You're geared up and ready to go. You and your unit are going to be the first allied troops to ground and battle with the enemy. Your plane is hit with a barrage of bullets and begins to fall to bits. You have to jump… now! With your heart pounding, you parachute your way down, landing roughly on the beach near a boathouse. The house is heavily guarded with riflemen and machine gunners, spraying hot lead in your direction. You have to find cover because those bullets are tearing everything in their path to pieces. You and your men have to advance or you will surely die. What a way to start a game!

EA say you don't play Medal of Honor: Vanguard - you volunteer. You volunteer as part of the All Americans 82nd division, the leading squadron of a whole fleet, the Vanguard. Joining the team of the 82nd division means you are part of an unknown quantity, trained in battle methods previously untested in a real life situations, so there is a lot resting on your shoulders. You play as Frank Keegan, a paratrooper dropped straight into the WWII action - and that action comes thick and fast.

With a quick look at the controls before you start playing, first person shooter fans should feel right at home. Some of the face buttons on the control pad are different to the 'norm' that seems to be present in many shooters, but it is very intuitive. I don't wish to bore you with the details but there is one feature that excels in this control system and is crucial towards your success. This is the ability to duck down and pop up (as well as the usual abilities of being able to stand, crouch and prone). This means you can crouch down behind an object, like a sandbag wall, and creep up ever so slightly and take a shot at the enemy. You can then duck down quick as a flash to avoid enemy fire. Once the enemy gets wise to this you can also lean around the sand bag to fire shots, again with limited exposure. This is a nice touch and it is possibly the best feature of the gameplay. It doesn't make you invincible though, because your enemies know these tricks of the trade too and you can only take a very limited amount of shots in close succession before you die (in anything above the Recruit/Easy difficulty setting).

While we are on the subject of invincibility, I should probably warn hardcore shooter fans to avoid the Recruit difficulty setting, because the game will be far too easy for you, plus you can't change it midway through a campaign (you have to make a totally different profile in fact). Try the next mode, which is Veteran difficulty, to avoid spoiling the single player experience. Each difficulty mode has a significant difference, so you will probably die a lot in Veteran mode. However, the game is much more rewarding to complete when it is a challenge, so the Recruit mode is only really for those with little experience of shooting games.

Vanguard is a truly awesome game with a superb balance of realism and arcade style playability. It is realistically presented and it doesn't take a lot for you to die - but it is arcade-like in the sense that you can try again from a checkpoint if you do die, rather than starting all over again. It is hard to get lost because of the linear level designs, which isn't always a plus point, but it does stop you from getting frustrated and it is well concealed by the immersing gameplay. Furthermore, the tasks are pretty simple, such as placing charges, finding objects like bazooka parts and blowing up tanks - but they do add a sense of purpose to your slaughter and they don't pull you away from the action that is constantly taking place. The only unrealistic aspect that I feel hinders the experience is that the bodies of your enemies fade away very quickly, which really reminds you that you are playing a computer game and detracts from the action a little. Other than that, Vanguard is the perfect balance of realism and playability, combining both short range/indoor combat with long range/outdoor combat (only without expansive locations for you to get lost in) and there isn't a single moment for you to get bored.

The graphics look superb too, in every respect. The movement and animations of the characters are smooth, when bullets hit the walls there are incredible dust effects, machine gun bullets whiz by with an illuminating flash, grenades explode and throw multi-textured dirt into the air and the locations really look the part. The details on the gun you're holding are crisp and there is a real sense that you are taking part (although they are not as crisp as the screenshots on the back of the game's packet… a curious marketing strategy). It's not the best looking shooter ever on the PS2, but I'm hard pressed to think of more than a few games that beat it (Black and Killzone come to mind). The sound is nothing short of magnificent too, with bullet ricochets and grenade explosions being spot on. Although it has been done before, it is great when that first grenade goes off close by, causing your ears to ring and vision to blur (your in-game ears and vision that is!) With the whole frantic atmosphere that the graphics and sound create, you really feel the desperation to take cover when there is a huge firefight. Even the rumble of the control pad and the sound of the gun you're firing accentuate the situation, something that's often taken for granted.

As you work your way through hordes of enemy troops you may notice that there is no indication of your health status. This is because you can survive a few shots here and there as long as they are not all at once. When your vision gradually becomes blood red you are in more and more trouble. Take cover for a short while and this should pass and you can go on fighting again. This may seem unrealistic, but it does work really well and with the vast number of troops you will be taking on I don't think anyone would complain about a chance to recover without having to scrape through until you find a medikit. You do have some help from fellow allies, but they are there mainly to provide covering fire. Strategy fans might be frustrated that you can't order them around, but pure shooter fans will enjoy their presence without having their thunder snatched away. My only personal frustration with this issue is when your allies take the best vantage points on the terrain, or put their heads in the way of your gun sight.

The only downside to the game that actually affects its overall score is its lifespan. When you first look at the four campaigns on the menu screen it really does look pathetic. You might think something like, "I paid £30 to play four missions, what a rip off!" But if you persevere you will notice that there are various missions within these campaigns and the last couple really do seem to last a while on the harder difficulty settings. Part of me didn't want this game to end because it was such a memorable experience, but another side of me was glad that it ended because they didn't do anything to ruin the game (like Max Payne almost did with its dream sequences). It probably won't last you until the next Medal of Honor game appears, but while it lasts it is simply brilliant. I wanted to give it a ten out of ten rating, but after a long session of wearing my thinking cap I decided it only just fell short. It is a must buy game, but it will only be a few weeks before you trade it in or let it gather dust on the shelf.

Once you have completed the single player game there is also a chance for you to show off your skills with your mates. If you have a multitap then up to four of you can battle it out in one of four modes - Death Match, Capture the Flag, Scavenger Hunt and King of the Hill. Unfortunately most of these modes are very similar (with the exception of Death Match) and of course you are always in danger of your mates taking a peek at a portion of the split screen that isn't allocated to them. Let's admit it, we all do this at times of desperation! [My brother and I refer to this as 'screen watching' and it's a cardinal sin! Ed]. I don't mean to say that they should have left this feature out though, as it will provide you with a couple more hours of action and it does have a few weapons that aren't in the single player mode (like a shotgun for example). However, it doesn't greatly increase the lifespan or even rival the single player game, and an online mode with more match types would have been a welcome feature.

If you are comfortable with the fact that you can't give orders to your troops and that the single player campaigns won't last very long then you will love Medal of Honor: Vanguard. You will love the crisp graphics and refreshingly exciting gameplay. You will love the constant action and atmospheric sound effects. You will grin like a Cheshire cat when manning machine-gun nests and spraying bullets in every direction. You will leap for joy when you blast tanks to burning scrap piles with your bazooka. Because with Medal of Honor: Vanguard, war isn't hell - it's gaming heaven.

Reviewed by Liam Bennion for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).