Medal of Honor

The next time the UN needs to pull out of a conflict, I suggest we send in a crack team of EA developers to replace them.

These guys sure know how to organise a war – from the labourious planning stages right through to the implementation, it all goes rather swimmingly, perhaps because there are no real surprises.

While the plot might talk of uprisings and surprise assaults catching the western powers off guard, the gameplay is regular and uniform, handing you tasks in a neat fashion that ensures you've conquered one before you have to take on another.

On parade

Realists might disapprove, of course, but in terms of a video game, such stability is often the difference between an ambitious game that ultimately turns out to be one big mess and one that delivers.

When it comes to pure action, Medal of Honor certainly delivers – just on its own terms.

Such terms essentially revolve around mastering your timing. Rather than chucking you into the mire and seeing if you sink or swim, Medal of Honor sets you a series of puzzles, tasking you with worming your way through enemy after enemy with the tools at hand.

The tools are, of course, your weapons. Firing them is a question of hitting the '5' key when the game's automatic aimer – which scrolls up and down the target's body like a gauge – lines up with his head.

Hit the body, and a second or third shot might be required.

Cracking the code

But though it might appear that Medal of Honor offers the standard succession of shooting and running for cover, there's a genuine craft to the design of the game's levels.

Avoiding your foe and waiting for the right time to attack is just as important as simply firing at anyone and everyone that moves.

Sneaking around machine guns rather than taking them on directly is a common requirement, for instance, while it's also key to prioritise targets when taking on a whole band of enemy troops rather than firing indiscriminately.

There's also variety on offer, with special missions that seem to sandwich the bulk of play – including an early go at sniping – helping to keep you on your toes.

Medal of Honor's weak point, however, is that it's questionable just how much replay value it has. Play tricks you into thinking it has a life of its own, whereas in reality it's simply a number of set moves triggered and carried out to order.

Fail to play by its rules and you'll die in quick time – there's simply no room for creativity.

Like a challenge on the Krypton Factor, Medal of Honor's war game is series of puzzles where there's only one right answer. We're just lucky that EA's right answer happens to be very right indeed.