| Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Respawn Entertainment |
| Publisher | Electronic Arts |
| Director | Peter Hirschmann |
| Composers |
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| Series | Medal of Honor |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 4[1] |
| Platforms | Microsoft Windows Oculus Quest 2 |
| Release | December 11, 2020 |
| Genre | First-person shooter |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is a 2020first-person shootervirtual reality game developed byRespawn Entertainment and published byElectronic Arts. The game was released on December 11, 2020. It is the first release in theMedal of Honor series since 2012'sMedal of Honor: Warfighter.
As part of its Gallery mode,Above and Beyond includes the short documentaryColette, which won theAcademy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the93rd Academy Awards. While not mentioned by name in the Academy citation,Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is the first video game to receive an Oscar nomination for its content.[2]
The game takes place inNorth Africa,Free France,Norway, andNazi Germany duringWorld War II, taking the franchise back to its roots. Protagonists in the game include anOSS officers,US Army Air Force pilots,US Navy sailors,US Marines,US Army soldiers, andFrench Resistance fighters - who all fight againstWehrmacht (Heer,Luftwaffe,Kriegsmarine,Afrika Korps)Schutzstaffel,Gestapo, and otherNazis. The game also features multiplayer modes.[3]
Respawn Entertainment served as the game's developer. The core team of the studio previously worked onMedal of Honor: Allied Assault.[4]Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was not initially planned to be a VR game, but the developers pivoted toOculus Rift after meeting and discussing the game with Facebook executives.[5][6] It was released for the Oculus Rift andSteam VR on December 11, 2020.[7]Oculus added that it was one of the most expensive productions ever released for VR platforms.[8] The game was built using theUnreal Engine.[9]
As players progress in the game, they gain access to the Gallery, a collection of short documentaries featuring veterans of World War II.[10] While filming the documentaries for the Gallery mode, Respawn partnered withHonor Flight to bring the veterans interviewed to the locations of many historic events they experienced and interviewed them there. Vignettes of the Gallery, which includes more than 90 minutes of footage, premiered at short film festivals such as theBig Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2020.[10]
Colette is a 24-minute short documentary directed byAnthony Giacchino and produced by Alice Doyard and Annie Small as an installment in the Gallery series. The film follows former French Resistance memberColette Marin-Catherine as she travels toGermany for the first time in 74 years. Her visit is inspired by a young history student who enters her life and convinces her to visit theMittelbau-Dora concentration camp where her brother died at the hands of theNazis.[11]
Of the Gallery shorts,Colette garnered particular recognition for its cinematic value. It won the award for Best Short at the Big Sky Festival, making it eligible for submission to theAmerican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for awards consideration. Subsequently,Colette was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the93rd Academy Awards, the first film produced by a video-game studio to receive an Oscar nomination, and it would later win the award.[12][13]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 67/100[14] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Destructoid | 6/10[19] |
| GameSpot | 5/10[17] |
| IGN | 6/10[15] |
| PC Gamer (US) | 52/100[16] |
| Shacknews | 8/10[18] |
| CGMagazine | 7/10[20] |
Above and Beyond received "mixed or average" reviews from critics according to review aggregatorMetacritic, with an average of 67 out of 100.[14]
It was listed byValve as one of the bestselling games onSteam throughout the month of December 2020.[21]
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