Medal of Honor: Warfighter – Los Angeles/Danger Close Playtest

And there we were…

In the early days of September, Off Duty Gamers, along with members of the gaming journalism community, were invited out to Los Angeles to playtest Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Given the esteem towards this title and their attention to authenticity,  RogueDoc and Edwards loaded up their rucks, strapped on their gear and headed out.

What is a playtest?

A playtest is simply gamer terminology of a function check for a game. You’re given your choice of platform control (keyboard+mouse/controller), and are tasked with finding issues within the game, such as:

• Terrain collision issues (tripping over 2 inch rocks)
• Graphical anomalies (artifacting, texture problems)
• Perfomance loss areas (slow-down of gameplay due to hardware or software issues)
• Overall gameplay improvements and tweaks
• General “feel” of the game

While these tasks may seem like something any gamer would love to do, discovering how to resolve these issues within game’s balance adds to the difficulty of the mission at hand. Players attended Question and Answer sessions in an auditorium, where game balance and bugs were described in detail.

Wasn’t Pax just around the corner?

Why yes, it was. The difference between what occurred at PAX in Seattle and what went on in the LA playtest is PAX was a controlled environment, where the players are given access to limited gameplay options. Basically, a showroom model of the game. In Los Angeles, we were given access to a wide array of gameplay options, maps, and other fancy bells and whistles to find out what gamers, as well as current/prior military service members, would be drawn to.

OPsec and you

While we would love to go into massive and unrelenting detail about how much you’re going to enjoy Medal of Honor: Warfighter, our chain of command is holding many of the details ‘close to the chest’. We at Off Duty Gamers take great pride in our promises not to blow the lid of of unreleased news, or ‘leaks’, of games currently in development.

However, we still have intel for you freaks! Read on…

New map – Harra Dunes

Harra Dunes is set in a Middle Eastern town. It consists of:

• Rundown buildings (most of which can be cleared or controlled by team members)
• Numerous flanking routes for you and your teammates to get behind the enemy or choke them off
• Dust, and lots of it. Gives an accurate representation of what it’s like “over there”
• Lots of places to set up some good defense of the sectors along with a few good Close Quarter Combat areas

We played it on Sector Control, the game mode where teams control a given set of strategic points within the map, whilst holding off the opposing force from taking the points from them. There are 3 Control points on the map, North, Center and South. Team “A” spawns at North, Team “B” spawns at South. While the control points closest to each opposing teams side are quickly taken, the inevitable head to head happens when the side converge onto the centrally located control point.

Where the fun begins is when the teams go for “Center” Sector. This Sector will be the scene of some great back and forth battles. At Center Sector there is a two story building that snipers will love when it comes to defending and overwatching the area. It will take some good team effort to route the enemy out of the building.

While your team is trying to take back “Center” Sector, you can take your Battle Buddy and flank around to take either “North” or “South” sector. To reach these Sectors there are plenty routes to choose how to attack them. Depending on how your enemy is setup, you have numerous options at your disposal on how to deal with threats along said routes.

Edwards - Hara Dunes feels as if old-school DE_Dust grew up, went to Basic training and straight on to SF Selection. It’s a beautifully rendered map, and will leave you feeling an urge to chug down some water afterwards to clean all the dust and sand from your throat.

RogueDoc - Overall this is a fun, fast-paced map. With plenty of flanking routes and some good Close Quarters Combat.

After action review

The Los Angeles – Danger Close Playtest was an amazing experience. Having long discussions with the  developers, which may or may not have included heated debates, was an eye-opener into the past time we all enjoy. Danger Close has spent an incredible amount of manpower and time into flushing out this title to you, the gamers, while being one of the few studios out there not “Hollywood’ing” gameplay for no authentic reason.

Meeting members of the gaming community was a joy for all involved. Staying up til Oh-Dark-Thirty theory-crafting many design features over a warm fire and a beer (or several) will remain one of those memories a gamer won’t soon forget.