What happens when EA takes the Medal of Honor series and combines it with the Wii’s control system? Something not often found coming out of the doors of EA- a game worth picking up.

If you’re a FPS (first person shooter) player (and you most probably are in the 99% of the gamers who have picked up a FPS at some point) you’ve probably already heard of the now established Medal of Honor series. It’s based around World War 2 and all that jazz and it’s had yearly instalments since it’s first release.

What’s my Name Again
You play as OSS Operative John Berg, a man sent in with a squad, but with his own agenda. The story is basic and people who haven’t played a Medal of Honor before (like me) won’t find themselves out of their depth. The story almost isn’t touched upon in-game and only in small voiced cut scenes after each mission. You could (and I did try this) skip the cinematic before the mission and just shoot down the hordes of Germans who want your head to be separate from your body, until you get to a shiny checkpoint and shoot something else.

Putting aside the rather non-existent and rather bland story the campaign is a lot of fun. You play through 8 levels, the final few of which, take’s around an hour or so to complete and are quite action packed all the way to the end. Waypoints are given on a radar in the bottom right of the screen so players don’t get lost easily, which is welcome as the levels look quite ‘samey’ all the way through and you can quite easily turn round and suddenly lose your way.

The ‘samey’ feeling throughout the levels is attributed to the fact that the colour palette consists mainly of greys and browns. All textures are gritty and dirty but that’s the look of a country at war, the graphics aren’t superb (in fact sometimes they are damn right ugly) but this means the game gets something else, a decent frame rate. The game runs at a good 60 frames per second almost constantly in Campaign, Arcade and Multiplayer and I think a high frame rate is more important than a life like war zone. The other benefit is short load times. Between dying and re-spawning there may be 3 or 4 seconds which is good because the health system in campaign seems slightly random.

Campaign and Arcade (which we will touch on later) both have starting tutorial levels. Unfortunately, it seems this hasn’t been done in a way which makes sense. After 5 minutes of fighting they tell you about the health bar and what the health packs look like. A good friend of mine played through and died twice before this point as he had no idea how to get more health.

As you play through the campaign there is a distinct lack of weapons. There seems to be one machine gun and one pistol for both Allied and the Germans sides and then 2 sniper rifles and a shotgun, that’s it. I really wish they had a few more options but then again, they had to keep the weapons authentic to the place and time. Even worse is the fact that I lose all the previous equipment I’ve gained after each level. This is a terrible mistake on the developers side.

There are instances where you do get to play with some bigger toys like anti-air turret, heavy machinegun or my favourite – rocket launcher. The rocket launcher is particularly fun as it has its own control mechanic which brought a smile to my face after firing it. You can hold 3 weapons at the same time, making weapons management a part of playing. One of which has to be the grenade which I wish wasn’t the case, as grenades are few and far between on each level.

Are You Smarter Than a German Soldier?
Unless you have no head you are probably smarter than the enemy AI in Heroes, which can be a little hit or miss. While enemies do have the intelligence to find cover they seem to prioritise this over killing you and your squad. On more than one occasion I’ve been faced with several enemies (often more than 5 or 6) 3 or 4 of which will stand in the firing line, wait, wait some more, and then finally run right past me looking for cover or a place hide rather than shooting me in the face and finishing me off. I’m not saying this happens in every gun fight or to every enemy but it does happen more than I would like it to.

What the hell is WASD
I will say that the controls are damn impressive and definitely redeem some of the bad points I’ve mentioned. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being Red Steel and 10 being Metroid Prime 3: Corruption) this is a solid 9. There are 2 main control schemes, the plastic-fantastic Wii Zapper and the standard Wii-mote/Nun-chuck setup. I went with the latter and found it very impressive. Move with the Nun-chuck analogue and aim with the Wii-mote, shoot with B, scope view with A, change weapons and duck with the D-pad. However, I must say I think it’s a stupid choice not to put a jump function in. Bad EA, very bad.

These are standard controls for FPS games on the Wii (not that there are billions of them) but where EA’s franchise shines through is with the little added extras. When ducking you can tilt the Nun-chuck left or right to lean out, which is fantastic and I used it quite often in fights to get me through. It’s a nice game mechanic I hope other FPS games pick up in the future.

The controls also have a variety of different settings and can be altered to suit almost any gamer’s tastes which is extremely useful as the default settings were a little too slow for me.

Modes Modes and more Modes!
Apart from the campaign, which is the main bulk of the game, there is a single player arcade mode and a multiplayer option. Both of these modes have great game play but seem to have missed a few tricks.

Arcade is good fun. It uses the same levels as its Campaign counterpart and plays the way you would expect it to. But why isn’t there any local multiplayer? Surely 2 player arcade mode would have been easy to put in and could have been a great addition. As mentioned before the bland graphics carry on through arcade mode, which can hinder the player unfortunately. Health packs are a bland green, which is fine until coupled with the fact that the ground is usually the same tone, thus making finding health a game in itself.

The online affair with Heroes is great. I really mean that, it’s simple and fun. Once you click on multiplayer, you are thrown at EA’s login screen (EA Nation) which you log into (or make a new account). Once this is done the Wii’s online function suddenly works well, like it’s been given a good kick. Menus load quickly rather than taking a few seconds each time you click a button (anyone who has ever used the shopping channel will know what I mean by that) and it feels more like navigating a 360 online game rather than one on the Wii. The multiplayer itself is barebones, no frills, straight up frag fests and Capture the Flag matches. You get online leader boards and EA’s own brand of friend lists.

Heroes Online is simply the best the Wii has to offer in terms of FPS right now. It’s smooth and playing online (with a full match of 32 people) was lag free in my play test. There is no voice support but after playing Halo 3 and hearing the abuse on that, a part of me is glad of that fact. For now when I play with friends I’ll simply plug a microphone into my PC and have a call on Skype. It’s not perfect, but it works.

Hear me now?
Music in the game is great- when its there. For the first 5 minutes of the campaign the great orchestral scores had me pumped. But then for the other 8 hours I played through Campaign it didn’t exist really, apart from making odd appearances to tell me that an objective was complete or when a level had ended.

This continued in multiplayer where it was almost silent apart from the BOOM of a grenade and RATATAT of a machine gun. Back in 2000 Unreal Tournament on the PC had sound clips for things, (nothing special but just ‘Killingspree’ or ‘Headshot’) how could something as simple as this be missed out for multiplayer? It adds to the experience plus it helps indicate what exactly is going on.

Instead of sound in multiplayer you’re left with text in the bottom right corner which is annoying to read when you have the other team running away with your flag not to mention impractical as it is displayed OVER your ammo HUD.

The War is Over!
While Heroes nails some of it’s content such as lag free fun online play, a good arcade mode, imaginative Wiimote useage, a solid single player frame rate and fantastic customisable FPS controls it drops the ball on some other basic mechanics- in-game audio, any local multiplayer in any mode, weak team and enemy AI and finally lack of weapons.

Heroes is the best FPS on the Wii right now only because I class Metroid as an adventure game and there really isn’t anything else in the FPS genre on the Wii. It’s definitely a good game but just falls short of being in that league of great FPS games.

Score 7.7

+ Best FPS controls to date
+ Enjoyable single player campaign
+ Short load times keep you in the action
+ As is the single player arcade mode
+ lag free 32 player online matches

- Bad AI for both enemies and team mates
- Lack of sound
- No local multiplayer of any kind
- Lack of different weapons