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13. Medal of Honor – 2010

Reboots are usually good for a game franchise as it allows new ideas and advance the series to new heights, but sometimes it’s not successful. Medal of Honor was a hyped-up generic military shooter where you play as Tier 1 specialists in the Afghani war, and it was a bug-ridden mess. The game was also ugly, stale, and just felt like a total Call of Duty rip-off. This was easily the worst game in the entire series.

Best Version: PC

12. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun – 2003

Rising Sun was riding on the success of Frontline and its newfound glory with console gamers, but what we got was an ugly rushed mess of a game. Rising Sun tried to show us the frontline in Japan, but what we had was just some dated gameplay and some of the worst level design the series has ever seen. I don’t know what happened within a year, but the development rush is obvious here.

Best Version: Xbox

11. Medal of Honor: Airborne – 2007

The first game in the series to try and reboot it with little success. Using next-generation hardware, the game looked impressive but used a weird multiplayer map style layout and open-ended objectives that just led to the generic level design and frustrating gameplay. The guns were highly inaccurate, and it was ridiculously difficult and plain boring. It’s clear that this series just can’t hit the reboot stride correctly.

Best Version: PC

10. Medal of Honor: Warfighter – 2012

Warfighter was a slightly more successful game with the new modern warfare formula with a much more entertaining campaign and better visuals, but overall it still felt generic and pointless in a bloated military shooter scene.

Best Version: PC

9. Medal of Honor: Vanguard – 2007

Vanguard is a much-forgotten game in the series as by the time this came around Modern Warfare was already out and the next generation of consoles was in full swing and no one cared. Using an old engine and gameplay, Vanguard was the last in the series to use the typical Medal of Honor WWII formula. The game wasn’t awful just super generic, boring, and just standard affair that we have seen before.

Best Version: Wii

8. Medal of Honor: Frontline – 2002

Frontline was the first game in the series on consoles, and this game is one I have fond memories of. I remember the opening scene just blew my mind and was incredibly cinematic for the time. Sadly, there was no multiplayer, but at the time I didn’t care. It still wasn’t the best game in the series, and it was clear the less powerful consoles held the series back some, but it was a good start.

Best Version: Xbox

7. Medal of Honor: Heroes – 2006

A strange game stuck in a weird time. The next-generation consoles were already here and Heroes stuck to a gameplay style designed for handhelds and the Wii. It was a decent game and felt good on each console it was on, but this was as generic as WWII shooters come. Even the production values were lacking on a dated engine and gameplay.

Best Version: Wii

6. Medal of Honor: European Assault – 2005

European Assault was not so much overlooked but overstepped. Everyone was starting to wane with the WWII shooters and European Assault was a mildly generic form of the genre that played well but didn’t add anything terribly new to wow anyone.

Best Version: Xbox

5. Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 – 2007

Heroes 2 was a rushed sequel, but somehow improved upon the first game and continued to use the dated engine and gameplay style of its predecessor. This and Vanguard were the last of their kind and were washed away with the new generation of consoles and graphics that just made everyone forget about these games.

Best Version: Wii

4. Medal of Honor – 1999

The original isn’t always the best, but it was really impressive on the PS1 back in the day and helped pave the way for modern FPS games to this day. It was a little clunky and basic, but did its job well and is still fun to play to this day.

3. Medal of Honor: Underground – 2000

It was a much-improved game over the first one, but was released right when the next generation of consoles was out and was kind of overlooked by the PS2, Dreamcast, and GameCube. It looked amazing on the PS1 and added a totally new campaign, but everyone was mostly over this generation of consoles by now.

Best Version: PS1

2. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault – 2002

The game that made Medal of Honor was it was released just before its console debut. It looked fantastic on the PC and was followed by two expansion packs. AA remains many players’ favorite game in the series for its PC-specific greatness such as solid controls, visuals, and scope.

1. Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault – 2004

My personal favorite game in the series due to the sheer cinematic quality and visual flair of the game. It was the last PC exclusive game in the series but felt and played amazingly well with a fantastic campaign and fun multiplayer. Medal of Honor, sadly, reached its peak early on, but it did it well and with a bang.

Publisher: EA

Developer: Danger Close

Release Date: 10/23/2012

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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.

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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.