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E3 2012: Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer (impressions)

by: John -
More On: Medal of Honor: Warfighter E3 2012
?Medal of Honor is coming back with Medal of Honor Warfighter and I was treated to a viewing of the multiplayer portion of the game.

For Warfighter, a big emphasis was put on Fire Teams. Think of the way your friends' outline show up in Left 4 Dead no matter where they are. This happens in Warfighter albeit it will only show up for one other person, but that's not all. When talking to the two dozen real life operatives from around the world, the development team got this dynamic from them and integrated it in their way into the game. The Navy Seals call them your swim buddy, but it's basically your partner and because you work so closely with that person, you tend to know what he's going to do and what he can offer as support.

The close relationship is captured in a few ways here. If you are taken down, you can wait til your friend is in a safe place and after a certain time has elapsed, you'll spawn right onto his six. But, your friend can also take down the person who took you down and you'll respawn instantly. So visually and through game play mechanics, the fire team feature will help with cooperative game play.

There six classes from all across the world that you can choose from in the mode I witnessed. Each class plays a little differently. The Grom has an HK 416 assault rifle with an under mount grenade launcher and call in an AH-6 for support. The SASR is quick and weilds an AUG with the ability to put in a clip that does 20% more damage and call in mortar strikes. The ITF2 excels at suppression with the M249 and can call in a Blackhawk for instant respawn. For the OGA, they are the quickest class and use an HP MP7 with an ability to call in an A-10 strafe run. The SEALs act as a sniper class with the TAC-3000 sniper rifle and can launch a UAV drove. Finally, the SFOD-D is a great class for tight spaces wielding the powerful AA-12 shotgun.

The multiplayer demo took place in Somalia and the people were tasked to take three capture points. Because the game uses the Frostbite 2 engine, the visuals were stunning. Now, the multiplayer part eliminated the destructible environments as the developers wanted a consistent playing field when going through the game, but there will be some minor destructible items such as crates and barrels.

The gameplay looked smooth and seemed to play really well. One of the things I saw in a class based system that was used to help the others was a launching of a UAV by one of the Seals. When in the air for the amount of time it is, enemies will show up blinking on the mini map. This is but one example of how a specific class can use its unique abilities to help out their team.

The multiplayer is pretty much developed in house and the team has really taken the information provided by the operators they talk to and incorporated into the game well. One example is that various team operators from different countries reload the gun differently. That's modeled in Warfighter so you get a certain level of realism that the operatives provided. You can see this evidence on the screen and more as the relationship the development team and the operatives grew for Warfighter and the hope is this translates to a better quality game.

Meal of Honor Warfighter's multiplayer looks like it'll have some great unique features to make it stand out amongst the crowded multiplayer military genre.

Look for Warfighter on the PC, 360, and PS3 this October 23rd.