign, everything feels anti-climactic. There were some vehicle chase scenes that went on forever and nothing ever happened. Some lasted over 10 minutes and I was just driving around dodging traffic. One area had me hiding from a target’s security team by sneaking around in the car and hiding in spots. It was a fun game of cat and mouse but again, nothing really happened during this moment. There were two moments when you controlled a drone on the ground, but yet again, it was uneventful.

The Warfighter campaign seems solid, but it is plagued with what shooters need to stop being: Shooting galleries. The game is either too easy for a while then you hit that difficulty spike where you die a bunch because of that one enemy. Warfighter is plagued with these issues. It also doesn’t stray from the typical military shooter norm, running around various deserts and destroyed buildings shooting Muslims,  it gets old fast and you start questioning your own morals after a while. I also have to mention the odd chase scenes on foot. You will chase a target through an area and his men will come out to stop you, but he hides on the sidelines. Once you shoot everyone he continues, this makes no sense. Most guys would high tail it while their men would shoot you down. The campaign just lets you down right when you think things start getting good, the last game was full of the same thing.

It seems Danger Close has some good ideas but they don’t know what to do with them. It also comes down to the weapons, they all feel the same. I couldn’t tell the difference between one and the other. I would pick up a PKM and an AK and one would just shoot faster and the other, but all weapons felt really inaccurate. It was really annoying. The only weapons that felt different were pistols and shotguns. You are actually stuck with the weapons you are given the whole mission. If you pick up an enemy’s weapon you have to ditch it, you can’t keep it. Even the sniper rifles felt like overpowered pistols and the steady aim mechanic didn’t seem to even work.

It also doesn’t help that the game is full of bugs and glitches. I would get stuck in railings, enemies would clip through barriers, and they even hid behind trees and small posts like they were walls. This also leads to multiplayer. With all this said is Warfighter’s campaign worth playing? Sure for a 4-6 hour gaming session if there’s nothing else to play. Once you finish that you will head straight into multiplayer which can be pretty fun.

The multiplayer isn’t really different from other shooters, but the sense of teamwork is really well done here. There are some fun game modes that mix different ones together, but in the end, the same campaign issues travel over like the bugs, and each weapon feels the same. You gain XP and level up and yeah, the same old story here, but it’s at least fun and a little different. Is it worth the full price though? Probably not. I would get this when the price drops below $20 and you are bored of your other favorite online shooter. As it stands, Warfighter is a game no one asked for. It feels almost like Battlefield 3, even as much as some sort of expansion. It looks like BF3 and almost plays like it, but isn’t nearly as polished or well done. I think EA needs to just pull the plug on MoH. There’s no room for it anymore and no one has asked for another.