Review: Medal of Honor vs. Call of Duty: Black Ops

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Multiplayer

Medal of Honor

Medal of Honor multiplayer has 5 modes of gameplay plus hardcore. You can create a group and join-in or just pick a quick match. The mission types are typical Team Assault (Team Death Match); Sector Control; Objective Raid; Hot Zone (king of the hill); and my favorite and most purposeful, Combat Mission. In Combat Mission you are assigned 3 or 4 consecutive tasks to accomplish while the enemy defends.

The maps are ridiculously small in Medal of Honor and the snipers are over-powering. They have an unobstructed view since they can usually see across the entire terrain of the map, and will snipe you as you spawn-in. Not good. While the size of the maps are a problem, they re nicely made with destructible environments and sometimes cover.

There are only three roles to choose and play — pick either Rifleman, Assault, or Sniper. As you play, you unlock more weapons, attachments, and tools. I would have preferred a few additional classes, or at least one more titled support option.

Medal of Honor multiplayer is fun but typical. Bigger maps and more assault points would have made the missions better; instead you’re bottlenecked down a kill zone. Since you must work as a team with counter-snipers, smoke, and attacking in force, finding players who work together well is essential to success.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Op’s multiplayer is packed full of goodness. They left nothing out in this bad boy, including the usual glitches, cheats, and balance issues that come with almost every new shooter game. But as usual, Activision is already working on the reported problems and plan to address them soon. Like in every new release of the Call of Duty series, the multiplayer group function is broken and server lag issues abound. But you have to expect that with the title that has the honor (no pun intended) of the fastest, largest-selling first day sales title in computer game history.

There are a ton of gameplay modes and a lot of well done maps with plenty of height, corners, and alleys. That is great because rarely if ever can a sniper see more than one area of a map compared to the Medal of Honor snipers. Call of Duty: Black Ops also has an assortment of classes that are all customizable. Perks have returned and are more balanced along with kill streaks. Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer is the best in the series based on it's maps, weapons, perks, and balance.

It’s still an action shooter and not Armed Assault 2 (which I have to continually remind myself while playing). Depending on the weapons and the perks, I can still unload a full mag of rounds into the enemy only to find they are still alive and firing back at me. The balance of the game is a lot better than before, but it’s still not perfect. Here is another beef I have with Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer: While laying-down machine gun fire on a window where a sniper is sitting, he almost leisurely takes his time zooming-in on me and gets the kill. Fire suppression — or the lack thereof — is the biggest on-going problem (in my opinion) in all computer and video game shooters.

Multiplayer Conclusion:
Winner - Call of Duty: Black Ops

As much as I personally like the team gameplay in Medal of Honor, the small maps, limited classes, limited weapons, and sniper overkill makes this aspect of Medal of Honor a flash in the pan.

Call of Duty: Black Ops with its bigger, better maps, custom classes, perks and kill streak rewards make it a better, long lasting game. It’s more balanced than ever before and it's multiplayer servers will be populated for a long time.

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