For fans of World War II first-person shooters, especially followers of HBO's hit miniseries "Band of Brothers," EA games has introduced Medal of Honor: Airborne, a game in which you get to literally jump into the fight.
Rendered beautifully in up to full 1080p graphics for the highest-end HD sets, you have to survive a parachute jump into enemy territory before you even think about killing hordes of Nazis. While "safe" jump zones are marked with green smoke, I found it's difficult manipulating the chute to hit the mark on your way down. If you miss the safe landing zone, you run the risk of being killed by enemy soldiers before getting out of your harness.
Once on the ground and free of restraints, MOH: Airborne plays like the familiar FPS. Unfortunately, I found the learning curve a bit steep in normal play mode, as I did with the previous MOH game, and the controls took time to get used to, as I didn't find them particularly intuitive. For example, teaching my brain the button combination to switch between my primary weapon and the grenade I wanted to use, and back again, was distracting in the middle of a firefight and led to more than one quick death.
Another occasional problem with MOH: Airborne is that the game automatically saves at checkpoints, but in some missions, these checkpoints can seem few and far between with plenty of chances of "dying" in between. While some may consider this just a greater challenge to overcome, I found it frustrating to die double-digit times and return a ways back in the game after battling through what I considered to be a fair number of bad guys. Granted, I don't consider myself the greatest FPS gamer out there, but casual players should be forewarned — unless you want to play on the easiest level, don't expect great success when you first start.
I did better the more I played as I started to figure out the best strategies to survive. In general, I've found a lot of success in many FPS games using the strategy of "when in doubt, charge with guns blazing." This generally doesn't work too hot in MOH: Airborne. This game takes some patience and a good bit of markmanship to get you through the hairiest firefights.
As you advance, the game designers help you by providing more weapons to pick up on the battlefield, and you can earn upgrades, such as better shooting accuracy, by completing tasks such as killing a number of enemy soldiers in a row without taking damage.
Battle environments are large and complex, allowing multiple attack strategies, be it flanking maneuvers or finding high ground from which to rein down hot lead on the hated Nazis. The first mission has you jumping into Sicily to take out some anti-aircraft guns in a large village. It's indicative of the rest of the game, offering plenty of strategic options to advance the attack.
While the game looks great, some annoying glitches remain that one would think could be overcome after years of bugging FPS games. For instance, you still get the odd dead German floating partially in midair. Or you'll find his weapon floating in space after his body has disappeared from the battlefield. My complaint is that such games as MOH: Airborne are billed as next-gen graphics wonders, but they still are bugged by rendering issues from the dawn of video games.
I haven't had a chance to play MOH: Airborne online, but the game supports two to 12 players battling Nazis over the Internet. There is no multiplayer option offline.
EA games works hard to render realistic battle spaces and missions, and I found the game suitably addictive to hold my interest. I would recommend it to fellow gamers looking for some historic FPS action.
