Medal of Honor Airborne (PC)

Developed by EA, Medal of Honor Airborne is the 5^th game in the series to come to the PC. Despite using the very good Unreal Engine 3 this game has “bad” written all over it, with only a handful of redeeming features.

Like most of the other Medal of Honor games you once again take on the role of an American soldier. Fighting alongside your allies from the 82^nd Airborne you take part in various missions including the invasion of Normandy and Operation Market Garden.

The first mission sets a benchmark for the game, and yet you very rarely see any improvement on this. It’s almost like the developers got bored early on, fumbled together some poorly designed maps and gave the player the exact same objectives to complete on each one, such as… blow up a tank, destroy enemy radio, blow up another tank, take out the sniper etc…

It’s a shame because the Unreal Engine has a lot of potential, which has been realised to some extent in games like Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas. However it’s difficult to see anything new with Airborne. The games main selling point is that you parachute into every level, but even this seems like a gimmick which doesn’t serve to affect the gameplay in any way, shape or form. The idea seemed to be that by choosing your start point you could complete your objectives in any order. However due to the small size of that maps this doesn’t make the game seem any less linear.

Fortunately for Airborne the actual gun play is very good. The weapons feel powerful and there is always plenty of ammo lying around. Although for the most part this is due to the stupid AI of your team mates, who seem intent on getting themselves killed as quickly as possible. Sadly this really screws over the “realism” factor as you continue to win the battle despite your allies being cut down quicker than the Amazon rainforest.

In stark contrast to your allies, the enemy AI is actually reasonably good, although the occasional Nazi will decide that his weapon is better used as a baseball bat rather than a gun. Unfortunately some clown at EA thought it would be a good idea to give the Nazis telescopic X-ray vision, allowing them to both see and shoot you from about four miles away. When combined with an unfair checkpoint save system this really adds to the frustration which comes bundled with the game. At times you feel you’re trying to beat the actual game engine rather than the Nazis.

Graphics wise the game is very good especially with textures and lighting. The sound is also half decent, but it’s nothing that hasn’t be heard before.

It’s almost a blessing that this game is so short, six missions to be exact, meaning you should be able to complete it in around six hours. Although by the time you get to the end you’ll certainly be wanting that time back.