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There are good shooters and then there are shooters that can leave a mark on you, and
in the case of FPSes, the Medal of Honor series was the cream of the crop in its heyday of
the PS1 and 2. Although its true that Call of Duty has moved up to high officer nowadays,
leaving out the EA released Medal of Honor would be ignoring an important part of gaming
history. Standing out among the rest in telling the tale of World War II is Medal of Honor
Frontline, which will get your blood pumping as soon as you begin your first mission with
lieutenant Jimmy Patterson: storming Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944. As bullets *** by
your head from enemy chaingun fire, you'll be pulled into the story behind the most deadly
conflict in human history: World War II. Medal of Honor Frontline is a continuation of the
popular philosophy behind shooters - Nazis bad, good guys good, in this case the Allies,
a philosphy that hearkens back to the days of Wolfenstein, so we aren't dealing with
a fairly recent concept. But when it comes to illustrating the theater of war, developers
DreamWorks Interactive pull out all the stops, and even if we are looking at this game's
stiff graphics and clunky controls through the lens of modern-day gaming, the developers
certainly do a ***-up job of putting you in wartime Europe in the 1940s. Stormtroopers
will yell out in German, rural Netherlands is painted with the brushes of autumn, and
even an infiltration into Nazi HQ is decorated with phonographs and generous detail. You're
on the trail of an SS officer named Sturmgeist, who is in charge of operations of a highly
experimental but potentially dangerous jet fighter called HO-IX. Although the plot is
intriguing, the levels are fairly straightforward: Receive your mission objective, blast away
at Nazis, and reach the exit unscathed. Too bad, considering games like Deus Ex had already
decided to let their fans make more of their own decisions during a mission. It's for this
reason alone that I felt the Medal of Honor series began to fade a little bit, and the
first-person single player shooter as well. Still, Frontline has since been remastered
with HD graphics and better control as part of the release of Medal of Honor for the PS3,
so if you're looking for a Reich-and-roll good time, consider that version instead before
you tackle Medal of Honor Frontline for PS2, a good game, but not necessarily an ageless
wonder.