Medal of Honor Airborne
When will it end?
Posted October 27, 2007
Easily the longest running WWII series of first person shooters, Medal of Honor: Airborne is another attempt at capturing the percentage of gamers that don’t seem to be tired of WWII games. Released by Electronic Arts, this rendition of the series focuses on the fellows that wanted to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, the Airborne unit. While we have seen countless airplane jumps in other WWII shooters, EA molded the game around the jumps and created a much more specific experience.
The narrative follows the story of paratrooper Boyd Travers, a member of the 82nd Airborne. The story never really focuses on Travers, but more on the troops around him. As the war progresses, Travers is taken to drops in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and eventually directly into the heart of Germany via Operation Varsity. I found the bland nature of the story lacked the cinematic qualities seen in the Call of Duty titles. Also, the narrative felt wholly unoriginal and borrowed too many elements from past games in the same genre.
Gameplay
The single player campaign is broken up over six levels, some which are based on historical battles. Each level has a variety of tasks to complete in an open battlefield ranging from the narrow streets of a European village to an abandoned train yard. At the start of a level, the player has a choice of two weapons to take into battle along with a choice of handgun and grenade cache. As the player progress, new weapons will become available when collected on the battlefield. It’s nice to see limitations on the number of weapons a soldier can carry rather than have ten weapons magically hidden on your digital character.
The parachuting elements dominate the game’s design. Levels always begin with a jump into the fight and each respawn will sent you back into the air essentially floating down from the sky again. Additionally, the player has complete control on the landing location. While level requirements are typically linear in nature, you have the freedom to attack them in any order for the most part. Sometimes, it’s better to purposefully seek death to parachute closer to the next objective. The safe areas to land on the ground are marked with green smoke, but essentially the player can head right for the worst areas as well. Often times, you can force the A.I. teammates to catch up to your location by employing this strategy.
On the harder levels of difficulty, the enemy A.I. is ridiculously accurate. In certain areas of the game, it makes for a frustrating time. Climbing embankments with several mounted machine guns firing nonstop certainly wasn’t supposed to be easy, but the rapid honing of enemy fire will make you curse the controls more than once. The developers employed the terrible unlimited-spawn rule for enemies until you reach a certain point in the level. Also, enemies gradually increase in difficulty at the game progresses. The soldiers in the opening levels will fall with one or two shots while the insane, chain-gun wielding troopers at the end take a couple clips of bullets.
One aspect that I really enjoyed in this rendition of MOH are the weapon upgrades. Each kill with a particular weapon increases the meter that awards upgrades. The upgrades ranged from extras like scopes for increased accuracy, extra or larger clips, or blade attachments to the front of the weapon for melee attacks. My absolute favorite upgrade modified the German pistol into fully automatic fire with a 20-round clip. It was perfect for taking down an enemy when quickly turning a corner.
The multiplayer mode seems like an afterthought rather than a full-fledged game mode. The limited number of players per side (12 total) makes for some boring battles on giant maps. Nearly every team-based match I participated in eventually became a sniper battle rather than a team effort, although the territorial matches are lots of fun with a competent team. Standing around the center flag waiting for a teammate is just asking to be picked off by the opposing snipers. The maps are based on the levels in the game and I found that people seemed to love the German bunker map. Matches were usually lag free when connected to a decent server and the server browsing tool is certainly adequate.
Graphics
Visually, MOH: Airborne won’t win any awards for design, but it still paints a fairly desolate battlefield. Unfortunately, the environment is completely static and objects don’t react appropriately to changes in the area. I can toss a grenade next to a wooden crate and it doesn’t move an inch in the resulting explosion. Fire and smoke effects are pretty standard, but smooth on the framerate. The character animations get old after you’ve seen the 500th German soldier keel over the same exact way. Hit detection seemed hit or miss as well. For instance, firing directly into the leg / foot of an enemy from underneath a car was impossible. Prone positions were also problematic due to ground contact.
Audio
Medal of Honor games always have fantastic musical scores. It’s usually what I look forward to when popping in a new entry of the series and Airborne didn’t disappoint. Each flowing piece was penned by the man behind all the other MOH scores, Michael Giacchino. The sound effects are excellent as well, although I did notice a lack of bass during certain explosions. The dialogue is on point compared to the rest of the series and the voice actors did a great job with the lines.
Overall
Medal of Honor: Airborne is a solid release, but it’s far from an exceptional title. The tired exposition, short single player campaign, and limited multiplayer options keep Medal of Honor from excelling past other titles in the genre. Having grown up with Medal of Honor games on the original Playsation, I’m saddened to see how lackluster the series has become. Still, it’s worth picking up once the MSRP falls to the $30 range.
The narrative follows the story of paratrooper Boyd Travers, a member of the 82nd Airborne. The story never really focuses on Travers, but more on the troops around him. As the war progresses, Travers is taken to drops in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and eventually directly into the heart of Germany via Operation Varsity. I found the bland nature of the story lacked the cinematic qualities seen in the Call of Duty titles. Also, the narrative felt wholly unoriginal and borrowed too many elements from past games in the same genre.
Gameplay
The single player campaign is broken up over six levels, some which are based on historical battles. Each level has a variety of tasks to complete in an open battlefield ranging from the narrow streets of a European village to an abandoned train yard. At the start of a level, the player has a choice of two weapons to take into battle along with a choice of handgun and grenade cache. As the player progress, new weapons will become available when collected on the battlefield. It’s nice to see limitations on the number of weapons a soldier can carry rather than have ten weapons magically hidden on your digital character.
The parachuting elements dominate the game’s design. Levels always begin with a jump into the fight and each respawn will sent you back into the air essentially floating down from the sky again. Additionally, the player has complete control on the landing location. While level requirements are typically linear in nature, you have the freedom to attack them in any order for the most part. Sometimes, it’s better to purposefully seek death to parachute closer to the next objective. The safe areas to land on the ground are marked with green smoke, but essentially the player can head right for the worst areas as well. Often times, you can force the A.I. teammates to catch up to your location by employing this strategy.
On the harder levels of difficulty, the enemy A.I. is ridiculously accurate. In certain areas of the game, it makes for a frustrating time. Climbing embankments with several mounted machine guns firing nonstop certainly wasn’t supposed to be easy, but the rapid honing of enemy fire will make you curse the controls more than once. The developers employed the terrible unlimited-spawn rule for enemies until you reach a certain point in the level. Also, enemies gradually increase in difficulty at the game progresses. The soldiers in the opening levels will fall with one or two shots while the insane, chain-gun wielding troopers at the end take a couple clips of bullets.
One aspect that I really enjoyed in this rendition of MOH are the weapon upgrades. Each kill with a particular weapon increases the meter that awards upgrades. The upgrades ranged from extras like scopes for increased accuracy, extra or larger clips, or blade attachments to the front of the weapon for melee attacks. My absolute favorite upgrade modified the German pistol into fully automatic fire with a 20-round clip. It was perfect for taking down an enemy when quickly turning a corner.
The multiplayer mode seems like an afterthought rather than a full-fledged game mode. The limited number of players per side (12 total) makes for some boring battles on giant maps. Nearly every team-based match I participated in eventually became a sniper battle rather than a team effort, although the territorial matches are lots of fun with a competent team. Standing around the center flag waiting for a teammate is just asking to be picked off by the opposing snipers. The maps are based on the levels in the game and I found that people seemed to love the German bunker map. Matches were usually lag free when connected to a decent server and the server browsing tool is certainly adequate.
Graphics
Visually, MOH: Airborne won’t win any awards for design, but it still paints a fairly desolate battlefield. Unfortunately, the environment is completely static and objects don’t react appropriately to changes in the area. I can toss a grenade next to a wooden crate and it doesn’t move an inch in the resulting explosion. Fire and smoke effects are pretty standard, but smooth on the framerate. The character animations get old after you’ve seen the 500th German soldier keel over the same exact way. Hit detection seemed hit or miss as well. For instance, firing directly into the leg / foot of an enemy from underneath a car was impossible. Prone positions were also problematic due to ground contact.
Audio
Medal of Honor games always have fantastic musical scores. It’s usually what I look forward to when popping in a new entry of the series and Airborne didn’t disappoint. Each flowing piece was penned by the man behind all the other MOH scores, Michael Giacchino. The sound effects are excellent as well, although I did notice a lack of bass during certain explosions. The dialogue is on point compared to the rest of the series and the voice actors did a great job with the lines.
Overall
Medal of Honor: Airborne is a solid release, but it’s far from an exceptional title. The tired exposition, short single player campaign, and limited multiplayer options keep Medal of Honor from excelling past other titles in the genre. Having grown up with Medal of Honor games on the original Playsation, I’m saddened to see how lackluster the series has become. Still, it’s worth picking up once the MSRP falls to the $30 range.