Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

The release of the bearded reboot of Medal of Honor is about a week away as of this writing, and we’ve got high hopes that it’ll be able to yank the franchise back into the limelight after years of so-so releases. If it’s going to live up to its title, though, Medal of Honor has some pretty big shoes to fill, and while it might be unreasonable of us, we hope we’ll be able to call it a worthy successor to its towering ancestor: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, arguably the single most important World War II game ever made.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was NOT the first to do a lot of things. It was not the first game to introduce hordes of computer-controlled allies into combat. It was not the first to incorporate a rousing score to complement the gunfire and explosions. It was not the first to depict D-Day. And it certainly wasn’t the first to do World War II. Heck, it wasn’t even the first Medal of Honor game. Yet it was the first to tie all of these things together into one of the most beloved WWII shooters of all time. With the next installment so close, we decided to take a look back at exactly what made Allied Assault so great – and to hope Medal of Honor can do it one better...

Composers in games are always the bloody bridesmaids. While Kojima, Clifford Bleszinski the Third and Shigeru Miyamoto lap up all the credits, complimentary hookers and free mini muffin baskets, the men and women behind their games' epic music go unnoticed.

Steven Spielberg famously said that composer John Williams' score in Jaws was responsible for 50% of the movie's success. And when you consider the iconic tunes from Super Mario Bros. or Shadow of the Colossus' sweeping score, it's hard to underestimate the impact a well composed soundtrack can have on a title. That's why we're giving some of gaming's finest composers the long overdue recognition they deserve.

Everyone knows about Max Payne taking all its best ideas (alright, one good idea) from the Matrix. But there have been many more games over the years that have taken their inspiration from Tinsel Town’s finest cinematic output. And when we say inspiration, we actually mean they broke out the tracing paper and copied these films' best scenes or stars almost exactly. And you know what? We’re thankful, because the nearly all of the