Medal of Honor: Airborne is
the pefect example of a game that could have
been great, but was left stumbling over it's
own feet in an unfinished product. I can only
assume it's because Activision's Call Of Duty
was jumping ahead of them in the WWII shooter
market. The last MOH effort in 2004, Pacific
Assault, was an average game and since then
Activision released a successful Call Of Duty
2 in 2006 and was set to release Call Of Duty
3 in time for the 2007 christmas.
So EA release Airborne; their
third PC game in the franchise, a game that
really needed another year of development in
my opinion. Only then it'd be competing against
the likes of Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, Left 4
Dead 2 and another Call Of Duty title. Airborne
is what happens when you make something half-assed.
In my opinion EA LA shouldn't be given the MOH
franchise to develop in future. Pacific Assault
was a disappointment and too short. The original
MOH was created by 2015 Inc, not EA. And what
happened to 2015? Most went on to create a new
studio named Infinity Ward, developers of the
Call Of Duty franchise. That being said, EA
actually started this game in 2004, giving them
three years to make it. How on earth they could
have spent three years creating six levels is
beyond me. Perhaps they only had a single level
designer and the rest were there to make coffee?
Has building a single level evolved so much
that it takes around 10 level designers six
months to create a single level?
Enough about the politics and
developmento of modern games, because I really
don't know, and on to what is bad about Airborne
from a gamers perspective. The most prominent
problem being that the game is only about five
hours long. As I said above, only six levels
and while they are large, there should be twice
that many for a full priced game. There are
some epic moments, this is Unreal Engine 3 afterall.
The final level is a great finale on a huge
war tower full of AA's and the like to destroy.
Walk to the partly destroyed outer-edges of
the tower you can look out over a bomb-ravaged
city. It's absolutely epic and probably one
of the best levels of 2007 for any action game.
Although the inside of the tower doesn't look
all that good at all.
The other levels look almost
as great too, but they are all very similar
looking European towns full of debris and destruction.
And none of them can catch that imposing feeling
you get from the tower; of being just small
dot in a huge city. Some of the levels aren't
really as big as they really appear when you're
parachuting down either.
Overall I'd give the design
an 8/10. The job was half-done with UE3, but
the levels all look good and are well constructed.
There's no story whatsoever.
All I can tell you is the players name is Travis
(spelt Travers because that's cooler) and it's
WWII. There are cutscenes before each mission
explaining the objectives, which are both boring
and skippable.
The combat also needed work.
The weapons just don't feel right. You can put
a few shots into an enemy and he stays there
as if he wasn't even hit. Couple more and suddenly
he dies. It feels as if my first few shots went
right through him. Headshots are difficult to
achieve because the movement is jerky and the
recoil on guns just throws you upwards and it
takes a second to even realise what you're aiming
at. What I mean by jerky is if you've got someone
down your sights, you move slightly to the left
and it jumps a foot. There's not a smooth transition,
so there's times where an enemy will be impossible
to shoot (unless you physically move the player)
because the sights jump from one side of him
to the other! It feels like stop-motion animation;
not good at all EA.
If I'm firing at close-range
at an opponent, it shouldn't take several shots
before he suddenly just drops, without any proper
death animation or blood. Many times you'll
shoot him again because you're not actually
sure if he's dead or not.
The guns have a weak fire-rate,
they sound weak, and none of them were really
enjoyable to use. The shotgun is maybe the exception,
but who uses a close range shotgun for long
range combat?
The enemies themselves were
just standard humans with different guns and
average AI. Nothing new here, but even then
they could be fun if the weapons had been tweaked
properly.
There is one big thumbs up
for Airborne that I absolutely loved - jumping
from the airplane! Each level I had to demand
the girlfriend to watch me jump on the big screen
because it's just SO DAMN COOL! She's not interested
in the slightest, but I had to show someone!
It was brilliant.
However, the checkpoint system
was sketchy as hell. Provided you don't die
much you'll be fine (and as such I played on
easy as I hate checkpoints), or if you die just
after a checkpoint. In Airborne you go back
to the last checkpoint of objectives, so if
you've completed 5 of 10 objectives then you'll
still have those completed. You return to the
parachuting-in mode (which makes no sense at
all from a realistic viewpoint) but you can
almost land right where you died. The problem
is the map gets partly re-populated and you
seem to restart with the weapons you started
the level with, or at least you lose all you're
ammo. I didn't die enough times to figure it
out, but for instance I died in the tower level
and parachuted back down with many enemies re-spawned.
Only this time I'm given my original two weapons
back with barely any ammo in them, instead of
having the machine gun I previously had with
full ammo in it. Why on earth would you restart
a checkpoint but lose your ammo and have the
enemies respawn?! Who the hell makes these decisions
at EA LA?
Oh well, this game could have
been the best MOH yet. It need the checkpoint
system fixed (quicksaves anyone?), the weapons
properly tweaked, at least some sort of story
rather than random missions, and most importantly
MORE LEVELS! As it is, it feels like an expansion
pack to a bigger game. It feels like a series
of objective-based deathmatches with little
point.
I still liked it; perhaps
I've been a bit harsh on the game because of
all the games I've played from 2007 so far,
this is one of the few I'd actually play a second
time. It just could have been much better with
a bit more work.
