The Medal of Honor series has been around for nearly eight years now, and for half of that time the series was the only real contender in the World War II shooter market. Over its history the tone of the series has changed from title to title ranging from realistic to fantasy though always coupled with a gritty presentation of war, and while Medal of Honor: Airborne has exceptional presentation, much like the series as a whole, the game suffers from the lack of a unified theme.
Medal of Honor: Airborne revolves around the bravery of the 101st Airborne Division who parachuted behind enemy lines in both night and day operations in World War II to seize or destroy key objectives and to pave the way for larger Allied offensives. At the start of every mission you must first jump out of a plane and parachute down to the battlefield, and must choose to either land in the “safe zones” marked with green smoke or can choose to literally land nearly anywhere on the battlefield that they wish. (This is not always advised…)
This open map gameplay doesn't have much in the way of artificial limitations; if you can guide your parachute onto it you can land on any surface that you choose. For example in the first level you can land in the safe zones with the rest of the squad and continue the ground assault from there, but you may also elect to land alone in the destroyed church bell tower and snipe off enemies to help clear the way for the rest of the squad. Every map has a set of objectives that can be completed in any order, and at times the parachuting aspect can be used to great advantage in achieving them such as landing on top of a house that has objectives on its roof rather than fight through the house to get to them.
Once on the ground Medal of Honor: Airborne plays much like a standard first-person shooter. You have a fairly standard array of actions you can perform such as sprinting, using and cooking grenades, using your weapon to melee an opponent, and aiming down the gun's sights. When playing on the normal or especially the expert difficulty levels the title plays out much like a realistic shooter that rewards taking cover and methodically moving up as opposed to blindly running and gunning.
A great ability is being able to lean and alter your stance height while you are aiming down the sights of your gun. Moving the left stick to the left or right allows you to lean only as much as you want to expose yourself and see your target, while moving it up or down allows you to crouch down lower (or if already crouched allows you to either stand up a little bit or get down even lower to a nearly prone viewpoint). You can still move forward at a walking pace by pressing the key assigned to the sprint function while aiming, allowing you to move up and still keep your gun at their shoulder.
At the start of every mission you can choose your weapon load-out, and the choices available expand from mission to mission. You can equip three weapon slots, two for primary weapons and one of the game's two pistols. The primary slot choices range anywhere from Allied to Axis weaponry, BAR automatic rifles to shotguns, MP40 submachine guns to Kar98k bolt action rifles. As you use any weapon you then gain experience with it, and at three intervals of experience the weapon gains an upgrade such as a faster reload speed, higher damage rounds, or accuracy increases.
The first five levels of the six that make up the single player campaign are some of the best that the genre has seen thus far with gameplay that not only fully embraces the open map and vertical gameplay mechanics but also stay at an aggressive yet not overbearing difficulty level. The sixth and final level however revolves around a fictional airborne assault on one of the various Nazi flak towers, and at the start forces you to either land on the roof or on the ground and complete the rest of the level in a largely uninspired corridor shooter fashion.
