MOH Spearhead is a "close, but no cigar" sequal to the superior MOH Allied Assault.
Like MOHAA, I just finished playing the complete single player campaign of Spearhead for the third time. Spearhead reminded me why I ultimately preferred the COD series of WWII FPS games. That's not to say that Spearhead is a bad game, it however does not stand up well to the original game or its COD competitors. Why? Well my main issue is that if a game is intended to depict the activities of the British airborne on D-Day or Soviet forces in Berlin then it should be through their eyes, not that of a misplaced American soldier. MOHAA certainly has a better compilation of missions out of the box and Spearhead is pretty much a "mission pack" rather than a sequal to MOHAA.
Perhaps because the Congressional Medal of Honor is an American award for heroism it was not thought possible to have non-American main characters. COD suffered no such restrictions, except that like MOH it only shows the allied not German perspective in the single player campaigns. As a result we have a US paratrooper, Sgt Jack Barnes, of the 501st Para Inf Regt (101st Division), equipped with British and Soviet weapons. The use of the Barnes character fits perfectly into the Bulge mission, is somewhat stretched in the D-Day one (knowing that the 101st were scattered during the drop ... perhaps not as far as the British sector), and totally out of place in Berlin. Perhaps Lt Powell of the OSS (MOHAA) would be a more sensible character in Berlin, especially as it involves recovering documents listing double agents.
Anyway, if you wish to experience the British airborne at Normandy play COD (Pegasus Bridge mission) and the Soviets in Berlin play COD, or better still CODWAW (in their respective Reichstag missions). Historical accuracy has not been MOH's strong point, rather it is the immersive nature of its "suspend your disbelief" missions.
Spearhead, like Allied Assault, is mission driven with little in the way of character development or narrative. By and large the missions in Spearhead are quite challenging and in most parts enjoyable. The memorable aspects of the three missions are:
o Operation Overlord, Normandy - nightime parachute landing, link up with British, knock out AA positions, clear buildings, eliminate enemy officer, and destroy railway bridge.
o Ardennes, Christmas Eve - Bulge-themed missions, destroy Nebelwerfers, attack supply depot, steal half track and man its AT gun (a difficult "on the rails" segment), foxhole hopping during artillery barrage, defend trenchlines, destroy tanks, clear out church, and use AA to shoot down Stuka.
o Berlin - incongrous document recovery mission, large map with multiple pathways to mission completion, clear snipers, man 88mm AT gun, operate a T34 tank, and defend against a last ditch German attack.
The Berlin mission, historicity issues aside, is probably my favourite as it is less on the rails than the Bulge mission, epecially the section on board the AT gun armed half-track. The "British" mission also has a good variety of objectives that cover a number of WWII genres. The Berlin mission permits use of a number of pathways to complete each objective, this is more obvious if you have played the missions through multiple times depending on whether you capture the 88mm AT gun and destroy the German tanks first or go through the building with the safe thereby acquiring the T34. The building with the safe has other floors and rooms, if you turn right instead of left at the top of the stairs off the lobby, which you may miss if you recover the documents from the safe too early triggering a partial building collapse.
Spearhead like MOHAA has its obligatory tank driving mission, this time a T34. The MOH series took this, literally, to new heights in MOH Pacific Assault in which the hapless marine hero end up piloting a dive bomber. Personally both MOH and COD are at their best as infantryman only simulations, but many players like the chance to single-handedly drive a tank, man its main AT gun and its machineguns simultaneously. Well, horses for courses.
While the contemporaneous COD titles look better, especially the environments, Spearhead's graphics stand up very well when played on a modern PC with graphics settings on maximum. It's amazing to play an "old" FPS, like the early MOH and COD titles, which play so smoothly without all the smoke and floating debris effects that the newer titles have. While greatly adding to the "being there" atmosphere these, nowadays overused, effects are tremendous GPU and/or CPU hogs.
Gameplay-wise Spearhead is essentially identical to MOHAA with the only addition I noticed being a primite form of leaning which can be used to fire from behind (vertical) cover. There are of course some new weapons to reflect the British and Soviet themes of the missions, along with the usual array of timer and stick bombs for blowing stuff up. While I am no longer motivated to play multiplayer games the MP maps in Spearhead are quite good.
As in MOHAA you gain awards (medals) for completing the missions and replaying missions or segments to earn higher/more awards adds to the replayability. One of the non-gameplay highlights of Spearhead are the poems written by former Allied soldiers and read by Gary Oldman at the conclusion of each mission.
OVERALL: MOH Spearhead is worth playing as part of the Warchest or other MOH compilation, however if you only have MOHAA its debatable whether you should buy it. Essentially MOH Spearhead is MOHAA, just much shorter and with no substantive gameplay improvements.