First-Person History

WWII Comes Alive in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead
By Brad Cook
 The opening scene of Aspyr Media’s Medal of Honor: Allied Assault expansion pack, Spearhead, is as close as you’re likely to get to a history lesson within a game. It takes place on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the date of the largest invasion in world history, as paratroopers leapt from transport planes over Nazi-occupied France while soldiers stormed the beaches below.

Spearhead places you in the guise of paratrooper Sergeant Jack Barnes, who crashes through the roof of a barn on that fateful day and engages in battles that could have been taken from Band of Brothers, HBO’s award-winning mini-series. You, in the role of Barnes, later undertake missions in the treacherous Ardennes Forest during the dead of winter and eventually overcome the last resistance in Berlin as the city falls and the war in Europe ends.

Play the Leading Man
As in Allied Assault (you must own the first game to play the expansion pack), Spearhead makes you feel like the star of your own movie. You meet other soldiers and join them on their missions, drive tanks and man fixed-position heavy artillery when necessary, and explore a world that feels like a history book come alive, complete with narration and archival footage that plays between missions. The music even swells as the action becomes more intense.

Unlike Allied Assault, however, you spend less time on your own and more time traveling with other soldiers. The other commanding officers who you meet will give you orders and expect you to carry them out. Often, your mission will fail if your commanding officer dies, or if too many of the soldiers with you get killed, so you’ll need to keep them safe. (See Tips and Tricks for a few suggestions.)

When you’re done with the 9 levels in the single-player campaign, switch to multi-player mode and stage your own world war in one of 12 new maps. Multi-player mode also allows you to play as a Soviet soldier and use the Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun for the first time. (The other new weapons in the game include the British Sten submachine gun and smoke grenades, both of which you can find in the single-player game as well.) There’s also a new multi-player game, tug of war, in which each team tries to achieve a series of objectives. A team’s spawn point can also be destroyed, which means you can’t rejoin the game after you get killed.

There’s more, of course, but we’ll leave that for you to discover. Now if you’ll excuse us, there’s a captain who needs our help to blow up a bridge.

System Requirements:
Full version of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault required
Mac OS X version 10.1 or higher
Power Mac G3/G4/iMac (Flat-Panel or later)/eMac/PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet or later)
450MHz PowerPC processor or faster
256MB of RAM
16MB Graphics Acceleration Required (ATI Radeon, NVidia GeForce, or better), 32MB recommended
Internet play requires a 56Kbps or faster; LAN (TCP/IP) play supported

If you liked this game, check out:
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
WarBirds III
World War II Online
  tank
Combat. Engage in tank versus tank warfare.
explosion
Blast in the Past. Help the Allies destroy deadly German heavy artillery.
Medal of Honor: Spearhead Media

View QuickTime trailer
Download the demo
Download the patch
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault feature
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault trailer
Medal of Honor: Breakthough expansion pack
iTunes Store: Medal of Honor Soundtracks

Tips and Tricks

gunner position Look alive, soldier! If you want to make it through the fighting in Europe and find yourself still alive on V-E Day, pay attention to these lessons. They will save not only your life, but your fellow soldiers’ lives as well.

  When you’re with a squad, take the brunt of the enemy fire whenever possible and refill your health meter by grabbing packs from dead soldiers. That way the guys with you won’t die as easily. You’ll be eligible for medals if you can make it to the end of a mission without anyone getting killed.

  That said, sometimes other soldiers will die and there won’t be anything you can do about it, because it’s a scripted element in the game.

  Some missions feature a medic in your squad. Aside from the CO, he’s the most important person to keep alive because he will heal you between battles, so you won’t need to stop and search for health packs.

  It’s important to take cover from enemy fire, of course, but remember to lean before shooting whenever you can. This exposes as little of your body as possible while giving you a shot at the enemy.

  Switch weapons when necessary. Use a submachine gun, such as the Thompson, in close quarters, but utilize your rifle when enemies are far away. When there’s quite a bit of distance between you and the bad guys, employ a sniper rifle to pick them off. And don’t forget to throw grenades into buildings and other tight places where German soldiers congregate in groups. Then rush in and take care of the survivors.

  It’s also important to switch weapons because your ammo isn’t unlimited. You will find more on dead soldiers’ bodies, but sometimes one or more weapons will go without ammo for a long stretch of time. If you use the right guns in the right situations, you’ll have less stretches where one of them runs dry.

  As in the first game, use the compass in the upper left-hand corner to make sure you’re headed toward your next objective. Remember, it just tells you what direction to head in; your objective might be up or down a flight of stairs, or perhaps you’ll need to blow a hole in a wall to continue on.

  Your computer-controlled allies will usually follow you once you’ve been given orders, so take the lead. If they get hung up somewhere (sometimes they can get stuck on a piece of scenery), keep moving and they’ll catch up. In a couple missions where you have to blow things up, make sure you lead the other soldiers far enough away before you set the charges, or you’ll wind up with unintended casualties.

  You can also avoid unintended casualties by not shooting every enemy soldier you see; sometimes it’s better to let them stroll on their way if they don’t see you. For example, in one early mission you accompany two other soldiers in a boat across a river. On the other side, you see two Germans on patrol, but they’re walking away from you. Leave them alone and they’ll keep going, allowing you and your friends to disembark without getting shot at.