Medal of Honor 2010

You begin your online career as a U.S. Army Ranger, but progress up levels, unlocking new items on your way to becoming a Tier 1 Operator. And you definitely want to become Tier 1 -- that's when you unlock a beard. The beard doesn't kill, it just looks bad ass. On the way to unlocking a beard, you'll be opening up new modifications for your weapons. Weapons can support three mods, which can be switched out between rounds. DICE promises hundreds of combination's. Weapons will become one of the biggest variables in Medal of Honor, far more so than in more first-person shooters.

There are four modes available in Medal of Honor multiplayer, two in the beta, spread out over eight maps. Combat Mission takes you to the Helmand Valley, an actual location in Afghanistan. This is a series of objective-based missions. The one I was shown had us playing as U.S. soldiers attempting to destroy a large weapons cache. Our opponents played as Taliban insurgents hell-bent on stopping us.


In true DICE fashion, Combat Mission requires teamwork if you hope to beat down the insurgents and take out the weapons cache. Everyone can run around like independent jerks, which is exactly what happens when you get a dozen journalists in a room, but once this game is out, working as a team can only help.

Medal of Honor seems to be the perfect combination of Call of Duty and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. You no longer have to fight over which game is better, because Medal of Honor offers the best of both. If the full game is as good as the demo I've seen, then this may just be the multiplayer game of the year...