Medal of Honor Above and Beyond: A Mixed Bag of VR Gaming Expectations

The game Medal of Honor Above and Beyond is out today, marking the latest installment in the iconic World War II franchise. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts, this virtual reality (VR) shooter has been highly anticipated by fans of the series and VR gaming enthusiasts alike. With a price tag of $60 at launch, it's natural to wonder if this game is worth every penny.

Upon playing through the campaign and multiplayer modes, I couldn't help but feel that Medal of Honor Above and Beyond checks all the boxes for what one might expect from a World War II shooter. The expansive campaign features tons of environments, amazing-looking death animations, and plenty of shooting Nazis - all hallmarks of a classic Medal of Honor game. Whether you're a seasoned VR gamer or just new to the platform, it's easy to see why this game would be exciting for players looking for a World War II gaming experience.

However, as I continued to play through the campaign, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. The game's developer had stated intentions to create an immersive experience that would transport players into the midst of the Battle of Normandy, but in reality, it felt more like a straightforward shooter rather than a truly innovative VR experience. While the visuals are stunning and the gameplay is enjoyable, I couldn't help but feel that the game was relying too heavily on familiar formulas rather than taking risks to push the boundaries of what's possible in VR gaming.

Another issue that arose during my playthrough was the sheer scope of the game's content. With 50 different environments to explore, it can be overwhelming at times, making it difficult to fully immerse oneself in the experience. The problem lies not with the amount of content itself, but rather the way it's presented. By trying to cater to a broad audience, the developers may have inadvertently created a game that feels too shallow and lacking in focus.

As someone who has played through numerous VR games over the years, I couldn't help but think about how Medal of Honor Above and Beyond compares to other titles in its class. In terms of graphics and gameplay, it's hard to deny that this game checks all the right boxes - it looks like a classic Medal of Honor game, with sweeping landscapes, intense firefights, and plenty of action-packed set pieces. However, I couldn't help but feel that there were moments when the game felt too polished, too refined, and lacked that certain je ne sais quoi that sets truly memorable VR experiences apart.

That being said, I do believe that Medal of Honor Above and Beyond has some real value to it. The 8-10 hour campaign is substantial, and the survival mode adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay experience. The game also features a gallery of interesting videos and interviews, as well as 360-degree video content exploring the history of World War II - all of which can be seen as valuable additions to the overall package.

Ultimately, whether or not Medal of Honor Above and Beyond is worth its $60 price tag depends on one's expectations. If you're a fan of World War II shooters or just looking for a solid VR experience, this game may well scratch that itch. However, if you're expecting something more innovative, more groundbreaking, or truly revolutionary in terms of VR gaming, you may want to look elsewhere.

As Medal of Honor Above and Beyond continues to receive updates and support from Respawn Entertainment, I can only hope that the developers will take a closer look at what's missing from this experience and make adjustments to cater to a more discerning audience. With a strong multiplayer component, a wealth of content, and some truly memorable moments scattered throughout, there's definitely potential here for something special.

But for now, Medal of Honor Above and Beyond feels like a missed opportunity - a game that had the chance to push the boundaries of VR gaming but instead settled on playing it safe. While I wouldn't say outright that this is a bad game, I do think it would have been better served by taking some more risks and truly innovating within the realm of VR experiences.

The game's release in both the Oculus Store and Steam Store marks an exciting milestone for VR gaming enthusiasts, but it also serves as a reminder of what's still missing from this fledgling industry. With Medal of Honor Above and Beyond, I was left feeling that we're not quite there yet - that the developers are playing catch-up rather than forging new ground.

That being said, I do believe that Respawn Entertainment has shown promise in their work on this title, and with some adjustments to target a more experienced VR gamer community, they could potentially create something truly memorable. Until then, fans of World War II shooters and VR enthusiasts will just have to wait and see if the developers can take another stab at creating something more innovative.

I'd love to hear from fellow gamers - what did you think of Medal of Honor Above and Beyond? Post your thoughts in the comments below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's norm from tessan and welcome back to projections where today  i'm going to be reviewing medal of honor above and beyond the long-awaited highly anticipated  aaa vr world war ii shooter from oculus studios and developed by respawn entertainment extremely  notable for its pedigree many of the development team at respawn previously were on the team that  worked on the first medal of honor allied assault for pc one of the most important  games to come out in my gaming history and so lots of high expectations for this game  the team no stranger to creating compelling campaigns about world war ii um and developing  shooters very innovative gameplay but it is their first big budget vr game and to get things out of  the way i gotta say with my high expectations and what i hope for what i imagine the game could be  i finished this game the single player campaign and a couple hours of multiplayer leaving feeling  a bit disappointed not only uh having to reconcile the game that i wanted it to be with what it ended  up actually being but also for the game i think they set out to make which is a sprawling action  adventure through europe covering a large part of the theaters of battle for world war ii i still  think missing the mark for the kind of game that i think they could achieve and they wanted to make  as well but let's talk about what this game is the single player is a sixth mission with prologue and  training linear story that puts you through a very kind of familiar world war ii campaign if  you've played medal of honor if you've played the original call of duty and call of duty 2 you'll  probably be very at home here going through not only omaha beach liberating and occupied france  interactions with the same kind of stereotypical uh personalities that you've seen in world war ii  movies and tv shows and stories kind of distilled them to these archetypes that guide you through a  wide array of pretty familiar stereotypical world war ii environments whether it's  the countryside of france churches your occupied mansions nazi bases even to the snowy mountains of  norway that all become backdrops for essentially these vr shooting galleries and while there's lots  of dialogue and scripted sequences and highly detailed environments it is a pretty linear  shooter you can think of it as a long combat corridor that you're being funneled through from  cut scenes to these fight encounters in larger rooms and and environments to then being funneled  back into the next area the next area and that structure becomes really apparent in the way  the game is set up so in these six missions each mission is broken down into about nine different  almost vignettes where the story is stopped and interrupted between every almost every combat  encounter you know you go through introduction to what you're about to get through uh you  fight off a bunch of nazis make complete a couple objectives and in about five to ten minutes or so  you your the action is stopped and you get to the next loading screen and then you  can get in and out into the next sequence it's in fact pretty disjointed and as linear as  story is i can't help but contrast it to a game like half-life alex also a linear story but in a  very valve way in a very half-life way extremely cohesive yes there are loading screens but you're  in the game world for extended peace periods of time um and where the corridors are a little more  expansive you have more room to explore and interact especially in vr with the game world  with physics objects here you're really going from room to room killing all the nazis which is  plenty fun and then hitting that loading screen pretty abruptly in fact there's a big loading  poster with a big victory sign and every time i think i'm getting amped up and ready to move on  to the next part of the level boom loading screen victory and that break in the action was  pretty jarring and i think pretty poor pacing i'm not sure if it's a technical limitation in  terms of the game worlds and the game engines but really took me out of the immersion of the game  now in those shooting galleries themselves in those combat encounters the firefighting is pretty  satisfying so i think respawn did a pretty good job finding a balance between simulation style  shooting where you have to hold your weapons with two hands really look down the iron sights there's  no virtual crosshair to help you with aim assist and you're looking down the barrel of an m1 grand  or a thompson or an stg or a sniper rifle and picking off the enemies ducking behind cover  really making full use of what vr can offer when it comes to intense firefights pretty satisfying  in those moments especially if you disable the indicators above the enemies that let you know  where they are so you're kind of peeking over the map uh and avoiding being shot there's a  fair bit of ik usage in the game in terms of the motion control so you see your virtual hands  you pick these syringes off of your wrist to jab yourself to heal yourself same with grenades you  have strapped to your chest and so the embodiment of your character feels pretty pretty cohesive  uh including pulling weapons from behind your back although there are things i wish you could do like  for example when you have a two-handed weapon i wish you could hold the weapon with one hand and  with your other hand grab things like another weapon like a pistol instead of having to reload  but if you're holding a rifle with one hand your other hand is locked using that weapon as  well little things here and there that bug me but all in all uh the kind of muscle memory reloading  felt very satisfying and pretty generous so that you didn't have to be extremely precise  with getting your clip your magazine into the weapon and reloading but still requiring that  you do these actions so that does feel pretty satisfying when you get build that muscle memory  when you pump that shotgun or pull the bolt back on a rifle and get those pretty satisfying kills  now the enemies they really uh swarm you with enemies and do a very classic medal of honor  call of duty thing of spawning them around the corners and so there's not a lot of kind of  situational awareness that you had in other shooters where you'd be mindful of things like  ammo and the position of enemies here it's about reacting fast uh and it's about aiming true  but that's where it feels more like a shooting gallery than it does like a survival shooter and  simulation and i think that's a conscious decision on their part they want to pay off those amazing  ragdoll animations where you can you know shoot an enemy and they'll fall over and fly over and their  helmets will pop off very true the classic number of honor way but in that also kind of pulpy almost  cartoonish way uh then uh a more intense kind of uh gritty shooter where you're i never felt that  i was in real danger being in those uh in those shootouts in addition to the firefights there are  a bunch of other sequences as well and really they felt like they wanted to check the boxes with all  the kind of cliched things that you could do in a world war ii game such as fly in a bomber man  the turret uh of one of those gunships as well as a ride on a top of a sherman tank and here  while i can see that they want to introduce a lot of spectacle in those moments and  shooting down airplanes or mowing down nazis across a battlefield it really felt kind of bare  bones and simplistic in fact a lot of the the head look style aiming and and firing of those weapons  in those sequences felt really almost last gen in terms of vr game play and there are some of those  on rail sequences where you feel like you're just there along for the ride whether you're on the  side of a motorcycle or riding on the back of a truck and the driver is just  barreling through a nazi base that's where i really wanted the game to slow it down  and and really let me feel the intensity and the risk of infiltrating a nazi base and exploring  the area and the grounds instead you're just going right through from beginning to end which i feel  like is a missed opportunity to bring that the the intensity of war of what it felt like what it must  have felt like for those soldiers to be in enemy territory in world war ii um and really may feel  like a miss opportunity here especially since the game looks so good i mean one of the things about  vr games is the fidelity of the graphics the character animations the textures the number of  objects that fill up the room have to be pretty high because you can get up to them and scrutinize  them and here you really see the benefits of a aaa studio like respawn working on this game they have  the talent and the resources to really populate these worlds now the level of interactivity in  some of these environments left me wanting because i wanted to pick everything up i wanted them to be  physics objects but for the most part they're just static objects or a few things few objects and  tools that you can pick up and you can use them for for melee and they've done things like make  a working piano a working typewriter in the game but once again the detail in the environments and  the great level design i don't think is backed up by the fidelity of the kind of authentic war  and soldier experience that i wanted out of this game a great example is in the early in the game  you're fighting your way from the beginning of a train to the back of the train through train  cars and every single one of these train cars was just exquisitely designed from the dining car to  the uh the lodge car the lodgings with the the guest rooms it felt like claustrophobic  fully detailed and ripe for really intense fire fights which i didn't think it delivered on i  would open the door the animations would cue for the enemies to turn around the chefs would pick  up their guns and it'd be really easy to pick them all off i never felt like i was in any real danger  and that honestly took me out of the immersion of being there i think it was you know a waste almost  of that incredible level design a lot of the beautiful game models and environments  can be appreciated beginning of each of these missions uh in this quarter master setting and  and here's where i felt like some of the best use of vr uh was taken advantage of where i  could actually pick up these scale models the same models that are going to be used  in full one-to-one size later in the mission and inspect them and appreciate the level of graphical  fidelity same with a few of the scenarios where you actually see almost a miniature playset of  the battlefield of the mission ahead and you can do a little bit of selecting and  placing and planning out and strategizing of that battlefield i thought that was a really  novel interesting use of vr but once the battle started again the sequences were far too short  uh far too much like a shooting gallery and ended too quickly and there went that victory transition  loading screen of all the missions there were a few that did stand out to me uh one was the  assault on omaha beach and while that assault from getting off of the higgins boat up to the bunkers  is again segmented in three different parts by the time you got up to the bunkers you know wandering  through those bases the nazi bunker bases shooting the nazis and then looking back down to the beach  i felt that was a pretty awe-inspiring moment and especially once you emerge into the trenches  and engage in a pretty intense firefight outside that was one of my favorite moments in the game as  well as another one where you're on a sinking nazi battle cruiser and they basically turn the entire  level the entire boat on its side and becomes this escape sequence where you had to climb out of the  ship on these on the railings while still shooting the enemies and that whole change in perspective  of the level being turned 90 degrees i found really interesting and enjoyable too and by  the end of the campaign i did come to terms with what i think they're trying to achieve and the  kind of game they're trying to make and it's much more of a pulpy adventure like an indiana jones  movie than it is the band of brothers miniseries and even toward the end of the game you're doing  things like infiltrating a snowy nazi base or sabotaging v2 rockets you know it almost has  like a james bond spy romp feel to it which again aren't bad things it just felt a little dated in  terms of the type of game and especially when it then ends up being these shooting galleries  um i almost felt a little bored by it by the end the fidelity of experience is there visually but  in terms of the intensity and actually putting me in the moment i didn't walk away feeling  like oh my god that was such an amazing game that really benefited from all of the advantages of vr  not just motion controls but the the presence you feel like that you can feel when you're  in a battlefield and it's extra disappointing because the genre of world war ii shooters has  come a long way since allied assault even in the medal of honor series you had games like  medal of honor airborne which i really enjoyed that had more non-linear level design and map  design that i felt like would really adapt well to vr and even franchises like brothers in arms  did more with the type of gun play to feel and those were non-vr games to feel more intense  here uh the satisfaction of shooting the nazis uh you know a room full of them and mowing them down  yes very satisfying undoubtedly with the character animations with the satisfying feel of the weapons  but when that's what most of the game is made up of  the far more shallow game than what i think vr can provide and what i think a lot of vr gamers  have come to expect this many years into uh vr gamingafter single player there's also uh multiplayer which is pretty robust uh i got a chance to  play about two hours of it so with some other reviewers and developers and the 10 maps that  they've provided here nice and varied really good level design and the five gameplay modes  really again harken back to desktop pc and console multiplayer shooters so very fast-paced deathmatch  team deathmatch domination control point style game and then two more novel game modes  in a mad bomber and also king of the hill style blast radius and here i think respawn achieved  exactly what they set out to do which is that again evoke that classic fast-paced death  match style game where it's less about hiding behind cover and shooting and peeking around  the corners then it is about running around the maps flanking finding someone and then reloading  and being true to your aim and if you build that muscle memory from that single player cam  and find the weapons that you like whether it's the scg or the bolt-action rifle you can be pretty  successful in those multiplayer games the teamwork aspect in terms of the domination and the team  death match modes i felt was a little bit lacking especially compared to games like population one  where there's a lot of coordination between you and your teammates here people are just  kind of talking all over and just yelling where the control where the enemies are  and you know just kind of racing toward where the action is and hoping you're there first throwing  your nades in and then being first to shoot first to kill and in fact in the death match modes  it's just free-for-all voice chat where you hear everyone as they're playing so  i don't think it quite achieves the kind of social benefits of vr multiplayer  and the lack of the progression system here makes me a little bit worried about the longevity of the  the multiplayer modes even though they have things like bots that help fill out the servers  and plenty of unlockables in terms of character skins there is also a survival mode which is  like a horde mode where it takes these select moments from the campaign and throws waves of  enemies at you see how long you can fare and survive and here's where i really wish there was  co-op where you could maybe meet up with a friend or two friends and hang out for half  an hour in these modes shooting nazis that's something i wish was in the game but again  here only for the single-player mode another thing that's worth talking about is the pretty  high system requirements of medal of honor above and beyond uh developers have listed  recommended specs which are way up there uh 9700 intel chip and a 2080 and actually my  system here doesn't meet those recommended specs i was actually playing on a 2070 gpu and when  i tried playing over a link cable on a quest 2 i actually had to turn down the graphics pretty low  you can do low medium high and there's a dynamic rendering setting in the graphics and even with  a dynamic rendering setting i was dropping frames and the scaling was looking really pixelated  so i ended up switching over to playing uh most of the single player campaign and the multiplayer  with a rift s and then with the resolution and the frame rate of the rift s  was really smooth on the high graphic setting it's one of those games where because  the recommendations are so high uh you might want to wait till there's some optimization  and there's even talk of perhaps porting the game over to play natively on the quest 2  wait for that before or upgrade your system before picking this up but be warned it does have pretty  steep requirements so medal of honor above me on is out today and they announced the price 60 at  launch of game and you know the whole time i was playing through the campaign and the multiplayer  i was wondering does this feel one like a aaa experience and two worth full price full aaa  pricing i do think there's 60 dollars worth of value here with you know an 8 to 10 hour campaign  survival mode a whole gallery of these interesting videos and interviews and 360 video content  exploring the history of world war ii and with the multiplayer as well i do feel like you get  60 worth of content here especially in the wide range of missions and environments  uh that the game takes you through and just that sheer number of you know visual assets here but  is it kind of the a game that you're going to come back to after playing through the  campaign you know just because a game like population one doesn't have the best graphics  it's a game i go back to because it feels so great in vr feels like it does something new in vr  and here i keep on going back to the fact that not only does it not feel like it's moving vr gaming  forward but it feels like a last gen vr game there are games that came out a year or two ago that i  felt like did more with vr as a platform than this game does and that's kind of unfortunate  uh because we had so many high expectations i think i don't think it's the case that respond  didn't know what they were doing i think they did exactly what they set out to do they made a world  war two vr game that looks like medal of honor it checks all the boxes for what you think a medal  of honor game should have this expansive campaign tons of environments these amazing looking death  animations lots of shooting of nazis that all these things make for a great looking trailer  right someone watching a video of this or maybe someone new to vr who just bought a quest too  and has a high-end gaming pc we'll put this on and feel like wow i'm getting a lot of a lot of  world war ii game play out of this but i think the mistake they made was maybe going too broad with  this game and trying to create it for a broader audience and underestimating the expectations  of what a more experienced vr gamer and community wants out of this  i don't need a world war ii game to take me through 50 different environments  you know i would be happy with a game that had four or five really amazing levels that took me  longer to get through that was slower pace that took its time to make me feel like i was in the  trenches you know take me through the bat the town of karentan or something um and and really  create a memorable experience out of one level then try to have a dozen different levels that  become just a flash in the pan and leave me feeling like okay that was fun but i'm gonna move  on to the next thing so there you have it that's medal of honor above and beyond it's out today  in the oculus store as well as the steam store and honestly i hope the game does well i hope there is  a flourishing multiplayer community which gives more incentive for developers to add on to that  and honestly i hope that respawn gets another chance to make another medal of honor game where  they can take more risks and doesn't feel like they're just going through and checking the boxes  what they think a broad first time vr gamer once out of a world war ii shooter i really  hope they get a chance to make that happen but if you've played the game i'd love to know what you  think about it please post in the comments below thanks for watching and i'll see you next timebye\n"