Medal of Honor: Airborne

Medal of Honor: Airborne Quick Review

Developer: EA LA

Publisher: EA Games

Engine: Unreal Engine 3

Genre: FPS

Platforms: Windows, Xbox 360, PS3

Release: September 4 2007

Modes: Single-player, Multi-player

Stores: Steam, GamersGate, and physical copy

Disclaimer:

• Got it as part of MOH: 10^th Anniversary Collection for my birthday.
• I play games on hard mode
• Played many FPS games.
• I'm harsh and picky.
• I'm not a professional journalist.
• This was casually written in 20 minutes.
• I try to 100% games unless it's pointless or tediously stupid.
• No bribes were taken
• No bribes were offered

Hardware:

• Windows 7 Home premium 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600@ 2.40GHz. Kentsfield 65mn technology
• Ram: 4gb Dual channel DDR2@400MHz (6-6-6-18)
• GPU: 1023MB MSI GeForce GTS 450
• Monitor: 1440x900@60Hz
• Audio: Creative X-fi Audio Processor

Game-play:

• Weapons:
  • Sucky accuracy, Can rarely hit where you want despite having a perfect aim on target.
  • Do pitiful damage even when fully upgraded.
  • Enemies become bullet sponges by the end of the game.
  • Also they sound horribly muted in tone and impact.
  • Leveling up weapons feels arcady and out of place for a semi realistic ww2 fps.
  • Leveling ruins any weapon balance. By end of game, you will need to use stg44, and panzershrek to beat the final level.
  • Shotgun has no range. Never worth using at any point.
  • Grenade explosion radius is quiet small making it hard to kill enemies.
• AI:
  • Friendly are worthless. Charge recklessly into enemies and even ignore those around them. With time and many re-spawns, they can clear out enemies.
  • Enemy is just as stupid. Randomly decide to suicide charge you or run like an idiot. Have a tendency to psychically try to dodge your aim in iron sight mode. Get distracted easily.
• Levels:
  • Typical fps game
  • Non-linear but feel like small arena’s.
  • Never without allies except for final part of final level.
  • Skill drops are often impractical and put you in horrible positions. Distracts from the ability to potentially land anywhere. Can only land in one per play-through. No bonus for getting them all.
  • Enemies spawn at certain triggers so you can have enemies spawn right behind you despite it being clear.
  • Later levels have monster closets full of enemies with what seams to be 20 of them at a time.
  • Plenty of backtracking. Can feel tiresome at times.
  • Despite having checkpoints, enemies can re-spawn in previous places.
  • Skill drops are sometimes tricky to have triggered. Third level skill drop of landing into the house never seamed to trigger.
  • Plenty of invisible walls that makes shooting a pain.
  • Final level. Plenty of enemies that wield panzershreks and mg42, that take 20 rounds of stg44 and two rounds of panzershrek to the face.
  • Sometimes game won't register you getting medals despite meeting the requirements.
  • The parachute anywhere mechanic is an interesting idea. Needs to be used with better elvel designs.

Graphics:

• Depth of filed and motion blur made me feel slightly dizzy when ruining or turning. Can be turning off in documents folder.
• Decent visually. Looks better in darker levels then brighter levels. Brighter levels look more drab and dull.
• Characters are noting to look at.
• Physics are wonky. Shot to the head can send a German flying up into the air or many feet behind you.
• PhysX seamed pointless and wasteful never noticed it other then with the rag-doll deaths.
• Not too much customize-ability.
• Can change advanced graphical setting in the config files.

Audio:

• Randomly plays various soundtracks from past MOH games. Doesn't have the same impact that previous games had.
• Weapon audio sounds weak and fake. Compared to the audio from previous games it sounds very amateur.

Thoughts:

• decently entertaining at first, but dull by the end.
• Don't want to play it again.
• Might be worth 5 dollars.
• Cut-scenes can be hilariously bad. " I got shot in the butt, but I'll still jump". "My buddy is shot by a tank so I will turn around and save him! (dies on top of wounded guy.) Get off me! (Head is run over by tank)

Notes:

• Requires legacy physX drivers or uninstalling all physX drivers in order to let game install it's own.
• Multi-player is dead.
• Can adjust hidden graphical features in config files.