2002 was a good year for fans of first-person shooters. No One Lives Forever 2, TimeSplitters 2, Jedi Outcast, Red Faction 2, and 007 Nightfire all arrived this year and were great. But two PC-only World War 2 shooters from EA were among my top favorites of 2002: Battlefield 1942 and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The question is: Which of these is the better WW2 FPS?
Allied Assault launched first, in January, and was an impressive action shooter built using the same tech that powered id’s Quake III. The single-player campaign in Allied Assault is fantastic, probably the best in the Medal of Honor series. The beach landing seen in the game’s third mission feels like it was ripped right out of Saving Private Ryan and was so good that the devs working on Medal of Honor: Frontline on PS2 actually added their own Omaha Beach landing mission late in development for that game.
But it’s not just the beach landing that’s great in Allied Assault. Every mission is fantastic and varied. Sometimes you’re sneaking around in the dark alone, other times you’re in the back of a jeep manning a turret, and then other times you’re involved in massive battles. I never knew what I was going to do next and was always happy to keep playing to find out. And no matter what I was doing, I felt like I was really in the thick of the action thanks to the game’s advanced visuals and attention to detail. I even love how every mission starts off with a pre-mission briefing, something found in the old PS1-era Medal of Honor games, too.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault also includes multiplayer, and while it is fun, it’s not a very fleshed-out experience. It’s mostly just deathmatch and team deathmatch on a solid collection of maps featuring the guns from the main campaign and not much else. But with a full server, multiplayer in Allied Assault can be a chaotic blast, as the game supports up to 64 players at once.
Meanwhile, Battlefield 1942 launched a few months later in September and is a very different game. Yes, like Allied Assault, BF1942 is a WW2 first-person shooter. But BF1942 doesn’t contain a true single-player campaign to work through. Instead, you can play through a list of multiplayer levels against the AI, and it’s fine, but it doesn’t come close to matching what other shooters released in 2002 have included. At first, I was disappointed by this choice. Then I played Battlefield 1942‘s multiplayer, and I quickly forgot that I was even upset about its lack of missions.
Battlefield 1942‘s 64-player multiplayer is incredible, and that’s despite the fact that I (and most other players online) only play Conquest, the main game mode in 1942. Unlike deathmatch and most other shooters, Conquest in Battlefield 1942 really forces you to work together as a team against other players. You all have to fight side-by-side to capture and hold bases in an effort to deplete the enemy team’s tickets. You can try to lone-wolf it, but you’ll get yelled at in chat and likely die a lot and not have much fun. Instead, you need to stick together and use 1942‘s various drivable vehicles, including planes and tanks, to get a foothold and take control of different points across some of the biggest maps I’ve seen in a PC shooter.
Further pushing players to work together is the use of classes. You can’t do everything and use every weapon whenever you want in 1942. Maybe that sounds annoying to some, but it creates a really immersive experience where I was focused intently on playing my role. If I was a medic, I was trying to support my team and keep them alive. If I was a scout, I’d try to get ahead and help break enemy lines with my sniper before the rest of my team arrived. And when I played assault, I’d just charge into areas like an action movie star and gun down as many people as I could, hoping a medic would have my back. It’s a very good time and feels unlike most other shooters out there, especially compared to what’s on PS2 and other consoles, and it kept me playing late into the night on more than one occasion.
But which is the better World War 2 shooter? Well, that’s a tricky question. Allied Assault feels more authentic and grounded, and has a really great campaign that I’ll likely play through a few more times. Meanwhile, Battlefield 1942′s multiplayer is the star of the show, is unlike anything I’ve played before, and feels like a glimpse of the future. For me, if I had to chuck one in the bin and could only play the other, I’d have to keep…Battlefield 1942.
It wasn’t an easy choice, and when nobody is looking, I’ll go sneak back to that trash can and grab my copy of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault so I can also play it. But yeah, I just think BF1942‘s multiplayer is so damn impressive and hard to put down that it wins out, ever so slightly, over Medal of Honor’s fantastic PC-only sequel.
Regardless of which one I think is better, I think it’s clear that EA has two really fantastic franchises on their hands that are going to go on to dominate the FPS genre for years to come. I bet in 10 years we’ll still be comparing the latest installments in Battlefield and Medal of Honor to determine which is the best shooter. Both of these games have a long future ahead of them, and I can’t wait to play the next installments for many years to come. I can’t imagine any other shooter series toppling these kings anytime soon.
The story you just read is part of the 2002 edition of Warp Week, a Kotaku series that takes readers back to gaming’s past through a mix of time-dilated reviews, retrospectives, and on-the-ground reports.
