Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Jumping out of an airplane is something that isn't considered to be very smart.  Jumping out of an airplane while getting shot at isn't very smart either.   However, for those in the Airborne division, this was a way of life.  While games set in WWII have had several different viewpoints represented, the view from the Airborne division hasn't been completely explored.   Most games place you inside enemy territory without any explanation of how you got there.  Now Medal of Honor Airborne attempts to show you how you got there, and give you a little bit of a mini-game while doing it.   Is this enough to differentiate Airborne from other WWII games?

In Medal of Honor Airborne you play as Boyd Travers, a green recruit to the 82nd Airborne Division.  As a Private First Class in this squad, you’ll converse with your squadmates in the plane before jumping out of it as you are taking heavy fire all around you.  Once you land directly into the action, you get to see how you get into position first hand and move forward with your mission objectives.

Playing a WWII game usually results in a grey and brown color scheme, with a little red mixed in.  The buildings are a mix of brown bricks and wood, with grey roads and smoke.  You won’t see much difference between the looks of the levels.  While you see the effects of battle before you enter the war zone, you don't actually see any kind of damage you might have done.  While grenades cause a large puff of smoke, you won't see any burn marks on the buildings next to you or see any sand bags flying off.  More interaction with the environment would have made the experience feel more authentic.

The characters you come across in combat don’t have much difference between them.  Their faces look very similar to each other.  The members of your squad do have more differences, but they all look stoic with no real kind of facial expression.  While the look is serious, a little more range would have been appreciated.  When parachuting you can actually see yourself with your legs dangling.  It can be a bit disorienting at first, but it's nice to be able to see yourself when looking down.

Airborne was designed for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.  With this kind of development, you’d expect the graphics to be excellent.  Unfortunately the graphics still look a bit rough.  The textures don’t make the characters look as smooth as they should.  The animations work pretty well, but they still seem to stutter occasionally at times.

Since you are playing as a member of the “All-American” 82nd Airborne Division, you can imagine how patriotic the music is.  You’d almost swear that John Philip Sousa was going to start playing some music.  Still there is an ominous tone to the music because of the seriousness of the conflict.

The sound effects are loud and explosive.  You’ll hear the action all around you.  A good surround sound system enhances the effect of where the explosion is coming from.  Your teammates are mostly silent throughout the game.  Occasionally an order will come from those in command, but you don’t hear much from your teammates other than their footsteps.  The weapons do sound very good and have the right punch to them for a weapon of their time which is hard to find in games these days.

Airborne uses the typical dual-stick control for movement.  The right trigger fires and the left trigger looks down your sights.  Hitting A uses items, B cycles weapons, X toggles your stance, and Y jumps.  The right bumper cycles grenades, and the left bumper does an alternate fire.

The controls are a bit floaty, not giving you the precision that is needed for an FPS.  This is particularly bad when looking down your sights.  It’s also hard to have good aim, especially at the beginning of the game because of the upgraded weapon model.

After jumping out of the plane, you need to move yourself to the area you want to land.  There are a few training sessions that help you improve your aim to get there, but it doesn’t feel like you move at the correct speed.  While turns are quick on the ground, it takes a few jumps to get a hang controlling yourself while falling down towards the ground and learning how to flare your chute.

The unique portion of Airborne is the jumping out of planes and landing into the battle zone.  You directly control where you start out the mission, and sometimes if you land just right, you can give an enemy soldier a swift kick in the head to let them know that you’ve arrived.

Before each mission you have a briefing where the situation is explained to you.  You see the areas that are available for you to safely land in.  It doesn’t mean that you still won’t be shot at.  Your chances for survival increase greatly if you can land in the safe areas.

Once you get through the landing, the issues start to rise in Airborne.  The first problem of the game is the accuracy of your weapons.  Even hitting the broadside of the barn seems difficult when first aiming.  That’s because you have to upgrade your weapons over time by causing damage with them.  These upgrades eventually help to steady your aim or hold more rounds, but this kind of system feels out of place in a WWII era game.

Secondly, the game is difficult, or at least it feels more difficult than it should be.  The enemy AI does shoot back at you while taking cover, and when it does this then you can feel trapped for a while.  However, they do have a tendency to run straight at you.  The AI of your squad mates is highly questionable.  Often times they run straight into your path of fire.  Hitting a teammate with a grenade happens far too often.  At least the health system does give you some relief as it’s similar to the one in Riddick or Resistance: Fall of Man where your health can regenerate if you have a partial bar of health.  Again, that isn’t that realistic either, especially when you pick up health packs to regain a bar of health, but you’ll need every little help you can get.

The enemies respawn, so you have to constantly move forward to keep the mission moving forward.  This is easier said than done though, as you often feel pinned and need to stay behind cover to avoid taking damage.  You really have to move quickly to keep the mission moving forward.

There isn’t much interaction with the environments.  While you don’t expect entire buildings to crumble, you expect more destructibility.  Wood seems to have the same amount of strength in Airborne as you can go behind a wood fence and be protected from harm, even though the bullets should penetrate the fence rather easily.

The single-player campaign is short.  It shouldn’t take very long to complete, even with the difficulty level of the game.  There are six missions in the game, and you can finish the game over a weekend.  The game is rather fast-paced for a WWII game, so that brings down the play time.

There is multiplayer, but the results are rather lackluster.  There are only three different modes available for multiplayer.  Team Deathmatch is like any other Team Deathmatch game.  Team Deathmatch Airborne is the same as Team Deathmatch except that you experience an airdrop if you play as the Allies.  Objective Airborne has three flags on the map.  The first team to control all three flags wins.  These modes don’t really have anything interesting to bring to the table and it’s doubtful that we will see a large online following for the multiplayer.

Medal of Honor Airborne does a few good things, and the airdrops actually add a lot more to the game than you might expect.  Unfortunately, once you land on the ground after your airdrop, Airborne feels just like any other WWII game that you have played before.  The respawning gets annoying and the difficulty of the game might scare away some who might not be used to shooters.  Airborne is one of the better games to come out of the Medal of Honor series in a while, but it still feels tired after the flood of WWII shooters.

Gaming Trend Score

72

1. Graphics: 79
2. Audio: 82
3. Controls: 72
4. Gameplay: 68
5. Value/Replay: 62
6. OVERALL:72