Reviewed: September 28, 2007
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Developer
EA Los Angeles
Released: September 4, 2007
Genre: FPS
Players: 1-12
9
9
8
7
8.3
System Requirements:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Welcome to war, Airborne style. Medal of Honor: Airborne puts you, not in the driver seat, but jumping from planes for every insertion into combat. Even on many returns to combat when you die and have to start part of a level over you will be jumping in to return to duty.
Medal of Honor Airborne is the continuation of the very popular World War II series from Electronic Arts that focuses on the Airborne’s effort to winning the war. With some 1every fast paced action you will have plenty of chances to rearm and gather your forces.
Starting with a very sloppy storyline you are one of the elite Airborne Army specialists and will be parachuting into harms way for every mission. You start off the game with a quick, it was that quick for many in real combat, training course and it’s off to war. Once over Europe you will have to maneuver yourself to the green smoke that was dropped to show safe landing zones. These relatively small areas will have your resupplies so it is not only nice to land for safety in numbers but for your weapons and ammo caches.
The games first several levels are not that difficult but the game really gets moving toward the end of the single player campaign. The linear mission gameplay is gone and instead a more open Battlefield type is used. The battlefields here are not your regular squares but you do have a large area that has definite objectives inside the area that you have to accomplish.
Many times once one objective is accomplished another will open and you have added work to be done. The objectives can be done in any order and there are often two or three safe landing zones in each mission. Being able to maneuver and choose where you land is nice and sometimes a definite advantage due to being able to start behind the enemy and use your troops to your advantage.
I found during the game you could rally your troops to you by standing in one area for a bit and they would often try to fight their way to you and the objective you were near. This meant that if you parachuted way behind the enemy they would also rally to you and fight to get near your position. This does not always work out but for the most part it means you will not be alone all the time and many times it helps to have even one or two extra guns in play near you.
The missions and objectives are given to you in a briefing before your plane ride and you do get to look at the maps and area before going in. You start each mission in a plane with a different little clip that shows things like a relatively smooth ride in before the leisurely jump out the door, hah. Most of the time its rough and you’re getting holes in the plane near you so be ready to punch out fast.
A few of the small clips before your jump are interesting and the one is great as your plane is shot to pieces around you. They have really added some excitement and fun during the plane rides and your insertion. Once in the open air you have to decide where you want to land and control your jump using the arrow keys, a little practice and you can land the greased and perfect landing easily.
No matter where you land there will almost certainly be enemies except right on the green markers. Your fellow airborne troopers will try for the objectives just like you but if you’re near them they will also rally near you to work as a team. After playing a bit I could see and anticipate how the AI would work and it was pretty easy to get most of the objectives in the first half of the game accomplished. Only when they introduce the super SS trooper does the going get rough.
They have varying levels of bad guys you face and when they get up to the tenth level they get to be bit rough on your work. Many of the enemies can be taken out with one or two shots but the super trooper takes about ten or more direct hits to take him down. The amount of damage these guys can take can only be from their use of body armor, as they would otherwise have to be super-human. Did Hitler really make a super soldier?
Anyway, Medal of Honor: Airborne is very good for gameplay for the single player mission, even though the campaign is very short. The campaign has six levels but these levels are broken up into different sections due to the addition of objectives at times. The game does a good job with things like physics and damage models but there is nothing spectacular about the overall AI or game.
The textures and models for everything in Medal of Honor: Airborne look great and are very realistic as far as that can go. The damage models do come up short in that they do not have any collateral damage to other objects and the entire scenery is very static. Buildings and scenery will not be damaged by any of the activity near them and this kind of detracts from the game.
You expect to have at least some damage and it would have added so much to the game to be able to destroy or at least do some kind of damage to the buildings while blowing up your enemy. The graphics are pretty good and the textures look great. The explosions of hand grenades have a unique look with almost no flame but plenty of punch. The weapons and vehicles, what little vehicles there are, look realistic and even handle pretty well.
EA has done a great job of showing the hazards of war and the insertion is fantastic not only in visuals but in how you can add a great difficulty to the game on your own, just drop in way behind the enemy. The graphics for some scenes really stood out by having smoke and moving parts to objects in the far distance like in the last mission where you could see smoke from buildings on fire miles away. They have done a great job with many aspects of the game and I think many of the reviewers are selling Medal of Honor: Airborne a bit short.
Hearing your fellow troopers yell at you when you just shot one in the helmet is fun and very realistically accomplished. The sounds and voice acting are very good in Medal of Honor: Airborne even if the shot would have killed him. This occurred when the fellow troopers would get in my way when I was firing but it was fun to hear the tirade when it did happen.
Often the voice acting and added comments by fellow troopers was very well placed and authentic to the environment. The noises like weapons fire, explosions and general background sounds were very good and added to the environment you would expect to hear.
Adding to this the nice theme music during the briefings and short cut scenes you have a good addition in the audio area with some good overall effects with sound. They did a good job in many of the areas of Medal of Honor: Airborne to create a pretty good overall game.
If this game had been longer in the campaign it would have earned a lot more respect from the gaming community, at least in my opinion. The campaign could have easily been twice as long with a little more effort and not as much work involved.
I read on Wikipedia that EA had been planning an interesting arrangement with a single paratrooper going in before each drop to place the markers used and this would have doubled the campaign. It would have easily made a great addition to the gameplay but for some reason was left out of the game.
Besides the fact of the great drops and going in under fire for every mission you have a pretty solid multiplayer game here that works equally as well. The games for multiplayer end up being more of a sniper hunt to find the other players due to the limit of twelve being on any server. It is fun to sneak around some of the ruined buildings amongst the wreckage of Europe during World War II searching for the other few soldiers trying to do unto them before they do unto you.
Replaying Medal of Honor: Airborne is very fun as you can make the whole experience different just by where you drop in. Cranking up the difficulty also adds that much more effort on your part and they have also added all the upgrades you get during each mission to make the levels worth coming back for more.
When running around trying not to get your helmet shot off, this happens often, you can earn upgrades to the weapons you are using. When an upgrade is earned the scene will go into slow motion, don’t read the upgrade, use the time to hit the enemy hard. You will then get an upgrade for your weapons such as a better clip or faster bolt that increases the weapons efficiency.
The multiplayer does add some extra content to Airborne but the campaign is just too short here and would have added so much to the game if had been longer. There are not a lot of people playing the multiplayer and this is a shame but the game is pretty good overall.
Medal of Honor: Airborne is not a ground breaking game but it does take a new look at World War II first person shooters. Dropping in and deciding where and what you want to do first adds to the overall carefree style of the game and begins that arduous trek toward freestyle gaming that is just a step around the corner.
Airborne is a great shooter but it is a bit short but includes some very good multiplayer action for more of a small time fighting approach. Overall Medal of Honor: Airborne is a solid game and worth a few tries at getting the war effort off to a good start.