Medal of Honor: Airborne

The game is released on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 at the end of 2007.

This game is the 11th of the MoH series and produced by EA Los Angeles. The game isn’t very different from the other games in the series, but EA LA has added a new element: A parachute drop in the beginning of a level and also in special multiplayer modes. Each mission starts with a short cutscene and after that you jump out of the plane together with your fellow soldiers. This means that you can choose where you start your mission. The developers have added two safety zones marked by green flares in each level, but if you want to kick some Nazi ass right away, you can also land in the middle of the action (this is not recommended). There are also five skill drops in each level and you can notice them by the parachute hanging near the skill drop.

The singleplayer features six levels that you can complete in about seven or eight hours, that’s a little short in my opinion. These six levels are: Operation Husky, Italy, Operation Avalanche (Italy), Operation Neptune (France, D-Day), Operation Market Garden (The Netherlands), Operation Varsity (Germany) and Der Fläkturm, (Germany). My personal favourite is Operation Market Garden, because I recognised that the music was the same as in MoH: Frontline (and because I’m Dutch). I also like Der Flakturm, because it’s just an enormous tower to see. It has artillery and 12 anti-air turrets on top of it.

You can play the game in three difficulties: Casual, Normal and Expert. When you play on Expert you can’t take as much abuse as you can take on Casual.

The game also features some RPG elements in this game. For example, you can upgrade your weapons. In order to do this you have to kill enemies. You’ll get an extra experience boost by making headshots or when you make three or five kills in a row. The upgrades are different with each weapon. The Thompson gun for example gets extra rounds and a stabilizer(which reduces the loss of accuracy during shooting).

The sound and graphics of this game are great, the levels are very detailed. When a grenade explodes near you, you’ll experience blur vision and you're deaf for a few seconds. The levels are partly open, you'll have to follow a certain path, but you'll get some movability when it comes to completing your objectives.

The multiplayer of this game is okay. There are three different game modes: Team Deathmatch, which is pretty self-explanatory, Team Deathmatch Airborne, Allied soldiers start in a plane and Axis soldiers on the ground. The Allied soldiers can choose where they’ll land, but the Axis soldiers can try to shoot them out of the sky. The third game mode is an objective-based mode where players must capture three neutral flags, similar to the main game mode of Battlefield 2 and Domination in the Unreal Tournament series. The middle flag requires two soldiers to be close to it in order to capture it.

However, there are some complaints about this game, besides the fact that there are only six levels. Number one: All objects are undestroyable in this game. You can’t even destroy a small object on a table. This means that you can take cover behind anything. Also, the AI is quite stupid. But the AI characters are very aggressive, the enemy soldiers will shoot you on sight, throw grenades at you or beat you to death. In the last two levels of the game, you’ll encounter some Übernazi’s called Nazi Storm Elites. You can recognise them by their gas-masks and MG42s (which are heavy machineguns). These soldiers can take a lot of bullets. I don’t think these soldiers ever existed, did they? My last complaint is that on the PS3 the maximum amount of players in ranked servers is only eight players. That’s just ridiculously low.

Another thing that's remarkable is that the game resolves around you. Fellow Allied soldiers won't press forward unless you take the initiative. This is quite weird since you'd expect that in a grand scheme of things you'd be insignificant for the progress of recapturing European lands.

But to be fair, I did enjoy this game for a long time. The game isn’t that good, but it isn’t bad either so I think most of you will enjoy it as well. The game is certainly worth your money, especially now that the price has been reduced.