The recommended specs for Respawn’s Medal of Honor VR game are out – and they’re surprisingly demanding.
The recommended specs are listed on the Steam page for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, which comes out 12th December. Here’s how it weighs in:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating systemOS: Windows 10Processor: Intel i7 9700K equivalent or greaterMemory: 16GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia RTX 2080 equivalent or greaterStorage: 180GB available space
All that’s listed under minimum specs is the line: “Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system.” I’m guessing you’ll need more than that.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond – Multiplayer Trailer Watch on YouTube
It’s worth comparing these recommended specs to the minimum specs for Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s flagship VR game (there are no recommended specs for Half-Life: Alyx):
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating systemOS: Windows 10Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600Memory: 12GB RAMGraphics: GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM
Compared to Half-Life: Alyx, Medal of Honor is asking for a more powerful processor, more memory and a better graphics card. And it’s worth noting that 180GB of storage space required – a huge amount for a VR game. Well, for any game, really – unless you’re Call of Duty.
Respawn told Polygon Medal of Honor actually requires 340GB of space to unpack and install before it settles on a 180GB storage footprint. And it highly recommends installing the game on an SSD rather than an HDD.
Hands-On with Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Gameplay at OC6 – Ian’s VR Corner Watch on YouTube
So what’s going on here? In a post on the Oculus subreddit, Oculus Studios executive producer Mike “Mdoran” Doran said you can run the game on lower hardware than the recommended specs indicate, but “you might notice some more hitching / framerate dips”.
But it sounds like an SSD is pretty much essential: “And whatever you do, please make sure you use an SSD to play this game,” Doran said.
Then, in a later post, Doran added:
“The reason we have a recommended spec is because we’re confident that it will give players a good experience across the game. People with hardware that isn’t up to those specs can still play, but their exact performance is going to depend on a bunch of other factors, like what area of the game is being played, what headset they’re using, etc.
“I can totally understand not wanting to take the plunge on a 170GB download if you’re unsure about how it will run on your hardware.”
6 Best Oculus VR Games At Oculus Connect 6! – Ian’s VR Corner Watch on YouTube
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond includes six missions, with nine levels per mission. Levels can last anywhere from five to 20 minutes, depending on the circumstances, difficulty and playstyle. There’s a mix of open levels, narrative-focused levels, and on-rails levels where you’re shooting from a moving vehicle. And there’s a full suite of competitive multiplayer modes.