Sweet ba-goodness, I love Medal of Honor games. It’s now been over two years since I wrote the review of MOH: Frontline with a promise for an upcoming review of MOH: Rising Sun. Well, unfortunately my Frontline disc was lost or stolen, which I’m still bitter about, so I need to go re-buy that game and finish beating it now. Rising Sun, however, is great in the meantime. Whereas Frontline thrusts you onto the shores of Normandy on D-Day, Rising Sun has you waking up in the first minutes of the Pearl Harbor attack. In other words, the first level is about as intense as it gets.

Instead of capping Germans like in Frontline, in Rising Sun you’re blowing Japs out of the water and the air, and into the dirt. Again, level variety is pretty great in this game. In one moment you’re manning the anti-aircraft turret on a gunship in Pearl Harbor, the next you’re floating down a jungle river in the Phillipines with a squad of men looking for a hidden enemy airfield.

One of the best things about these games is the realistic weaponry. Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they all fire like they would in real life; they’re not pin-point accurate, because after all it’s 1940’s weaponry we’re talking about here. So just because you place a shot right in the crosshairs with your Thompson doesn’t mean the gun’s going to fire each shot perfectly. Then again, the Thompson is an automatic weapon so it can lay down a nice hail of fire. And don’t get me wrong; I hate Nazis. But there’s something about seeing the dust kick up off a Jap as you shoot him in the face through your modified Springfield ‘03 scope that’s strangely satisfying. I gave the game a 3.5 because I love it, but so far I liked Frontline slightly better.