Medal of Honor : Airborne Review

There is no real story in this game. I should leave it at that and mark the game down heavily. I am a very story orientated gamer, I like a game with a good story-line. That isn't to say that I prefer story heavy games but I will look more favorably at a game with a good story. If the story drags me in and keeps me hooked then I can forgive any number of gameplay sins.

So were does the lack of story leave Airborne? There is homage to real war events. The game is educational you could say. It present six battles of world war 2 that the airborne division played a heavy role in. From Operation Husky where the Italian town of Adanti is liberated, through to the Attack of the Flak Tower in Germany. Several countries are visited and I presume we play the same soldier throughout the game, however I can't recall ever being told his name. Some soldiers accompany you for the most part of the game, they are cut down regularly and are replaced just as quickly, so there is no sense of camaraderie with your a.i. allies.

The game is a typical First person Shooter, the only novel system presented is the cover system. You move to cover and duck down, as with most FPS's you are now looking at a wall texture in close up, which isn't the best. Now as is the norm these days if you hold down the left trigger you sight along your weapon, which makes you more accurate but your looking around movemnt half the speed. The cover system comes in as now if you use your movement stick which is the left analogue stick you move your character's upper body only and can poke your head above and around the sides of cover to take pot shots and release the stick to duck back into cover. This system takes a while to get used to after the likes of Rainbow six and Gears of war but it is very effective and changes the pace of the game from run and gun to slightly more cover based tactics.

The game is a sandbox type game which is a deviation from the usual corridor shooter associated with world war 2 games. The six missions have a fairly large area of map associated with them and objectives are dotted about the map. You parachute in at the start of the mission and can choose from a ususal three safe landing spots. You have the option to land anywhere you can make your chute take you, however you better pull of a good landing and be ready to fight as you will probably land in heavily enemy occupied territory if you stray from the safe zones. You can land with a perfect landing, a flared landing and a botched landing. The time taken to recover and be ready to move and shoot differs with each.

Health is in the form of a four segmented bar. When you are shot it drops down, when you get in cover it goes back up but only to the nearest segment. Therefore you need to find health which is found around the maps and dropped by the dead.

The enemy seem to keep on coming unless you advance. Sit still and you will be shooting the same people all day, advance and it seems to stop them coming. This leads you into recklessness as a way to avoid repetitiveness, similar to the Call of Duty series.

The various objectives can be tackled in any order at the start of the mission and there comes a point where the story on the ground changes and you are presented with more linear objectives around the latter half to halfway point of the missions. As you approach objectives your allies are attacking, as is traditional for a.i. the fights seem to be going nowhere until you arrive. They kill each other but another re-spawns instantly to take the place of the fallen.

Objectives include the destruction of anti-aircraft guns, munitions depots, motor pools, fuel depots, communications aerials, radio equipment, spotting and radar towers, bunkers, pillboxes, machine gun nests, tanks, rail-guns, pressure valves, trains, half-tracks and ammunition lifts, You also find yourself assembling at specific points on the map, saving snipers teams, taking out german commanders, avoiding ambushes, securing towns, setting signal flares and picking up various objects of use in the missions.

Your guns have three staged upgrades and every person you shoot gains you experience with them. Shooting people in the head and in quick succession gains you more experience. The guns become more accurate and some have upgrades like grenade launcher which are added as you gain experience..

The a.i. is puzzling, sometimes there are never ending soldiers coming from a room with no other entrance than the one you are shooting into, which suggests infinite respawns. At other times there seems to be a finite number of troops in an area. Sometimes your a.i. helpers are totally ineffectual, at others they make a difference, sometimes they just vanish completely and you are left feeling you are fighting the battle alone. It's just not consistent and seems to work to an internal game logic that changes depending on circumstances that you are not privy to., This means you can never really get a good strategy worked out as you never know what the competence of the ai helpers will be like or how many or how never ending the enemy are going to be.

Puzzlingly the grenade danger icon does not show up when you are zoomed in using a scope, which leads to some annoying deaths for reasons that could have easily been avoided.

Boss fights are mainly just harder areas to storm like town halls and pillboxes. There are around 10 different types of soldier all with their own equipment load-out and abilities. The final troops you meet are Storm elites and they have huge chain-guns which are almost instantly fatal. They form the final bosses on the last mission, though they are around in smaller numbers on the later levels.

The level design is actually quite good surprisingly. The areas are all themed around the real world locations where the various historic battles took place. Environments range from italian towns to rolling countryside. factories to familiar beaches. the most impressive level is kept until last and is the Flak tower, which is imposing and excellently rendered.

The game engine is sound, with everything running mostly smooth, despite the huge aerial views you get when parachuting in.

Sound is average, rousing scores in the style of war movies, lots of bangs and whizzes from the bullets.

Checkpoints come at the end of each mission. For the most part you are only a drop away from where you left off, although when the going gets tough near the end a more liberal sprinkling of checkpoints would have been welcome.

I received 360 achievements, which seemed a bit meagre after the hardship I endured playing it on expert level. The cardinal sin of achievements is broken here and the casual and normal difficulty achievements remain locked after doing the higher level. If I want to play a game through three times I will. A game I am not enjoying to the fullest won't get my time just to get 1000 gamer points.

Multiplayer is something I never got around to, I don't give a high priority to multiplayer in a game and won't mark a game down for any multiplayer related sins or omissions.

There is little wrong with this game, it's a solid FPS which brings some innovations to the table. It just feels like another WW2 game however, harsh, but honestly how I felt. I would like to see the FPS sandbox style being used again and improved upon. I would certainly recommend a rental or bargain bin purchase.

Scoring

Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 4
Level Design 8
A.i. 5

Total 6.6