If you’re planning to pick up Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond when it launches this Friday, take note of both the required space and recommended specs.
Update (December 10th, 2020): While Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was originally planned to require 340GB of free space for its installation process of the Oculus version (resulting in a final instal size of 170GB), Oculus says it has optimized the process such that it will now only required 180GB to install. While still a massive game, this will make it significantly easier to squeeze onto your drive. Be sure to update to the latest version of the Oculus PC software.
The original article, which overviews the game’s recommended specs, now reflects the latest info.
Original Article (December 7th, 2020): If you aren’t rolling in extra hard drive space, the upcoming launch of Medal of Honor: Aboveand Beyond might necessitate some overdue Spring cleaning.
While the final installation size of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond already sits at a huge 170GB, developer Respawn Entertainment advises you’ll need 180GB of free space for the installation process. The studio also highly recommends installing the game on an SSD rather than an HDD. If you’re looking to clear our some extra storage space, the excellent and free tool WinDirStat comes highly recommended by yours truly.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Recommended Specifications
For smooth VR gameplay, Respawn recommends the following specifications for Above and Beyond:
CPU: Intel Core-i7-9700K (or comparable AMD)
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Graphics Card: GTX 2080 (or comparable AMD)
Storage: 180GB required for installation, 170GB once installed (SSD or NVMe recommended)
The studio says that the game can be played with lower specs but players might see occasional performance issues.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Release Date, Price, and Supported Headsets
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to launch on December 11th in the Oculus PC store and Steam. It will be playable on Oculus Rift headsets and SteamVR headsets. Oculus Quest headsets can play the game if plugged into a capable PC via an Oculus Link cable.
Oculus has unfortunately not yet confirmed the price of the game, though we expect it will land between $40 and $60.
If you’re planning to pick up Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond when it launches this Friday, take note of both the required space and recommended specs.
If you aren’t rolling in extra hard drive space, the upcoming launch of Medal of Honor: Aboveand Beyond might necessitate some overdue Spring cleaning.
While the final installation size of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond already sits at a huge 170GB, developer Respawn Entertainment advises you’ll need 340GB of free space for the installation process. The studio also highly recommends installing the game on an SSD rather than an HDD. If you’re looking to clear our some extra storage space, the excellent and free tool WinDirStat comes highly recommended by yours truly.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Recommended Specifications
For smooth VR gameplay, Respawn recommends the following specifications for Above and Beyond:
CPU: Intel Core-i7-9700K (or comparable AMD)
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Graphics Card: GTX 2080 (or comparable AMD)
Storage: 340GB required for installation, 170GB once installed (SSD or NVMe recommended)
The studio says that the game can be played with lower specs but players might see occasional performance issues.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Release Date, Price, and Supported Headsets
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to launch on December 11th in the Oculus PC store and Steam. It will be playable on Oculus Rift headsets and SteamVR headsets. Oculus Quest headsets can play the game if plugged into a capable PC via an Oculus Link cable.
Oculus has unfortunately not yet confirmed the price of the game, though we expect it will land between $40 and $60.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know if you plan on playing Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond when it releases later this week?
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is just around the corner. The latest shooter from Respawn Entertainment drops exclusively for PC VR later this week on December 11th on the Oculus PC Store and SteamVR for Rift, Vive, and Index and it aims to deliver a full single-player campaign that lasts over 10 hours, a wave-based survival mode, and online multiplayer.
You can read our first impressions of the online multiplayer here as well as our round up on everything you need to know about the game’s modes, maps, guns, and more. The recommended specs are high, as is the amount of hard drive space required, so this is certainly one of the beefiest VR games to date that puts it up there in the same tier as Half-Life: Alyx and Asgard’s Wrath for sheer digital footprint required.
So, that brings us to the ultimate question: Do you plan on playing Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond when it releases? If so, which PC VR headset will you use? Are you holding out hope for a Quest port of some kind?
Let us know your plans later this week once Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond releases down in the comments below!
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is finally releasing this week for PC VR on the Oculus Home store and Steam. I’ve spent most of the past five or so days digging into the campaign and playing multiplayer. I can’t render a verdict just yet, but I can tell you everything you need to know about multiplayer in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
If you’re just interested in knowing what I think of the multiplayer and reading my hands-on impressions, you can read that here. The rest of this article is intended to round up all the details about the mode and give you the information you need to know.
Below we’ve rounded up all the info on Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond’s game modes, weapons, loadouts, character skins, progression system, multiplayer maps, bot functionality, how servers work, and whether or not to expect any post-launch support.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Game Modes
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has five different game modes for multiplayer. When queuing up for a game you can either pick a specific mode to try and match for, or pick Quick Play to load into whatever is most readily available at the time. All modes hold up to 12 players with team games offering 6v6 matches.
Deathmatch:
This is exactly what it sounds like. Twelve players are plopped into a map with infinite respawns to try and get the most kills before the timer runs out. Default match length is five minutes.
Team Deathmatch:
This is exactly like Deathmatch but it’s two teams of six instead. Everything else is identical. A basic game mode, but it’s usually the most popular choice in any online shooter for good reason.
Mad Bomber:
This one is pretty unique. On the surface it’s more or less just Deathmatch, however there is an interesting twist on the idea. Rather than just getting points for kills, every person in the match also has a timed explosive they can place on literally any surface. Once placed it starts a 30-second countdown. If you get any kills with your bomb (they have a huge explosion — if you can hear the timer ticking that means you’re in the blast zone) then you get lots of bonus points. You get bonus points for disarming other bombs as well.
Domination:
This one works just like you’d expect if you’ve ever played Call of Duty before. There are three capture points across the map (A, B, and C) and you’re split into two teams of six. You need to capture and hold a position to gain points and the longer you hold it the more points you get. Holding multiple positions grants more points over time. You also get points for kills. This is the most tactical of the game modes and teams that actually work together well tend to have the most success.
Blast Radius:
Of all the game modes in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, this one is by far my favorite. It’s basically just Deathmatch with everyone fighting for themselves, but the big twist is that there is a ring that will appear periodically for you to stand inside. If you get a kill while inside that ring it’s worth 5x as many points. Since you’re typically a sitting duck in the circle, each time someone dies in the ring a single-shot rocket launcher spawns on their body to aid whoever is in the circle. Pardon the pun, but this mode is truly a blast.
Weapons and Loadouts
There aren’t many guns to pick from in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond multiplayer — only eight in fact — but luckily they all really and truly do feel different. As of this time each loadout only has that single primary weapon — there are no sidearms or pistols in multiplayer.
Guns:
M1A1 SMG – Short range, high rate-of-fire. Very small and quick choice.
MP40 SMG – Submachine gun with slightly more reliable accuracy compared to the M1A1 but a slower rate of fire.
StG 44 – Automatic rifle with longer range but the rate of fire is slower than the comparable SMGs. A bit larger in terms of size by comparison.
Combat Shotgun – Pump-action shotgun with shells automatically loaded into the bottom once empty, but you must manually pump in between every shot. Great for close range with very high-damage.
Lever-Action Repeater – This rifle has excellent stopping power but reloading is a bit wonky with the way the lever works. Takes a bit of practice.
M1 Garand Rifle – Semi-auto rifle with an iconic ping chime as magazine ejects. Easy to reload quickly.
Gewehr 43 – Semi-auto rifle with reliable accuracy, it’s similar to the other semi-auto rifles on offer.
Gewehr 43 Scoped – This is the same as the previous gun, but it has a scope. In Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, scopes just take up your entire vision like a full-screen black screen and a scope circle in the middle — they’re not real VR scopes.
Secondary Loadout Choices:
When you choose a primary weapon during multiplayer you also get to choose secondary loadout options. This includes either three healthy syringes, a special contact-explosive Gammon Bomb grenade, or a standard frag grenade and a single healthy syringe.
Mid-Match Weapons:
Additionally, there are alternative weapons spread around every map. This includes different types of grenades, the occasional grenade launcher for instant-kills, and a few other goodies. You won’t be collecting power-ups or anything game-changing this way, but you should keep your eyes peeled for things that could grant a slight advantage in the moment.
Progressions and Character Skins
Unfortunately there is no real progression system at all in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond’s multiplayer. There are no levels, or ranks, or anything to unlock by playing games. All guns are available from the very beginning without any option to tweak them.
At the time of this writing, the only unlockable contents are character skins which you earn by playing through the single-player campaign. Hopefully they consider at least adding weapon skins, if not more, later on.
Multiplayer Maps
There are ten total maps in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond and they legitimately are all extremely well-designed. In many VR shooters you’ll find a lack of map variety, lack of verticality, and nothing feels organic or natural. Respawn did a great job here. I was particularly fond of the church and the overturned train on the snow level. Everything has a very distinct feel and they function well for each of the game modes.
Bots for Multiplayer
Thankfully Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond includes full bot support. This means if no one is online when you’re trying to play you can still play multiplayer matches because the game will auto-fill lobbies with bots. Alternatively, you can go into a private lobby and customize how many bots or players exist on each side. You could even set it up so you and a friend are playing against just bots and make it like a series of unofficial co-op missions.
However, it does not seem like there are any customization options for bots in terms of difficulty, what their loadouts are, their skins, etc. Perhaps that may be added in the future.
Dedicated Servers, Parties, and Private Matches
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond utilizes dedicated servers so you shouldn’t have to worry about errors getting disconnected from hosts while playing. When you first join multiplayer matchmaking the game will automatically be set to “default” which will naturally result in whatever has the lowest ping. Beyond that you’ll see a list of specific dedicated server options for Asia, Australia, Europe, US East, and US West.
In the Multiplayer lobby you can also create a party by inviting people from your friends list. From there you can launch into a public game together, as a group, or into a private match. When arranging a private match you get a few options for tweaking game settings and of course you get to pick the map and mode.
Post-Launch Support
So far there has been no indication of post-launch support plans for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond for neither single player nor multiplayer. However, given Respawn’s history it’s entirely possible we could at least see new weapons or skins added, if not maps and game modes. Fingers crossed!
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond releases on December 11th as a PC VR-exclusive on both the Oculus Home store and SteamVR with support officially listed for Rift, Vive, and Index.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond releases this week across the Oculus PC Store and SteamVR for PC VR headsets. We can’t disclose our verdict on the game as a whole just yet, but the final preview embargo has now lifted so we can talk about our early impressions and publish thoughts on multiplayer.
In addition to Above and Beyond’s single-player campaign, you can master the distinctive handling of a host of WWII weapons and test yourself against opponents in five multiplayer modes on sites across Europe.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Multiplayer Impressions
Naturally, these impressions come with a lot of caveats. Since the game isn’t live yet these multiplayer impressions are based on specifically scheduled sessions with producers, developers, QA testers, and fellow members of the gaming press to run through the various game modes on several maps. I also supplemented that time by playing several rounds of each game mode against CPU opponents as well.
The issue here is that not only were my teammates and enemies not your typical gamers that are learning the game for the first time but also servers were relatively stable. I had issues connecting at first, but eventually, it worked itself out.
Game Modes Impressions
There are five game modes between Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Blast Radius, Mad Bomber, and Domination. The first four of those listed are all basically just some variation on deathmatch with a twist of some kind, so the variety isn’t actually as great as it seems on first glance.
For example, Mad Bomber is very similar to Deathmatch other than the fact that each player also has a timed explosive they can plant wherever they want. You get bonus points for explosive kills and disarming other explosives. In the end, it boils down to just being Deathmatch with a few sporadic extra kills here and there.
It’s really a shame that a WWII-era shooter is launching without a Capture the Flag mode or something that really takes advantage of the unique advantages VR presents. Something that incorporates some vehicles in some way would have been awesome, or at the very least another objective-based mode instead of four variations off of Deathmatch.
Weapons Impressions
The weapon selection is also shallow in the same way. There are only eight primary guns to pick from and weapons like the MP40 and M1A1 feel very similar in practice and two of the options are literally the exact same gun, except one of the options has a scope and the other doesn’t. Since there are zero sidearms in multiplayer and no progression system to speak of it just left a lot to be desired for me in terms of depth and options.
Luckily the ten large, spacious maps are fantastic. It’s extremely evident that this is a studio that has years and years of experience designing online multiplayer shooters so the map design philosophies really carry across well into a made-for-VR title like this. I feel like all-too-often VR shooter maps lack verticality and they all kind of feel the same, but that’s not the case here. There’s a snowy map with a light hazy fog effect in the air which pairs well with the stark white landscape — it’s a great juxtaposition for the ruined suburban church with exploded walls and destroyed interiors.
Overall ten entirely unique maps is a really great launching off point for this type of shooter and should keep things fresh for a while across all of the game modes.
Overall, I had a lot of fun playing multiplayer. In many ways it feels true to the tone and pacing of the original Medal of Honor games, specifically in terms of the fast-paced structure that focuses on delivering fun thrills without much complexity or depth. After a few hours it left me yearning for more in some ways, but it does scratch a certain itch that nothing on the market really does right now — not even Onward, Pavlov, Contractors, or any others that I’ve tried — due in large part to the nostalgia I feel for the brand and the setting.
The biggest hindrance overall is the lack of any sense of overarching progression. The fact that EA and Respawn have managed to capture that old-school feeling in the moment-to-moment gameplay and base WWII setting is a great achievement, but I also fear they may have turned the clock back in other ways too much as well. You don’t have a rank that levels up, there are no unlockables at all besides character skins — which are earned via campaign progress — and every gun is available from the start with zero changes possible. You can’t tweak your loadout or even change weapon skins.
As much as I enjoy the gameplay on a surface level, it doesn’t seem to go very far beyond the window dressing from what I’ve seen so far.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond releases on December 11th as a PC VR-exclusive on both the Oculus Home store and SteamVR with support officially listed for Rift, Vive, and Index.
This week Facebook revealed Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond recommended specs, and they’re on the heavy side.
Oculus Studios producer Mike Doran took to Reddit to reveal the recommended specs for the VR-exclusive shooter (though, notably, no sign of minimum requirements just yet). You’ll want a beefy rig to get the most out of the game; Facebook’s asking for the RTX 2080 GPU and 16GB of RAM. “YES, this is a high spec,” Doran said. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t run it on lower hardware, but you might notice some more hitching / framerate dips.”
The full spec is below.
Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond Recommended Specs
CPU: Intel i7 9700K (or comparable AMD)
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX 2080
“And whatever you do, please make sure you use an SSD to play this game,” Doran added.
VR games often require a powerful PC to run, but Medal of Honor’s spec definitely goes, well, above and beyond. The game offers a full single-player campaign and a suite of multiplayer modes with blockbuster production values, though, so this isn’t too surprising. “Part of the reason for the conservative recommended spec is because there are so many scenarios in this game,” Doran noted in another comment.
We’re just a few days out from the game’s full launch on the Oculus Store and SteamVR launch now. Oculus also wants to bring the game to Quest, but won’t commit to anything until it knows if that’s even possible.
What do you make of the Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond recommended specs? Will you need to upgrade your rig? Let us know in the comments below!
With Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond nearly just a week away from release, we still know surprisingly little about the game’s multiplayer component. Luckily we’ve got some details to share.
Now we’ve gleaned some specifics on the functions and features of the game’s multiplayer.
Cross-play Between Oculus and Steam
Because the game is the first Oculus Studios title to be released on both Oculus and Steam, one big question on our mind was whether or not the game’s multiplayer will support cross-play.
Luckily the answer is “yes,” says Mike Doran, Oculus Studios Executive Producer. But there’s a catch.
While the game will have cross-platform matchmaking (a shared pool of players queueing up for matches), individual player invites between platforms is not supported, meaning you won’t be able to invite a friend to your squad if they’re on the opposite platform.
“We don’t have a way for the social graphs to talk to each other as there’s no EA account required to play the game,” Doran explained.
That’s a bit of a bummer, but at least cross-platform matchmaking means the game’s population will be healthier than if the two were divided. Some cross-platform VR games have gotten around this cross-platform invite limitation by allowing players to join one another via a ‘room code’ which connects players to a specific room, so there’s at least some hope that such a system could be added after the fact if there’s demand for it.
Bots to Fill Empty Slots
To further support the health of the game’s multiplayer population, Doran says that Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will automatically fill empty team slots with bots. That means that even a handful of players will be enough to get a match started—far better than sitting in an endless queue—and hopefully the game will be able to swap out the bots for real players as more people queue for matches.
Dedicated Servers, Private Matches, and Team Sizes
Speaking of matches, Doran also confirmed that, in addition to public matchmaking, players can also choose to host private matches. All matches, public and private, will use dedicated servers.
He also said that multiplayer matches support up to 12 players at a time. We’ve seen that the game offers team modes, meaning the maximum team size will be 6 vs. 6. Free-for-all modes are also in the game, pitting all players against each other, though we’re not yet sure if multi-team modes (ie: 4 vs. 4 vs. 4) will be supported.
We’ve known Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond would include a multiplayer component, but with just a little over a week left before its December 11th launch, it wasn’t clear if developer Respawn Entertainment would offer much detail ahead of time. Luckily a new multiplayer trailer for the game released today, giving us our first good look at how it will play.
As a studio known for its kinetic shooters (Titanfall, Apex Legends), there was little doubt that Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond multiplayer would be a run-and-gun affair, and the new trailer does a great job of showing off how the action will play out.
In addition to Above and Beyond’s single-player campaign, you can master the distinctive handling of a host of WWII weapons and test yourself against opponents in five multiplayer modes on sites across Europe.
While the delay in releasing info was worrisome, fortunately it looks like Above and Beyond will feature a full slate of five multiplayer modes across various maps.
Mad Bomber – Plant and defuse bombs
Deathmatch – Free for all
Team Deathmatch – Teams competing for kill count
Blast Radius – Explosive king of the hill
Domination – Take and hold territory points with your team
We don’t know how many weapons and maps yet, but the trailer showed at least nine different guns and two different grenades.
With such a wide range of modes, there is of course concern that the player population could be stretched thin. Luckily the game is due to launch on both Oculus PC and SteamVR (it will be the first Oculus Studios title to be released on a non-Oculus platform). We’re hopeful that cross-play will be supported between the two platforms, though we don’t have explicit confirmation yet.
Respawn has finally revealed Medal of Honor: Above And Beyond’s multiplayer modes and, as promised, there are some interesting ideas here.
Facebook’s Oculus today tweeted a new trailer for the game, seen below. It gives us our first look at the online portion of the PC VR shooter, which arrives on December 11th. Based on the trailer, we now know there are five modes, including your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch game types. But that’s not all.
Medal of Honor Multiplayer Trailer Revealed
In addition to Above and Beyond’s single-player campaign, you can master the distinctive handling of a host of WWII weapons and test yourself against opponents in five multiplayer modes on sites across Europe.
Headlining the trailer is a mode called Mad Bomber. Here a player will be given a bomb they have to plant and then defend whilst others try to defuse it. Based on the trailer, it looks like you can plant the bomb pretty much wherever you see fit. It seems like the mode could make great use of VR.
The last two modes include Domination, in which you fight for control of points on a map and Blast Radius, which is described as an explosive take on King of the Hill.
Overall it looks quite promising, especially when you consider that this is in addition to Above And Beyond’s single-player offering, which includes a full, story-driven campaign. This will be the first Medal of Honor game in eight years and a full circle moment for Respawn, members of which helped create the series back on the original PlayStation.
Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about it. We’re just over a week from launch, so check back soon for plenty more coverage on the game, which is launching on both the Oculus Rift store and SteamVR.
Respawn has finally revealed Medal of Honor: Above And Beyond’s multiplayer modes and, as promised, there are some interesting ideas here.
Facebook’s Oculus today tweeted a new trailer for the game, seen below. It gives us our first look at the online portion of the PC VR shooter, which arrives on December 11th. Based on the trailer, we now know there are five modes, including your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch game types. But that’s not all.
Medal of Honor Multiplayer Trailer Revealed
In addition to Above and Beyond’s single-player campaign, you can master the distinctive handling of a host of WWII weapons and test yourself against opponents in five multiplayer modes on sites across Europe.
Headlining the trailer is a mode called Mad Bomber. Here a player will be given a bomb they have to plant and then defend whilst others try to defuse it. Based on the trailer, it looks like you can plant the bomb pretty much wherever you see fit. It seems like the mode could make great use of VR.
The last two modes include Domination, in which you fight for control of points on a map and Blast Radius, which is described as an explosive take on King of the Hill.
Overall it looks quite promising, especially when you consider that this is in addition to Above And Beyond’s single-player offering, which includes a full, story-driven campaign. This will be the first Medal of Honor game in eight years and a full circle moment for Respawn, members of which helped create the series back on the original PlayStation.
Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about it. We’re just over a week from launch, so check back soon for plenty more coverage on the game, which is launching on both the Oculus Rift store and SteamVR.
