Feature By

Dale Weir

It wasn’t that long ago that first person shooters (FPS) were solely the domain of the PC industry. Made popular by such eternal classics as Wolfenstein, Doom and Marathon, the genre exploded in popularity on the PC in the late 1990s. Console gamers could only watch from afar since technical and perceptual limitations made FPSs unrealistic vehicles for the console game market. Their controls were built around a tandem of the keyboard and mouse, the graphics were too complex for the consoles available at the time to reproduce and the viewpoint was seen as very PC-centric. That meant that console owners had to make do with the rare porting of an old PC classic like Doom. This title enjoyed a modicum of success, but it was clear that its PC roots were holding it back. It was only after the arrival of the 32-/64-Bit generation of consoles, and more specifically the Nintendo 64 (N64), that things began to change. The N64 gets singled out because it brought with it Acclaim's Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Rare's GoldenEye 007. With PC-quality graphics and console-friendly controls, these two FPSs redefined the FPS genre for the console market.

Nowadays, a FPS is a must-have in a console's line-up—arguably as much of a necessity as the mascot platform title was in past generations. The PlayStation 2, in only its second year, has become home to more FPS titles than one might have thought possible and the line-up is packed with impressive releases like TimeSplitters, Quake III Revolution, Red Faction and Half-Life. This summer the PlayStation 2 roster will be boosted further with the release of an eagerly anticipated console FPS, Medal Of Honor: Frontline. The first console sequel to the original PlayStation releases, Frontline promises to be an entirely new adventure and not a port of Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault (the PC version released earlier this year).

Frontline takes place in 1944 during Operation Market Garden, the attempt by British and American airborne divisions to capture crucial German bridges behind enemy lines. Lieutenant Jimmy Patterson is called upon once again by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to infiltrate the German frontline and steal an experimental Nazi weapon called the HO-IX flying wing. The HO-IX is a weapon that could very well turn the tide of World War II in the favor of whomever possesses it. EALA (formerly DreamWorks Interactive) will try to balance stealth missions with full-frontal assaults on the enemy while giving players a great degree of freedom in terms of how they complete a mission.

Over the following pages, we'll take a look at what Frontline is bringing to the table.