Medal of Honor

The new series in medal of honor bring you to new level of modern warfare.
The single campaign bring you to Afghanistan and face the Taliban, the story is quite comprehensive. You are part of an American military effort to find and eliminate Taliban forces, and the grounded-in-reality premise feels more immediate than those that feature fictional enemies. The nicely varied environments provide an attractive array of places to wage war, and even though the visuals suffer from some technical imperfections, the fact that the whole campaign takes place in one region of the world creates a good sense of cohesion. It's easy to keep track of who you are and where you fit into the offensive even though you play as multiple characters. While come cut-scenes provide good dramatic set-up, the ham-fisted interactions that take place in the command outpost often feel cliche and cheap. It's probably for the best that Medal of Honor didn't take on a wider representation of the current conflict, focusing instead on the characters you meet in the field and their soldierly attitudes. The great battlefield chatter portrays intriguing facets of professionalism and camaraderie among the soldiers, setting an authentic tone that enhances the experience.
During the course of the campaign, you engage in heated firefights and quietly infiltrate enemy encampments, which are familiar actions that feel good thanks to solid controls. Playing as different soldiers provides markedly different combat experiences, and the game transitions between protagonists in logical ways. For example, after fighting your way through enemy artillery positions, you find yourself facing a frightening onslaught that threatens to overwhelm your squad. Your desperate stand ends in a dramatic rescue, and you then play as rescuers as they take on their next mission. On-foot missions are punctuated by exciting moments when you direct powerful air support, and an intense vehicle sequence gives way to a more methodical assault. Things proceed at a good pace, and it's invigorating to realize that all of the exciting action you are engaged in takes place within the bounds of a realistic military operation.
Despite the focus on realism, however, Medal of Honor tries to tightly control your experience throughout the campaign, and this leads to some unfortunate problems. Part of the campaign experience immerses you in the dialogue among your squadmates and up the command chain (some of which is thoughtfully spent ensuring that the individuals in your crosshairs are actually enemies). Much of this chatter is delivered on the run, but there are times when your progress is halted at a flimsy door or a short rocky ledge to let your squadmates talk. There are also a lot of invisible walls that prevent you from going off the beaten path. These two elements seem designed to keep you in line so you can experience the campaign the way it was meant to be experienced, but they can feel heavy handed and restrictive at times. Perhaps more egregious is the not-so-hot enemy AI. The Taliban soldiers can shoot and take cover reasonably well, but they often enter the battlefield or stick their heads out from behind cover in alarmingly predictable ways.

The campaign lasts about six hours, and on the normal difficulty level, it isn't particularly challenging. Ramping up the difficulty makes your foes appreciably harder to kill, and those who like to test their skills will likely enjoy Tier One mode. In this mode, you are timed as you play through individual campaign missions on the hardest difficulty. Performing headshots, melee kills, and kill streaks freezes the clock for varying lengths of time, shaving precious seconds off your completion time. If you manage to complete a level, you are ranked on an online leaderboard in a bunch of different categories, including fastest time, most headshots, and longest distance kill. The challenge of going slowly enough to survive but fast enough to register a strong time creates an exciting sense of tension, especially if you're competing against a friend or a rival.
Medal of Honor also caters to those who prefer more direct competition. The online competitive multiplayer supports up to 24-player matches and covers a range of familiar team-based modes, including deathmatch, sector control, objective raid, and the progressive combat mission. The maps are well designed but not terribly big, ensuring that the matches are almost always intense. You can play as the rifleman, special ops, or sniper, and each class has its own series of guns and gear for you to unlock as you rank up. Success in a match not only helps you rank up, but it can also earn you powerful offensive or defensive support actions, like mortar strikes, enhanced body armor, unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance, and radar jamming. All of your abilities and assets remain strictly within the realm of realism, meaning you will always hear the footsteps of an enemy running up behind you, and you can't revive your bullet-ridden teammates.
Though it may be tempting to look at its flaws and dismiss Medal of Honor as inferior to its competitors, there is a lot to enjoy here. The campaign has its shortcomings, but its unique sense of scope and well-orchestrated pacing make it an enjoyably cohesive adventure. Tier One mode offers an accessible yet formidable challenge, and the competitive multiplayer captures the brutal intensity of a battlefield where one errant move can result in your abrupt death. Medal of Honor doesn't set any new standards for the genre, but it delivers a lot of entertainment and excitement if you're looking to add a splash of realism to your first-person shooting. 

source from gamespot.com

Assasin's Creed: Brotherhood

Traditionally, the Assassin's Creed series has been a story-driven single-player experience, but with the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Ubisoft is introducing a full-blown multiplayer mode for the first time. While the stealth-driven gameplay might not immediately come across as multiplayer friendly, a number of tweaks have been introduced to the combat to try to ensure matches remain fair, balanced, and, most importantly, fun. Ubisoft will be road-testing the new online modes in an upcoming beta for the PlayStation 3, and we got an early peek at the content to see what players can expect.

Unlike many multiplayer experiences, Brotherhood's is set up with a narrative, albeit a brief one. You play as an agent at Abstergo Industries who has been handpicked to take on the Assassins. You're placed into an Animus training program, which sends you into reconstructed training areas to practice your skills against other agents. It's in those training areas that the multiplayer takes place, which conveniently lets you play in areas from both the first and second games, as well as all-new locations. There are two maps unlocked from the start in the beta: Rome and Castle Gandolfo. Rome is what Ubisoft calls a "neutral" map, because it contains indoor and outdoor sections, as well as a ton of tall buildings to climb up. Castle Gandolfo is much more enclosed, with most of the action taking place indoors. An additional map located in Sienna isn't available from the start of the beta, but players will be able to unlock it later. Details for the unlocking haven't yet been finalised, but it will likely revolve around a certain number of matches taking place or a certain number of kills being reached.

Before jumping into a match, we played through a brief tutorial section, which introduced us to the unique gameplay mechanics behind the multiplayer. Rather than a free-for-all deathmatch where everybody is a target, Brotherhood's multiplayer allows you to kill only those enemies that you're specifically assigned to. A picture on your HUD lets you know who your target is, and a compass at the bottom of the screen tells you where he's located. As you get closer to your target, the compass turns blue, gradually getting brighter until you are at close range. There is also a detection meter to worry about, which decreases if you execute visible actions, such as sprinting through crowds or killing civilians. Once the meter drops below a certain point, your target is alerted, and you then have a limited amount of time to chase him before you lose the mission. However, all the usual assassination tricks from the single-player game can be used to sneak around, including blending in with the many non-player characters, hiding in hay bales, sitting on benches, or assassinating from rooftops. The tutorial had us practice sneaking up on targets in the city of Florence, and once we had killed three targets, we were able to jump into a proper match.

The beta will launch with two modes: Wanted and Alliance. Wanted is the simplest mode, with players all fighting against each other deathmatch-style, albeit with the aforementioned targeting system. You can play with up to eight players, each of whom is assigned a target from the group. This means that while you are attempting to assassinate someone, another player is attempting to assassinate you. This unique twist constantly keeps you on your toes, and we found we had to juggle our stealthy attacks while attempting to hide from our pursuer. Each kill nets you experience points, the number of which vary depending on how stealthy your kill was. You also net XP for more dramatic kills, such as leaping from a rooftop, or by flanking your victim.

XP is used to level up your character in a progression tree similar to that of first-person shooters like Modern Warfare. There are 50 levels in total to work toward, though only 20 are present in the beta. Reaching a certain level unlocks a number of bonuses, which can be used to upgrade your character. These fit into one of three categories: abilities, perks, and streaks. Abilities are tools that you can use, such as disguises, smoke bombs, and poison. There are also more physical abilities, such as sprint boosts and morph, which transforms NPCs into clones of your character. There is a cooldown time attached to abilities, so you can't just spam them at opponents during combat. Perks act like modifiers for each ability but have no cooldown attached, meaning they are active throughout each match. Examples include enhanced auto-bash, which increases the number of NPCs you can bash through, and blender, which automatically morphs one NPC into a clone of your character when you blend with a group.

The final set of upgrades are streak bonuses. These give you a reward depending on the number of kills or deaths you have in a match. For example, you can choose to receive 100 points if you kill three players in a row, or you can choose to receive 300 if you kill all three using stealth. The reverse also applies, so you can receive a temporary skill, such as extra compass sensitivity, if you die more than three times in a row. As well as ability upgrades, gaining XP unlocks character customisations, including new costumes and accessories. However, these customisations are purely cosmetic and do not affect the strength or skills of your character.

The second gameplay mode is Alliance, which is played cooperatively. There are three teams of six players who are assigned each other's team as a target for the entire five-minute round. You have to assassinate your target while evading death from an opposing team. At the end of the round, the targets switch, ensuring that everyone gets a turn at assassinating each other. Like in Wanted mode, you're awarded with XP for killing targets, using stealth, and escaping. However, there are additional points up for grabs by helping a teammate with a kill. This can take the form of distracting your target while your teammate takes the kill, or you can simultaneously kill the opposing team's players. We found this mode to be a lot of fun, and by working with our teammate we were able to execute some amazing-looking kills. By using the height of buildings, we could sneak up on our target and take them down in one swift move without their knowing what hit them. However, this did make us more vulnerable to being seen after the kill, and often we found ourselves being killed instantly afterwards by our pursuer. At times we were also too eager to attack, which gave our position away. This meant our targets had the ability to stun us, giving them a 10-second head start before we could chase them.

Of course, that is also incredibly useful when on the receiving end of an attack, and the extra 10 seconds made all the difference between surviving and being killed. To help with escaping, each map had active elements, such as doors and gates, which shut behind us when we sprinted through them. Later, we were able to exact our revenge on our would-be assassins, which made the kills all the more satisfying. Speaking of kills, there are a number of gruesome death animations, which are unique to each character. Some of them involved the slitting of throats, while others showed knives going right through our victim's body. One of the more hilarious kills involved a stunned character. After we recognised one of our pursuers, we stunned him, only to find that his pursuers were right behind him. They proceeded to kill their target by simply kicking him in the head once and running off--the most humiliating of deaths.

Though we had fun, we did find some niggles with the beta build of the multiplayer. At times it was difficult to see who our targets were, even after we had identified them, meaning we often killed civilians by mistake. It was also impossible to escape assassination once our opponent had hit the button on his controller, meaning that even if we spotted him just before, there was no way to avoid our death with a timely button press. Despite this, Brotherhood’s multiplayer is a lot more fleshed out than we expected. A full levelling system, along with customisable abilities and characters means there's a lot to get stuck into. It also shares its single-player counterpart's good looks, with a large amount of detail on show in each location. Also impressive is the number of NPC characters on each map, which makes each locale feel like a living, breathing place, and without any significant amount of lag.

The Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer beta launches on September 27 for PlayStation Network Plus users only. Players who preorder the game from select retailers will be able to get access to the beta on October 4. The full game is due for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 19, with the PC following in 2011.

Source from gamespot.com