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The Medal of Honor series is back in fine form. Once upon a time, Medal of Honor dazzled gamers with its authentic, epic, and some would say Hollywood-caliber display of World War II. Since that time many other WWII shooters have come and gone and in recent years, the Medal of Honor series has seen itself outshined by Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty series. With Call of Duty 4 moving to modern warfare, Medal of Honor Airborne fills the WWII void quite well. It’s the most engaging Medal of Honor in years.
Instead of crafting an elaborate new story, the development team at Electronic Arts has chosen to simply focus on the action. The game gives you a list of objectives before each mission and not much else. Airborne takes its name from the fact that you parachute out of a plane to begin each mission. This gives you the ability to parachute down to various locations in the battlefield and while there are some cool secret areas to find using this, for the most part you’ll find yourself parachuting to the safe zone (shown via green smoke). As you play the game, you’ll be able to upgrade and improve the weapons, as well as unlock secondary firing power.
The Medal of Honor has never attempted to be a sim and Airborne is no different. The game has six long levels that take upwards of an hour to complete. The missions typically involve taking out a large number of enemy soldiers, as well as destroying anti-artillery guns and tanks or detonating explosives. The artificial intelligence isn’t particularly intelligent but they are quite aggressive and looking for a fight. Airborne lets you tackle mission objectives in any order you want, which gives you some freedom especially in the latter missions. There are often two or three ways to get the same mix of objectives done and it’s interesting to figure out different approaches to the same missions.
Airborne includes a multiplayer component for up to 12 players. The game includes the expected multiplayer modes and six different maps and focuses largely on fast-paced, chaotic matches. The parachuting ability is actually quite cool and useful in multiplayer, giving you a strategic advantage if you use it properly.
The game’s graphics are good but not great. The character models look authentic enough with a good level of detail but don’t look quite as good as those in the Call of Duty series. The environments are quite large and feature some rather impressive buildings, but not all of the architecture shares the same level of detail. The explosions look good but again lack the oomph we’ve seen in other games. Technically, the game runs quite well thanks to a smooth framerate.
The audio is a bit more impressive. The orchestrated background music that the Medal of Honor series is known for is in full presence here. The sounds of war, particularly the weapon sound effects, sound great. The voice acting is solid and there is plenty of it to be found here.
Medal of Honor Airborne delivers the most compelling MOH experience in recent years. If you’re looking for a fun, chaotic WWII game this Holiday season, Medal of Honor Airbone is a great choice. -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Sep 19, 2007
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