Unlockable stuff and hidden extras
But Medal of Honor: Airborne isn’t just about going in and killing all the bad guys before blowing stuff up. EA want you to explore the area you’re in and it’s well worth taking a stroll around rather than just following the other members of your squad. You’re an Airborne trooper and it’ll often pay you to think in three dimensions as, apart from the last mission, there’s always a variety of routes to choose from… though some of them might not always be obvious.For example, the very first mission drops you into the Sicilian town of Adanti with its ancient fortified wall… which happens to be an excellent way of circling from one side of the map to the other. But along the way you’ll find several places where you can access the rooftops and whilst this is no free-running simulator, you can scramble around the roofs to get a better vantage point on the enemy and give them a stitching from above. Certainly on the harder difficulty settings this makes a big difference as you can soften them up a bit to either let the AI squad mop up or let you double back for a ground-level assault.
Click for larger imageNow, for your choice of armaments, you get a load-out screen before each mission, giving you various options. You’re limited to one primary, one secondary and one sidearm with more weapons becoming available as you either find them in the missions or pick them up from dead enemies. New for Medal of Honor: Airborne is the skill ranking you can gain for each weapon which allows you to modify certain weapons as you go along.
So, use the Thompson loads and you’ll get a fore-grip for greater accuracy, then a muzzle brake for less recoil and finally a 50 round drum magazine for higher capacity. Other weapons have similar upgrades which improve accuracy and rate of fire with the final, third upgrade usually giving something extra, such as bayonet on the shotgun for increased damage in melee attacks or a grenade launcher on either the Garand or the Springfield.
Click for larger imageIn addition to these marksman awards, there’s also several ‘special drop’ areas doted around each map. These are represented by a parachute draped over the scenery and are in more inaccessible areas. The idea is that you either find and locate them on foot or parachute down onto them. It seems a bit odd that some of them are completely inaccessible from the ground though… you’d have to die and re-drop to then land on them, which stops you winning the medal for completing a mission without dying.
And this is probably one of the biggest bugbears with Medal of Honor: Airborne, in that even though it’s fairly non-linear, the number of different achievements either conflict with each other or just aren’t achievable within a single mission. For example, say you wanted to get the maximum proficiency with every weapon, you’ll finish the game before you even come close…
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