Medal of Honor: Heroes - the review...

Those gamers among us who have had their PlayStation Portable for some time now cannot help but have noticed the complete lack of quality First-person shooter's for the system. Last year we had Coded Arms, which felt more like a demo than a fully-fledged commercial title. A lot of this has to do with the control system and most PC owners will discount any system which can't run Counter Strike with a mouse/keyboard control system.

Medal of Honor is not the only WWII shooter to grace the system this year though; by the time this review is published we should also have Brothers in Arms and Call of Duty. It is the most established though so it was only a matter of time before EA converted it to the handheld format. This had previously been attempted with Underground on the GameBoy Advance but the system’s obvious shortcomings made the game almost unplayable. The same is not true of the PSP, of course, but have they sorted that control system out?

Heroes is not an entirely original game and instead allows us to revisit three soldiers from the previous MoH series over three countries (Italy, Holland and Belgium). Each comprises 5 separate missions making 15 in all with your general objective being to destroy a command centre or steal important papers detailing the enemy’s plans. Because of the limitations of the PSP system the missions are somewhat shorter than you've come to expect and rather than challenging you with multiple, and very different objectives, things are kept relatively simple. That's not to say that you won't occasionally still be ambushed by a handful of German soldiers but the emphasis is squarely on shooting rather than setting explosives or collecting intelligence. These are occasionally part of the secondary objectives but unless you are going for the gold medal on each mission they aren't essential.

Once you've completed the rather short single player game there are a handful of Skirmish games. These allow you to compete with up to 16 AI controlled opponents in any of the environments you have opened in the single player game and are all about how many kills you can generate. Multiplayer fans will be delighted to learn that their needs are also catered for and once you've navigated the rather complex EA server you can battle it out on-line with up to 32 gamers. It's pretty stable too although there is the occasional slowdown that can, frustratingly, give your opponent the upper hand just at the right moment.

If you haven't actually tried the game yet you are no doubt eager to discover just how well the controls have been implemented and the good news is that they are very good indeed. Yes, it's true and even without the second analogue stick the whole thing feels surprisingly intuitive regardless of what you are doing. If you haven't encountered a console based FPS before it's simple really. The analogue stick controls the looking around, the face buttons deal with movement and the directional buttons can change weapons and apply health packs in addition to other minor tasks.

In addition to the mission’s length there have been some cut backs in the visuals department and while the frame rate keeps to a respectable speed there are some changes which MoH veterans will notice. The various textures are less detailed and repeat much more often. There are trucks, planes and cars but you can’t drive them because they are simply scenery. You can't even blow them up. Even so it's a very good-looking game and the overall presentation has always been the envy of other titles. It still pulls off some spectacular effects when it really needs to, for instance in the battles where grenades explode with a flash followed by smoke and debris floating into the air. There are even weather effects just in case you didn’t consider war miserable enough. Finally one aspect of the original which has dodged the cuts is the original newsreel footage which still does a wonderful job of setting the scene for your missions.

As with the visuals Heroes goes all out to provide big screen audio and it's clear that the development studio appreciate the power of sound to create an atmosphere. This begins with the excellent orchestral score which could persuade even the most anti-war individual joining up. Then there are the various weapon sounds, which as in previous installments have been thoroughly researched. Possibly most haunting though are the background sounds of far off artillery, approaching gunfire and more alarmingly, enemy troops. Stirring stuff indeed.

As soon as you jump into the action in Heroes you'll be reminded just what a great series EA have created. The high production values still manage to create an unparalleled atmosphere of both fear and excitement. There have been concessions made on its trip to handheld in both presentation and the mission’s depths but the impressive Multiplayer and well thought out control system more than make up for it. If you can't take advantage of battling it out online though the single player game is far too short. With only four hours or so of gameplay you'll be reaching your final mission just as you are starting to get to grips with the finer points of the weapons. Still, it's an impressive debut and as this is the first outing, let’s hope the sequels only get better.