Related post: Call Of Duty Tax

When I wrote about paying my annual Call of Duty tax recently I realised that I should pay tribute to the game that was its origin and the one that hooked me into gaming.

When I bought my first console, the original Xbox, one of the games that came with it was Medal Of Honor Frontline.

I have to confess I had previously played this on a friend’s Playstation console and decided that I needed to get a console of my own.

I mean you were immediately thrust onto the Normandy beaches and were desperately scrabbling around for health packs just to survive.

For the time the graphics seemed quite intense and I was immediately hooked – put it this way I started playing the game at what might be considered a reasonable hour and the next thing I knew it was 4am.

Over the years I bought into the ever expanding Call of Duty franchise, which goes without saying, but I still had a loyalty to Medal of Honor.

While Call of Duty changed the game, so to speak, by moving away from the Second World War setting and introducing Modern Warfare, I like to think the Tier 1 Edition was Medal of Honor’s response.

It was set in Afghanistan and, as I had been there just years before, I totally appreciated the attention to detail in the landscape and the fact they captured the ever present dust hanging in the air.

The story of the single player campaign followed a couple of soldiers’ experiences, together with their squads, in Afghanistan and there were a couple of hairy moments where I had to repeat the chapter several times because it was that challenging. But I made it to the end which was good to say the least.

And then they released a sequel called Warfighter which I quite enjoyed but maybe the driving around the Middle East in a sandstorm was a bit of a challenge.

I have to admit the characters were iconic and it is a pity that they did not do any more games.

It is well known that the development team behind Medal of Honor left and set up Call of Duty (which might explain why Rising Sun finished so abruptly), but I am so pleased their successors continued to produce these two really good games.