Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond takes an all-or-nothing approach to VR game design, throwing you into one World War II European battle scene after another. Parachute from behind enemy lines, take charge of firing AA guns, clear Nazi trains, ride shotgun on a motorcycle, or storm Omaha Beach. It all sounds more exciting than it really is. I was often bored, especially by the tedious mission briefings and the dramatic dialogue interspersed between the action. I played on a first-generation Oculus Rift and was captivated by the VR headset, sometimes angrily telling Above and Beyond to "get on with it."

Compassionately, Above and Beyond allows me to at least fool around during the oddly paced conversation scenes (often with long pauses). I threw props around and, if allowed, put holes in my surroundings with pistols, rifles, and submachine guns. Because much of the dialogue went something like this: "There are things I'd rather do at my own expense (inaudible because I started shooting my pistol at the ceiling), and I'd like to do them at the cost of my own life. But I got the gist of it, and the usual boring suspects: the clean-cut American good guys, the brave British teenagers, and the French resistance fighters.

Cruelly, "Above and Beyond" restarts the scene as "revealing your identity" by having you goof around and shoot a gun at the floor. In those moments, you feel like you are being punished by the teacher for not paying attention in class. Sometimes they even nail you to the spot so that all you can do is stand there and listen. (Interestingly, sometimes the immobilization is removed and you are disembodied, and you turn around to see your own headless torso.)

Above and Beyond is not always more enjoyable when the shooting starts. Sometimes, when I jump out of cover, almost immediately everything turns echoing red, warning me that I'm being over-attacked; there wasn't much time to awkwardly sight in my M1 Garands and Gewehr 43s, so I shot from the hip, tracer rounds and plenty of room to spare. Relying on the hitbox, I used the analog stick on the left Oculus Touch controller to glide around and wipe out the enemy as quickly as possible. (There are other ways to move.)

It's fun in the moment, but most of the challenge is remembering to stock up on ammo and reloading as quickly as possible. Magazines don't snap into slots like they do in "Half-Life": in "Alix," there was no satisfying feeling of a magazine snapping into a slot. Not very satisfying for having to think about reloading. Even the ping-ponging sound of a spent M1 Garand clip is hard to hear. (I used the Oculus Rift built-in headphones.)

It got more fun when I lowered the difficulty to complete the awful ski segment in Norway (skiing very, very slowly while under fire). On easy, the auto-aim is so prominent that most other shots are headshots. I liked this approach. Even if not as clever, because pretending to be a crack shot without actually being one is more fun than squinting at a deadly chunk of pixels on the balcony.

If, like me, you are working with older VR hardware, know that there is quite a bit of shooting at range. Sniper rifles are available, but they are terrible to use, the scopes flatten the world and you have to cross your eyes to focus. Furthermore, without 360-degree tracking, it is easy to accidentally turn around in "Above and Beyond."

What was fun in Above and Beyond was holding a pistol sideways and trying to shoot Nazis in a way that did not seem out of place in the early 20th century. I also liked stabbing them in the chest with a syringe and treating them. It's an ultra-violent action, but I did it as casually as sticking a pin in a cushion, and VR games are great comedic vehicles, regardless of their intent. I was particularly amused when I accidentally used a syringe while trying to grab a gun, but also angry because a useful item was wasted. Likewise, grabbing a grenade with the intention of grabbing a syringe was only funny a few times. The funniest one was when I desperately reached for the submachine gun, only to have a potato shoved in front of my face.

The scenery was enjoyable in its own way. Especially some of the interior, which is stained with little details like books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Outside there are great views and an amazing number of unique scenes and set pieces. The number of landscapes produced for this game alone is a tremendous accomplishment.

With so much variety, it is fun just to see how the developers approached each scenario. There's a walking infiltration of a Nazi base with a box of papers, a terrifying stealth segment at sea, an underwater scene with arm-waving swimmers (which is just awful), and a scene where a crashed plane is shot down (this whole scene is bizarre junk). However, there are some silly movies that are kind of fun. For example, when you get into a tank, the cannon follows in the center of your field of view, making you feel like you are the tank. It's no more fun than any other on-rails tank combat level - you see the Panzerschreck guys and shoot them with machine guns - but after you take down a Tiger tank, you're off to do something completely different.

It's like wandering between gorgeous but disappointingly interactive museum exhibits, knowing that turning the valves on a U-boat is no more fun than being a janitor in a Nazi compound (where you have to bend over and pick up trash to blend in), but you still want to check it out.

Speaking of the museum, the campaign itself is clearly not a documentary. It's a bunch of soldiers having fun playing by their own rules, but there are History Channel-style documentary videos about the war, including interviews with veterans, as well as real 360-degree photos (craters, ruins, etc.). You have to unlock all of these by playing the campaign, which seems ridiculous. These are historical videos, not Destiny 2 exotics. That said, this is good content and makes me nostalgic for the multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedias of the 90s. (Not that it really needs to be in VR.)

Above and Beyond also has a survival mode and multiplayer. For some reason, the multiplayer has no sidearms, so reloading speed is more important than in the campaign. I found it annoying, but the multiplayer was fun. Most of the opponents are bots, and bots tend to stand still. They are fun to shoot. Even in point-capture mode, I easily camped out on enemy spawns, so I don't get the sense that this is going to be a competitive game. I would still prefer "Rainbow Six Siege" or "Valorant" for that kind of experience.

"Medal of Honor": Above and Beyond goes above and beyond in some ways. It's longer than expected, and it's chock-full of one-off experiences, multiplayer modes, and extras. And I can't say that it betrays the spirit of 2002's "Medal of Honor": Allied Assault was one of my favorite games as a teenager; the M1 Garand still rumbles quietly, and the beach assault scene is basically the same, running and planting between anti-tank obstacles The explosives have been added. But nearly two decades later, Steven Spielberg is directing films like "Ready Player One," and even in the still-young medium of VR, "Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond" feels dated.