The original PlayStation isn’t really known for its first person shooters, but there are a few notable ones. When I think of exclusive FPS game son the console, the one that I immediately think of is the original Medal of Honor. This was a World War II themed shooter thought up by Steven Spielberg, of all people, during the making of his movie, Saving Private Ryan. That’s a neat thing, but does the game still hold up?

Right after firing the game up, I was pretty impressed by the presentation. There’s actual historical footage of events and people who were pivotal to the war while narration gives you a two minute, abridged version of what led to everything. The narrator speaks to you, saying that you’re someone with a particular set of skills that they’re looking for to assist the French resistance. With that out of the way, off to France you go.

At this point, the game really reminded me of what era it came out in. You get a mission briefing from a member of the French resistance, that tells you what’s going on and what your objectives are. This is extremely GoldenEye-like. Also just like GoldenEye, you’re not simply running through levels, shooting everything and seeing cool set pieces. Instead, you have to explore the levels to complete objectives. The first mission tasks you with finding a log book, a plane, and then entering a village. It’s nothing too complicated, but it does make you think a little bit about what you’re doing.

Another thing that immediately put me back into the 90’s was how the game controlled. This is an interesting one, because it does have full dual analog stick support. However, this is from a time before developers had really figured out exactly what the right way to use the two sticks is. In this case, like GoldenEye, the left stick has you moving forward and back as well as turning. The right stick has strafing left and right and looking up and down. This means that you really can’t aim with just the right stick, the way you would in a modern shooter. However, once again similar to GoldenEye, holding down R2 puts you in an aiming mode, where a crosshairs shows up on the screen, you can no longer move, but the left stick lets you aim wherever you like.

Maybe the weirdest control choice is the shoot button. Just about every shooter from this era I can think of maps shooting to one of the shoulder buttons, or Z if its an N64 game. But what about Medal of Honor? Here, it’s the X button. I already mentioned that aiming was weird in this game, but this makes it so you practically can’t aim without using the aim mode, because this makes you take your thumb off of the stick and onto the X button in order to shoot. It’s weird.

The game itself, despite its weird controls, is not bad. The first mission is pretty straightforward, but the French countryside looks nice and shooting Nazis is fun. At one point, you come across a mounted gun and can mow down a whole bunch of them. It’s simple, but works well. It takes until the second mission for the need to explore to really come into play. That mission, if you just move forward, you’re going to accomplish all the objectives. The second mission tasks you with taking out at least eight gestapo officers, destroying their radio, and finding the resistance’s base. If you play it the same way I did the first mission, you can pretty easily miss that radio.

So, that’s Medal of Honor for the original PlayStation. It’s kind of interesting to think about where this franchise went, especially in games like Allied Assault, with it’s large scale battles and crazy set pieces. This is more just a slower, World War II themed Goldeneye. But that’s not a bad thing, and it’s cool to remember that it really did take some time before developers really figured out the console first person shooter.