Medal of Honor: Airborne is by no means a bad game; it’s just not a particularly great one. Despite the fact that the maps are huge and the game isn’t quite on rails like the older games in the series, you can’t escape the fact that you have done most of this countless times before.
In Airborne, you play a member of the 82nd Airborne, dropping into World War II hot spots such as Sicily, Holland, etc. The game is a pretty much straight –up shooter but there are differences this time around which distinguish it from earlier games in the Medal of Honor line. For one, the missions are enormous and take a long time to complete (usually over an hour). Plus, being in the Airborne, you start off each mission jumping out of a plane. When you do your jump you see the entire landscape and have the option of landing in a safe green smoke zone or anywhere you desire if you’re feeling lucky. You can tackle missions any way you see fit; you aren’t required to do step one, then step two, etc. Landing is actually a pretty important part of the game because you can try to maneuver yourself atop a building, guardhouse, barn, and so on to get a quick height and cover advantage over the enemy. This is particularly effective when you have the sniper rifle handy.
The fact that the game doesn’t lead you by the nose is a big step for the series. Granted, there are a lot of times when you should be able to simply hop over a small fence or go into areas that seem logical but the game won’t let you. In some missions, like Market Garden, you can’t even go down certain streets because the map ends, leaving you running in place.
The game contains six missions, each with branching objectives; the first three are actually a lot of fun, but as the game continues certain realities start to become evident. First off: the game flat out cheats—especially on the later levels. The Germans develop an amazing ability to see you from any angle, at any time, no matter where you are. Even when you think you have the perfect sniping position, it takes the Germans a matter of seconds to see you and pick you off. This starts to become a problem at the end of Market Garden as you try to secure a bridge. Just poke your head out and you’re a dead man. From that point, the game is literally a cat and mouse affair as you try to avoid being seen by the Uber-Germans. This makes the game incredibly difficult at times, and not in a good, challenging way—it comes off cheap and artificial.
The AI also doesn’t help, either. While fellow Airborne squad mates fight along side you, they have no qualms about running out in the open, getting themselves killed. The Germans aren’t much smarter, though. Sure, they take cover but they have no real fear of death—they just have uncanny aim and since most can take multiple gun shots without as much as calling for a medic, maybe fearing death isn’t necessary?
Then there’s the weird re-spawning. Even after you clear out an area—if you die and have to re-drop, certain areas become magically repopulated with fresh German troops. This is what makes the game feel like a chore at times, and since you can only save the game at checkpoints, in lovely console fashion, you are going to have to watch that load screen quite a bit—and go back and do things multiple times because of it. Saving your game when and where you want should be a PC no-brainer by now, but sadly we live in a console world and have to live with it.
The game certainly looks good, though. Granted, you expect this from a big budget EA game but Medal of Honor doesn’t disappoint. You can also run the game on a modest system; the test rig for this review was a 2.4 GHz 1 GB ram system with a GeForce 6800 Ultra video card and the game ran extremely well even at relatively high settings. The sound is also a plus as you can hear fighting across the entire map – small arms fire, explosions, radio chatter, etc.
