Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond reboots classic shooter in VR

Oculus and Respawn Entertainment have announced their long-awaited VR project, and it’s an unexpected reboot of a classic shooter. 

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is coming exclusively to virtual reality headsets and takes players back to the series’ roots as players battle through a series of battles based in World War 2. 

We last saw Medal of Honor in 2012 with the frankly mediocre Warfighter, which was both a critical and commercial failure for Electronic Arts. It’s been long enough that we’re happy to see it revisioned by a new studio. 

Announced during today’s Oculus Connect presentation, Above and Beyond will feature a variety of first-person battles as you fight  Nazis both on foot and in a variety of different vehicles. 

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It’s set to launch in Summer 2020 and it’s unclear if it will be coming to other platforms aside from Oculus, although given the franchise history, we’d love to see it on others, too.

The trailer features interviews from the development team, delving into what the series means to them and how they drew inspiration from real-life veterans to craft battles that are both enjoyable to play and accurate to real events. 

Respawn Entertainment is responsible for some of the finest shooting experiences in recent years, knowing its way around sharp, satisfying mechanics and story-driven gameplay. Titanfall 2 rules, and you should play. 

Judging by what we’ve seen thus far, it looks like a blast. Players can catch grenades in mid-air and hurl them back at enemies, or pull the pin out using their mouths to prepare for a timely explosion. 

Other setpieces involve planting explosives across a facility located upon a mountain range before setting them off from a distance, hinting at a mixture of both combat and stealth sequences. So long as we’re killing Nazis, we don’t mind where things are going down.