E3 2003 – First
Look
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
is the latest title in EA’s award winning Medal of Honor series. Instead of
looking once more to war-torn WWII Europe, this version takes place on the other
side of the war, focusing on the battle against the Japanese. The preview demo
which I saw was only in pre-alpha stages, but already it looked amazing. The
graphics were already surpassing last year’s hit Medal of Honor: Frontline and
the action was incredibly intense.
The first level of the game
is Pearl Harbor.
Your character is laying around in bed on a ship when suddenly the walls begin
to vibrate. Another person runs in the room and yells to get topside and says
that this is not a drill. As you make your way up, various other characters are
dealing with injured or killed comrades, helping you get out and trying to get
themselves out. Holes in the ship leak and spray everywhere, and explosions
tear through the ship and kill a few of those around you. You grab a fire
extinguisher off of the wall and begin to squelch the fire to get to out of the
bowels of the ship. Another character near the fire grabs the extinguisher from
your hands and puts out the fire himself. You finally make it topside to see
hundreds of Japanese planes swarming the blackened sky. Your CO yells at you to
quit standing there and sticks a gun in your hand. You go up to a turret and
begin blasting away at the fighter planes. Soon you’re on a gunboat manning the
turret and blasting away as fighter planes are swarming.
All in all, the preview
build for Rising Sun looked pretty incredible and, with its new two-player co-op
mode, stands to be the best game in the series when its released this fall.
