Genre: First-Person Shooter

Platform: Xbox 360

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Classification: 18 (PEGI)

Call of Duty...

...Oops! Medal of Honor is a seen and done title that's trying to bring the franchise into the modern day with modern combat. But to survive in this genre of heavyweight titles – this latest instalment needs to pull something extra special out of the bag.

Electronic Arts were clearly aiming to project a sense of gritty realism by using the Taliban as the enemy, a real life opposition of war still fresh in the minds of many. With much of the action taking place across Afghan cities, it provides the backdrop to add that extra trickle of realism.

There's a refreshingly calm nature to the campaign that doesn't use over-the-top characters being gun-ho heroes, instead there's an intensity derived from their more believable personalities. They don't run blindly into a fire fight, instead there's a cover and shoot mechanic that makes use of leaning around corners.

The campaign is split into three separate stories, each providing a different perspective of the war in Afghanistan and spanning a total of nine missions. Although there are some heart poundingly intense moments that draw players in, they would be extremely lucky to get six hours of play from it.

Things are linear during this short single player campaign, only ever trudging forwards to the next objective. There's also an overuse of invisible walls along the way - something that screams lazy programming and poor level design.

DICE, the legends behind the multiplayer for Battlefield: Bad Company created the mutiplayer for Medal of Honor. Despite their being four play modes and a handful of maps, the experience trees for the three character classes don't have enough branches to warrant pumping hundreds of hours into. There's no massive sense of achievement.

Because it was Danger Close that worked on the single-player mode, and they used a different engine to DICE, the two parts of the game look and feel completely different. It's a strange splintering that just doesn't feel right.

It's a far cry from the dismal effort that was Medal of Honor: Airbourne but it's still a long way from rivalling Call of Duty or even Battlefield.

SCORE: 6 / 10