MEDAL OF HONOR: RISING SUN

TITLE: Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
NICKNAME: "Harrisons"
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2003
ENTERTAINMENT TYPE: Video game
TAPE TYPE: Disque
REQUIREMENTS: Copy of game "Medal of Honor Rising Sun", video game console, television
PRICE: New: 27.95 (GameCube) Used: 00.01 (PS2) (Both in USD)
CAST: Dale Dye, Nick Jameson, Yuri Lowenthal, Mako

Now that I've got that out of the way, I can FINALLY get to reviewing this game. Here goes! My first video game review!

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun has always been one of my favorite games. I'll be the first to acknowledge that it's not a very good game. In fact, the game sucks. That doesn't mean I can't love it, though. And I refuse to play video games with ANYBODY until they go through the special two-player version of the single player version of this game with me.

Rather than having an interesting story or good gameplay, Medal of Honor is known for its high-tech graphics, as evidenced below:


















There's two aspects to the game: The campaign, and the multiplayer.

CAMPAIGN 

You are a soldier, sleeping through the wee hours of the morning. Maybe you're having a dream about your sweetheart back home. Maybe you're having a nightmare about her. Who knows! All that matters is, your world is about to change. You're a regular soldier sleeping in a bunk in a ship when all of a sudden you feel everything around you shake, and you realize that the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor! (which is where you are stationed.) Then you jump out of your bed and run up to the top of the ship (which is harder than it sounds). You shoot at some planes, taking down at least 20. Then you get on a funny little ship (this is in the next level, by the way) and you ride around in the water shooting at more airplanes, and taking down another 20 or so. You may get shot many many times, but luckily, the bullets don't affect you much, for some reason.

Next, you're in a foreign country. It might be the Phillippines; it might be Indonesia. I don't really remember. All I know is that you're in a battle for your life. A GUN battle, against the Jeps. This is where the game really gets interesting, because you have to run around a weird-looking town with no real goal in sight. Basically, you're trying to get to the baseball field. But YOU don't know that yet! Because that's how war is. And that's how this game is.

Campaign mode takes you through seven or eight breathtakingly brief levels. It ends, of all things, on a cliffhanger! There is no sequel, so you just have to use your imagination. You also have to use your imagination to force this game into being fun. I happen to have a wonderful imagination, and that's why this is my favorite game.

You can play campaign mode by yourself, or you can bring a friend. I recommend playing with a friend, because otherwise the desolate loneliness of war is likely to tear you apart. The game is THAT realistic. It's also nice to have some one cover your back. But beware: with the two-player version, it's not about whether you live or die; it's just about whether you both die at the same time. The only way to lose is for both of you to die at the same time. That makes it interesting, because if your ally dies, you really want to just try to hide and not get shot for ten seconds or so. It's all very cerebral.

MULTIPLAYER

This is my favorite part of the game! Even more than the two player campaign mode. It's basically a deathtrap. You get put in this square-shaped area with no way out. You have to shoot at whoever isn't on your side. If you're playing free-for-all mode, that means everyone. The existentialist aspect of this game mode is really my favorite thing about it, because WHAT IF you were trapped in a square-shaped area with people who wanted to kill you? That would really be something.

But the good thing about war in an enclosed box is that you get to choose both your own team and your opponents. You can choose people who are really hard to kill, or people who are really easy. I'd recommend choosing the people who are easy to kill, but if you really want to, you can fight against Harrison (the namesake of the game), who will track you down and kill you in most likely one shot. He's not only a crack shot, but he has incredible leaping ability!

In the end, the multiplayer proves to be a patriotic and highly symbolic struggle, as you run around killing and being killed over and over again until time runs out and whichever side has the fewest deaths is the winner.

TIPS AND HINTS

Press down the right stick to use a melee attack (aka hitting somebody with your gun). It is particularly effective at close range. Look for future releases from the Medal of Honor series to include a gun-throwing attack, extremely useful for when you run out of ammo.

Multiplayer: On the temple level, you can go up on the balcony in the pagoda area, and then jump down and land on the rocks. DO NOT DO THIS. THE OTHER TEAM WILL SHOOT YOU WITH EASE.

Welrods: These are the best guns in the game. They may only hold one bullet, and you have to reload it every single time you fire a shot, and this reloading takes about 15 seconds; but in multiplayer you can shoot somebody in the foot and they die instantly and unconditionally. It's not a made-up gun. It's VERY real.   The reason you've never heard of it is because it's so deadly, they destroyed them all after the war, except for two: A gold welrod and a silver welrod. Legend has it that the man who unites the two of them will be given a coupon by the gun company for buy-one-get-one-free on boxes of welrod bullets.

Grenades: You can throw grenades short, or far.

Multiplayer: If you're losing on the city level, my advice is to go into the buildings and throw grenades out of the window. Don't even go up to the window; your opponents will see you, and possibly shoot you. Just crouch under the window and throw the grenades. There's a never-ending supply of them nearby.

Multiplayer: It's tough to come up with teams that are fair for both sides. However, if the other side is nothing but computer players, it doesn't really matter whether you're fair. Just fill it up with Kandlers or Tanakas, then you don't even have to raise your gun barrel because they're so bad at war they will kill each other.

RATING

This game's a 10/10 for me. I don't see how it couldn't be. It's given me more hours of entertainment than any other single piece of entertainment ever could. It may not be a very good game; in fact, as I said, it's a very BAD game; but it didn't suffer much in the rating because I'm a very generous and forgiving rater.

Go out and buy this game the instant you're back on the internet after reading this review! It only costs 1 cent used on Amazon! It might be even cheaper on other sites!