Medal of Honor: Airborne

I try to be honest and forgiving in reviews. I'll be struggling with this one.

The first mission was great. Great fun, multiple simultaneous objectives and not linear. Second one ok, third one ok. Went a bit downhill after that.

Graphics - I actually like the graphics but I know some have complained about them, but they look pretty good to me. Not as good as COD3, but still pretty good. The sprint effect was a nice touch.

Sound - was chaotic as you'd expect in a battle, headshot sound is a nice feature. But that flaming annoying music is SO LOUD it's ridiculous. And it's cheesy. How annoying is it to hear that same baah-baba-baah-ba-baaahh trumpet fanfare in the music every time there's an 'exciting' bit? My advice is to turn that off ASAP.

Land wherever you want in the map - Not really true. If you start moving towards a good area some kind of invisible fart blows you off course, you don't land where you want and you end up with a botched landing and probably a beaten skull. There's a 'greased landing' where you can be ready for action the moment you land, but in the last couple of maps there's almost no way of using it.

Enemy - endless. What's the point in picking them off from a distance? None. Kill a couple and run to some cover further on and hopefully they'll stop coming. By the end it just got silly. Plain silly, and at that point the game lost all hope. MG42-toting super-soldiers running around and it takes 2 panzerschreck hits to their head just to kill them, and when you kill them you can't even pick up their weapon! Not believable. Plus if you shoot at an enemy who has a panzerschreck he can suddenly and miraculously fire 2 or 3 panzerschreck rounds a second! They fire 3 in the time it took me to fire one and reload.

Game saves - Here it only saves after you achieve an objective. Why can't you save the damn game when you are in a good position? You'll cry and curse if you are 2 inches from the objective and you die and you have to do the same thing over and over. Splinter Cell Double Agent is hard, but at least when you've pulled off that tricky bit you can save it straight after.

Weapon upgrades - nice feature. The shotgun bayonet is pretty cool. I wish it would save after a weapon upgrade because, as it is, you upgrade your weapon and lose the upgrade if you die and it hasn't saved. But why can't I take the scopes off upgraded weapons? For example I liked the G43 without it. On the X360 the 'true trigger' is just pure pap. For a start it's wrong in the manual (its got nothing to do with the D pad, it's left triger to aim and ease in the right trigger), secondly the X360 triggers don't have a 20lb pull, which makes it a bit tricky. And if you ever do master it by the time you do it the enemy has moved.

Allies - This game does tend to suffer from what I like to call "Medal of Honor syndrome" (which is not surprising as it is Medal of Honor) and by that I mean there's complete parts of it where I was the only paratooper there. Just like in the original MOHAA. There are the odd parts where it's you and a mate, or maybe you and 2 others. Where's the rest of the Division?
That said, when they do turn up they are as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. E.g. I aimed at an enemy, and ended up killing 6 of my own guys as they ran in front every time I pulled the trigger. It was uncanny. And my all time favourite - running in front of you just as you throw a grenade, so that it bounces off them and hits you. Genius. At least it doesn't suffer from the even more annoying CoD problem where you have to restart if you kill one of your own after they stupidly run in front of you.
They also like run in front of an enemy and try and melee them; god knows why as the Germans always win those fights. Still your squad mate with a Tommy will always run up and try and melee. Can someone at EA explain why? Please?

The biggest problem though was that from where you have to run across Nijmegen bridge onwards it just got so tedious, boringly frustrating and repetitive that I can't describe it. I must have done some of those bits a million times, mostly thanks to the endless enemies described above. It has just stopped being fun, which I hate to point out is the reason for playing games. I've played Condemned, COD3, Crackdown and Bioshock through a good 2 or 3 times each at least. I've played COD, COD2, H&D2 and other games through loads of times on the PC, because they are FUN! And ENJOYABLE! And REPLAYABLE! It's like the developers of this game missed the reason people were buying it.

I loved the demo for this game, that's why I bought the full version. I didn't even mind dying as you could try landing somewhere else or a different approach. But the later missions, especially the last three, just didn't measure up to the expectation that the first mission gives you. I looked forward to endless hours replaying the missions because I believed that it would be fun trying out new things by landing elsewhere on the map. The potential for replay here was enormous but the developers squandered it and it settled in to the old "Big Boss" formula.

In summary - good graphics and sounds, crap music, allied AI is atrocious, enemy doesn't need AI as they just keep on coming (but that said they do tend to take cover and move a lot which makes killing them tricky), but badly let down by being not believable or enjoyable by the end. I'm just wanting to get this over with, and surely that's not why you buy a game?

I'd also like to congratulate EA for correctly spotting that there was no other Airborne forces in WWII. There were no British or Polish paras, it was all the Americans. Honest. If you're going to call it Airborne then why not have a load of airborne missions from other forces? Start in 1940 with the German airborne attacking Eben Emael, the Crete a couple of years later(which would have significantly increased the number of missions, and made them much more varied and less made up by the end.)

Incidentally - CoD3 Gold Edition is only £20. Half the price, twice the game.

I got this game based upon the amazing reviews; you can jump anywhere on the battlefield, the enemy is far more intelligent than in other games, and the graphics are great. All of these are true, only that although you might not think it, this all leads to invariable repetition. First off, you can jump anywhere; thats all fine and dandy, but really your only choice is to jump into safe areas marked by green smoke, or else your cut to pieces by enemy fire. The AI is great, but is really only as intelligent as the soldiers you find in COD3 and 2, the exception being the elite troops. However, i do find it highly unlikely that (this is in the last two levels in the game) the Wehrmacht would emply slow moving troops encased in heavy armour wielding massive machine guns. The graphics are sublime, far better than any other war game i have seen so far, but i and i think many others cannot judge a game solely on that. Lastly, although the aspects i have mentioned do drag the game down a little, this isnt an unenjoyable expierience. What is annoying is that the game only has five levels, rather like COD3, which has a little more. What about other battles that the airbourne took part in, other than D-Day, Nijmegen, Sicily and the Ruhr (two levels)?If you seem so intent on creating boss soldiers that never existed, why not battles that never took place?
All in all, this is a good game, but is dragged down by stupid ideas and lack of scope. I am not saying stay away from it, but keep in mind that at most you will get two days play out of it and then get rapidly bored.

As a single player game it is game, graphics wise and sound etc is brilliant as you would expect. But it is very very short - only 6 missions.

It is the multiplayer that lets it down. It does not rival COD3 in this respect. Ok one side can parachute in etc but the maps are very small. Max 12 players on a map. There is only team battle, a sort of similar thing to the "war" mode on COD3 and that's it. No capture the flag, no all against all or anything like that.
This really lets down the title in my opinion, infact I've had it less than a week and I'm bored of it and am back to playing COD3 on multiplayer.
Buy this only if you are really really really keen on the novelty factor of being able to parachute. That's it!!!