Also featured in the last level are the Nazi Storm Elites, soldiers wearing nothing more than a Nazi officer's uniform that fire a MG42 with perfect accuracy from the hip and can shrug off a direct rocket hit and multiple head shots. Medal of Honor: Airborne has never called itself realistic, but when you go from fighting in a quasi-realistic setting for most of the game to fighting Nazi super soldiers in a dimly red-lit environment one wonders if the development of the final level was passed off to a different design team that was completely unfamiliar with the game.
Medal of Honor: Airborne does support multiplayer of up to twelve players over Xbox Live in either objective-based or capture the flag modes of play. Much as in the single player campaign the allied forces parachute onto the battlefield and combatants on both sides gain experience with their weaponry. The weapon experience level each player has in multiplayer is separate from the single player experience they may have gained, but like the single player the experience carries over from match to match. You also gain ranks as you play matches to indicate their level of skill. However, the multiplayer suffers from being fundamentally unbalanced as while the Allied players can parachute onto rooftops and into any area of the map the Axis always spawn in one of a handful of areas and have no means of getting onto the same rooftops or perches. Realism aside, the multiplayer seems woefully tipped in the favor of Allied players.
Presentation is one area that Medal of Honor: Airborne absolutely shines. Graphically the game is a powerhouse that makes battles seem completely chaotic thanks to impressive explosion, smoke, and debris effects. When you sprint the camera enters a slightly blurred shaky-cam state that only adds to the hectic feeling as you run from cover to cover, and the viewpoint realistically shifts as the player lands from parachuting and begins to unbuckle his parachute and harness. The music and sounds are mixed very well together, with music taking a backseat to the sounds of gunfire in normal combat and swelling when the action reaches a cliffhanger moment.
Medal of Honor: Airborne is, for the most part, what one would expect of a cutting edge World War II shooter. Overall the title has both great gameplay and great presentation, but the issues that plague it such as the sudden inclusion of completely out of place enemies and the woefully unbalanced multiplayer do tend to drag down the overall enjoyment level of an otherwise solid game. The enjoyable parts ultimately do outweigh the questionable ones, and despite its number of flaws Medal of Honor: Airborne is certainly worth recommending.
