The Medal of Honor games are known for their usually successful attempts at atmosphere and realistic production values. Unfortunately, over the years the game itself has become noticeably staler, and European Assault does little to alleviate this problem while simultaneously making the series go downhill even further.

I might as well get the good out first. The high-quality music that has become a staple of the series is evident in this game, although less so than the previous installments. Also, the attention to detail throughout the game is quite thorough and obviously took a long time to apply. The sound quality is quite high definition, especially in Dolby PLII, which heightens the atmosphere tremendously.

That is everything good I can say about this game. Really.

The game itself is your usual Medal of Honor, except this time you get to “command a squad.” This part of the game is like a huge gravitational quality hole that single-handedly brings the entire game down. The “squad” mechanic is the worst I have ever seen in a video game. You can tell your squad two things: “Go there.” or “Stay here.” But damned if they are going to listen to you. Unless they meet a Nazi on the way, usually they go to where your cursor indicates and then come right back, even if you sent them away to avoid danger. They stick around you even if you just planted explosives, which sometimes leads to their deaths. The squad mechanic really feels tacked on and incomplete.

The game is brutally difficult, and not in the F-Zero GX “fair” way, but in the “broken game” way. Bullets just seem to materialize from your enemies' weapons to you, even if they are not aiming at you, and sometimes even from behind cover. Is it too much to ask for the enemies to be required to aim at you before firing? Even worse is that there are so many of them. I guess the designers figured that since you command a squad, you would need many, many more Nazis to fight, even if your squadmates have the IQ of rainbow trout. I had to play it on the easiest setting just to survive, and I by no means suck at video games.

The single-player mode is dreadfully linear, which would not be a problem, but the game claims to be “open” which is just not true at all. There are maybe one or two levels that could be considered “open”, but mostly the game requires you to march forward and kill all the Nazis in an area before moving on, all the while completing objectives like “kill this Nazi.” Or “destroy some tanks.” The game claims to have “secret objectives” but usually they are completed automatically while completing the non-secret objectives.

In all honesty, European Assault is just boring. I really did not get into it like I did the previous two games. This WWII shooter genre has become old hat, and games like European Assault make that hat older by using stale game devices without improvement and introducing new concepts in a slipshod fashion.