This next-gen rejuvenation of the Medal of Honor series is getting dropped from sky to land right into a competitive battle field of first person shooters. After exploring the vast hallways of Rapture, I’m excited to enter the smoke filled landscape of video games favourite war in Medal of Honor: Airborne.

The new Medal of Honor game highlights the Paratrooper's role in WWII. Exploiting vertical combat, Medal of Honor: Airborne allows players to airdrop into fight anywhere on the battlefield. Once you learn how to jump out of your airplane you are thrown into the war zone with the task of assaulting the fortified village of Adanti in 1943. In this moment you will understand what MOH: Airborne is all about as you pick you landing spot gliding through the sky. This mechanic allows players to drop into a safe zone regulated by green smoke, or anywhere else you want to land on the map. The coolest aspect of dropping is that you can actually land near your target, on a rooftop, or play it safe and land green. This instantly opens up the players options and gives them a sense of freedom, however it's a brief sensation that soon falls into the marching order of the programmers code.

Go Anywhere
Focusing on the "go anywhere" approach, Medal of Honor: Airborne wants you to explore different strategies in obtaining your goals. Understanding trial and error, EA allows you to have as many retries as necessary to find the best approach for your playing style. This approach seems dramatically innovative for a shooter, although this dynamic approach reminds me of a true classic, Airborne Ranger for the Commodore 64 released in the days of the old, 1987. It’s unfortunate to say, but MOH: Airborne doesn't move too far ahead of the old classic and slowly feels like another typical WWII shooter. The main issue in Medal of Honor: Airborne is that it feels to linear even when you have all that freedom. MOH: Airborne pushes you through multiple objectives over a number of campaigns in a linear fashion. Even with it's directed path, Medal of Honor: Airborne makes running through a hailstorm of bullets a lot of fun. Depending on your love for shameless arcade styled shooters, Medal of Honor: Airborne could be all you need, or it could be unfulfilling shallow experience.

Flank and Move
Medal of Honor: Airborne is broken down over six missions that will run you about 8-9 hrs. For the majority you’ll will be flanking the enemies, objective to objective. MOH: Airborne is pure action without much thought to realism besides the obvious settings, weapons, and machinery. After marching through a few levels you’ll feel a slight satisfaction in giving the boot to the Germans, but in the end you will be hungry for more. The story is simple, as Private First Class Boyd Travers, you and the 82nd Airborne Division will have to save the world from the evil Nazi scum. Add jumping out of planes and a number of cut-scenes and pep speeches, and now we have everything you have come to expect out of WWII action shooters.

Didn't I Hit You?
Airborne’s fast action suffers from more than being another WWII shooter, the game is filled will little hindrances that affect the quality of the overall product. One complaint is the poor hit detection that can take a few dead on hits before one connects. This could be attributed to the fact you gain weapon upgrades in the game, but it doesn’t. Even with the “accuracy” weapon upgrade you will still feel like you’re missing shots. Poor hit detection in a shooter, is like not having a wheel in a racing game, it’s a necessity. Besides this downfall, Medal of Honor also has too many scripted trigger points where enemies automatically spawn until you reach a trigger spot. This made me play Airborne in a kamikaze style rushing to hit trigger points, and sure enough when I reached a certain areas I would discover enemies popping up out of thin air and my team magically advancing along my side. On the flip side if you don’t try and hit these triggers the game gets stuck in a standstill with neither the enemy of your AI team mates making any progress. This isn’t a constant scenario and at time your team will down a few oncoming soldiers, however it’s is obvious there are some balancing issues that where never sorted out before the game shipped.

Online
Online MOH redeems itself with its competent multiplayer. These ranked and unranked matches support up to 12 players stand out when servers are full, feeling more “real” then the single player campaign. The action is always lag-free in your face and intense, especially with the ability to drop next door to the enemy teams. This makes easy work of snipers if you are good with the shoot. Now the advantage is not your hiding spot, its how you place yourself within the battle, dropping from the sky is the ultimate vantage point. For maps three are taken from the main campaign while the other three are favourites from Allied Assault. The bare-bones multiplayer component in Airborne should be enough to extend the value of the short single player campaign until you move onto your next target.

The persona of the larger than life, “Hollywood” style of gameplay falls short from what EA was trying to recreate. Medal of Honor: Airborne isn’t going to reclaim the franchises former glory; instead it lays a solid path for the next Medal of Honor game to follow. The gameplay has its flaws and at the same time exceeds in the most important factor, which is its fun-factor. I’d like to see Electronic Arts follow up with the paratrooper theme in the next Medal of Honor game, I think the concept should be fully exploited, or at least enough to warrant one more jump.

Medal of Honor: Airborne isn’t the best looking game on the market, but it tries hard to bring some interesting camera work during the camp sequences along with some intense war scenarios during the air drops. Like the rest of the game most of the other work is on par with its competitors. The quick pace of the gameplay also helps “fake” the visual quality, but it’s not fast enough to make you forget forever. Getting up close to the enemy soldiers or hanging out near a drop grenade will instantly give it away the low res textures and inadequate explosion effects. I would slot Medal of Honor: Airborne on par with a first generation, next generation Xbox 360 title. It’s nothing Halo 3, or Bioshock will loose sleep over.

The audio element has a little more care then the visuals in development; however it doesn’t actual boost the end product effectiveness. Even though EA has dug through their audio files and re-recorded real WWII weapons, engine sounds, and tanks, this falls to the background while your eyes are fixed on large crowed battles and mind on gameplay issues. If you need a spotlight on the audio section it would be Michael Giacchino’s orchestral soundtrack. Michael has done work for the Medal of Honor in the past and he doesn’t disappoint again. Airborne sounds like that big epic dramatically sweeping over the stringed instruments. Unfortunately, MOH: Airborne falls into the same sound spectrum as other WWII games with good audio that is unbalanced in respect to its presentation values. Even with the sound overachieving the way the incorporate it into the game doesn’t do much for either side of the graphics or audio department.

Medal of Honor: Airborne jumps from it's Xbox 360 rendered C-47 airplane to land in mine field of gameplay issues, mediocre graphics and overused mission objectives. In this tired genre, the concept behind Airborne is its greatest accomplishment; however the overall execution doesn’t live up to its potential. Medal of Honor: Airborne has its problems, but the game isn’t a total bust. There is enough fast paced Nazi killing action to satisfy your warmongering heart for a few solid hours, as long as you didn’t by into the revolution EA was boasting. I enjoyed Medal of Honor: Airborne enough that it felt like a guilty pleasure. If you enjoy the WWII shooter genre then I would take a look at Medal of Honor: Airborne, but I’d have reserves about plummeting out those doors for a straight ahead purchase.

Gameplay: 6.5, Graphics/Sound: 6.5, Innovation: 6, Mojo: 6 Final: 6.5 / 10

• Start each mission with an airdrop into enemy territory where the landing spot you choose can dramatically change the course of battle. On the ground, tackle enemies and complete objectives in whatever order you chose as your navigate your way through a massive, free-roaming, non-linear FPS environment.
• Vertical Combat
• Fight on the ground or atop roofs, balconies, towers, ruins and natural formations in a variety of environments authentic to the European Theater of War.
• A formidable new AI system delivers unpredictable and intelligent enemies which challenge even your most battle-hardened strategies.
• Engaging the enemy triggers death animations unique to each and every encounter.
• Upgradeable Weapons
• For the first time, enhance your chosen weapon with authentic, customizable field modifications that affect your marksmanship.