Much of Allied Assault is drawn from Sa ving Private Ryan
Across the board, Allied Assault is a product of its time, unaware of the lessons of both Call of Duty and Half-Life 2. But where Omaha is a messy attempt at creating an ambitious, singular experience, elsewhere the lack of heavy direction is a boon. The opening is classic war drama, effectively expressed. You hide in the back of a truck as part of a convoy that’s infiltrating a Nazi camp in North Africa. A guard checks the documentation of the truck behind you, and your squadmates wonder whether he’s buying the ruse. It’s a short introduction that sets the tone, giving the scant justification needed to shoot up a level full of Nazis.
These opening missions feel like a way to bridge the original Medal of Honor games with Allied Assault’s later focus on being the unofficial companion to Saving Private Ryan. Both sections feature excellent mission design and variety. There are stealth sections, sniper sections, solo infiltrations and full-scale invasions. There’s also some turret sections, because, despite everything else, Allied Assault is still a ’00s FPS. There’s a brilliant early mission that involves walking disguised through an enemy base, using a false ID to bypass checkpoints. Still, the lack of a cohesive through line does make the campaign feel scattershot.
Why We Fight
The protagonist, Lt Mike Powell—yes, I had to look that up—has no real personality. He’s a cipher for a collection of war experiences, with no story to link them. Neither are his comrades noteworthy. Powell works as part of a squad, but his allies are disposable and quickly killed off. By Omaha, which doesn’t occur until the third chapter, I was desensitized to the plight of the basic AI.
In the years since, FPS campaigns have done more to characterize squadmates, and often use multiple protagonists to justify the whistle stop tour of different war scenarios. It’s easier to connect to characters facing impossible odds than with the vague terror of a terrible war.
Despite time not being kind to its presentation, Allied Assault is still a good shooter. It feels precise, with a focus on longer range combat. If you’re caught by surprise, the enemy can be deadly, and so there’s an emphasis on scouting, particularly in the open areas. Fortunately, Allied Assault features a recreation of the M1 Garand that still holds up. It’s a fantastic gun that’s crisp to fire and has more personality than many of the game’s characters. Allied Assault is no simulation, but a nice quirk is your inability to reload the Garand mid-clip—something considered too awkward to be worth attempting in the middle of a firefight.
Allied Assault is still an entertaining war shooter, and a fascinating step in the journey from Wolfenstein 3D to the upcoming Call of Duty: WW2. That the Medal of Honor series would destroy itself trying to mimic CoD is a shame, because Allied Assault proves that effective systems design can shine outside of Hollywood set pieces. This is, at times, a subtle representation of war, with a lightness of scripting that creates a distinct, now almost unrecognisable tone.