8 Video Game Reboots That Failed TWICE
5. Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor is a great example of a franchise that did major things for a genre and then got left eating the dust of games that it directly inspired. Its earliest entries set the standards of quality for first-person shooters but when Call of Duty came, well, calling then Medal of Honour found itself with something of an identity crisis.
With Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare having such a huge impact in 2007, Electronic Arts decided to follow suit by having the next MOH game - simply called Medal of Honor - set in the present. The series had been receiving mixed review scores for some time and this 2010 outing was no different. The (albeit short) campaign was the better half of the game’s offerings, as the multiplayer was criticised for not quite coming together. Familiar elements didn’t necessarily make a compelling whole, and overall the game just felt outdated due to how quickly the genre was racing forward.
It was the reboot’s sequel, Medal of Honor: Advanced Warfighter that truly bombed and caused the series to be seen as irrelevant, resulting in a dishonourable discharge from EA’s portfolio in favour of Battlefield.
Eight years later, MOH returned with Above & Beyond, with Titanfall devs Respawn at the helm. This title at least tried a few different things, including VR integration and the oft-praised Gallery mode which highlighted real-life diaries and documents from World War II. However, many found this to be at odds with a campaign that was just a series of disconnected set pieces between long cutscenes and a story led by some truly unlikable characters.
Above & Beyond, at least by 2020, was the most expensive Quest game developed which means, more than just filling its online lobbies, it desperately needed to sell. Considering the series has been dormant since, it seems that Medal of Honor is back to being MIA.