Dogs of War collared
And replaced with a European Assault. What are we on about? Medal of Honor, course, although we're sceptical about its magic invulnerable super soldiers.
Console World War II first-person shooter Medal of Honor: Dogs of War has been renamed Medal of Honor: European Assault, and will involve tracking down various reviewers on this side of the pond and beating us to death with copies of Rising Sun.
Well, that might be a sub-mission. The bulk of the game will, unsurprisingly, be given over to fighting World War II. As this is a European Assault, you can expect to control an American OSS agent called William Holt, fighting in diverse European locations including France and Northern Africa.
There'll be 12 missions in all, but we reckon that's a bit like the way Medal of Honor: Frontline only had ten. It didn't mean they couldn't go some.
And when we say "missions", we should probably say "levels", because as we understand it European Assault will be a bit more open-ended with several possible paths through each level. You'll be able to join your fellow soldiers in tackling AA guns or just go off and do other stuff before coming back to them, apparently.
When you do rally back to the fray, you'll be able to exercise a degree of squad control, having your fellow soldiers assume formations, provide suppressive fire, chuck grenades and so on.
EA also wants to reflect the "zone" feeling soldiers sometimes get in the thick of battle, finding superhuman strength to recover a fallen comrade or split-second reactions to dodge a bullet. Apparently it's doing this by having you build up a "rally meter" next to the health bar as you accumulate headshots or combo kills. Activating it, er, makes you invulnerable with infinite ammo in Bullet Time.
We'll see how that works out. If it doesn't, there'll always be split-screen multiplayer for two to four players, although no PS2 Online or Xbox Live confirmation at this point; apparently EA wants to get the single-player right this time after most recent console instalment, Rising Sun, failed to convince.
We're not sure when Medal of Honor: European Assault is due out, but US retailers reckon middle of the year and EA's Euro press site says "2005". We'll let you know when we do.