You Don’t Play, You Volunteer
- NA release: 7th November 2002
- EU release: 6th December 2002
- JP release: N/A
- Developer: EA LA
- Publisher: EA
- NGC Magazine Score: 75%
- Mods Used: None


Medal of Honor was once THE war first person shooter, until the EA failed to keep the franchise relevant once Call of Duty 4 came about. The series started on PlayStation that started with Steven Spielberg (creator of Boom Blox on the Wii), Dreamworks and EA. By the time of Frontline, Dreamworks Interactive was sold off to EA and was rebranded as EA Los Angeles, and the franchise became a multi-playform games on the next generation of systems.

The game opens with D-Day and…it’s actually rather tame. It’s small, there aren’t many people and there isn’t a huge sense of danger. You have to rescue your squad, who are just crouched alongside small objects and mostly out in the open. While it worked extremely well as the opening to Saving Private Ryan, a video game version of D-Day really should be later on in the game where it can be more unforgiving.
It also doesn’t capture the horror of the situation. Despite being a comedy game, I’d even say that the D-Day parody in Conker’s Bad Fur Day captured the nature of it far better.

The rest of the levels are fairly typical for an FPS at the time, with a lot of the time taken up by just roaming the levels to find the right path. One thing that doesn’t help is the amount of doors, with no obvious indicator as to which ones are the ones you can actually use, and a bunch of dead end areas that can waste your time. I was also slightly baffled as to how the second batch of levels revolve around you sneaking onto a U-boat, destroying it when you get to the German factory, then sabotaging the factory and U-boats singlehandedly. Then in the third, you’re escorting someone else as they blow up tanks.

There are still some enjoyable moments, but this feels like an awkward middle ground to more open first person shooters and more modern set-piece shooters. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the game, I just don’t think it holds up as it doesn’t do anything unique.

Fine
However, as good as it is that a game like this has made the move to the Cube, a little reality-check is in order. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled with the subtlety and complexities of GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters 2, but this isn’t quite the classic game that it was touted as on PS2. Medal of Honor benefits from a staggering attention to detail and delicious period trappings, so much so that it immerses the player to an extent that something like Turok Evolution could never achieve. But this (admittedly wonderful) scene-setting hides a deceptively simple game.
Jes Bickham, NGC Magazine #75
Remake or remaster?
There was a remaster on PS3, so using that as a basis for a collection would be good.
Official Ways to get the game
There’s no official way to get Medal of Honor: Frontline.
GameCube Games by Date
2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec