Go wherever the fancy takes you
Right then, as the game’s title, Medal of Honor: Airborne, might suggest, you play the part of Boyd Travers, a trooper with the newly created 82nd Airborne Division… so think along the lines of the first episode of Band of Brothers and you’ll get the picture. Superbly for a first person shooter, there’s no ‘training mission’ to introduce players to weapons and movement etc. I say superbly because by now we’ve all played at least one shooter so we know how it works. What you do get is three test jumps to earn your wings which are used to familiarise you with controlling your parachute… you are an airborne trooper so you will have to parachute into each mission.And this is where EA’s major gameplay change for Medal of Honor: Airborne comes in. Given that you start each mission dangling under a few hundred square feet of silk and you can control where you land, Medal of Honor: Airborne is completely non-linear in how you tackle your objectives. Before, games of this ilk have always been very linear but in Medal of Honor: Airborne EA are essentially opening up the whole level at once, leaving you to drop in wherever you fancy and then take it from there.
Click for larger imageYou start off each mission with a briefing telling you your objectives and the safe spots in which you can land your ‘chute before getting on with the mission proper. However, whether you do this or not is up to you and you could, if you fancied a challenge, drop yourself right onto an objective… which of course lands you in the midst of the enemy too.
Once you’re on the ground the non-linear aspect of Medal of Honor: Airborne really kicks in as there’s several different routes to take to complete objectives which can also be completed in any order you fancy. Sadly there doesn’t appear to be any tactical advantage to be had in the order in which you take on your objectives. For example, in the second mission, you’re tasked with destroying an ammo dump, fuel dump and comms centre. Now you’d expect the enemy to call for reinforcements if you don’t take out the comms centre but having played through that level several times, it’s no harder and there’s no more enemy troops whether you take out the comms first or blow up pretty much the whole camp first… which is a shame.
Click for larger imageThat’s not to say that Medal of Honor: Airborne isn’t an enjoyable blast and I know that in any game the realism has to have a boundary, but even with the non-linear aspect of how you tackle your tasks and the routes you take to get there, Medal of Honor: Airborne is still fairly linear in how the rest of the game mechanics work.
As with previous Medal of Honor games, you’ll not be fighting alone and though you’re part of a squad, there’s no squad control. That’s not a black mark against Medal of Honor: Airborne, but given that we’ve seen even limited squad control on other games, it would’ve been nice to see it here, especially as you’re pretty much in control of how you take on the objectives.
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