Medal of Honor: Airborne Final Hands-On: Floating to Your Doom and the Spoils of War

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpotPosted Aug 24, 2007 3:12 pm PT

We've survived the first mission of this wartime first-person shooter intact, and we're back with a full status report.

Airborne!

Watch this new Medal of Honor game in action.

What could a World War II first-person shooter do that hasn't been done before? Well, if our time with Medal of Honor: Airborne is any indication, there's still plenty of room for the genre to grow. We played through the first dramatic level of the game this week, and we're impressed with just how visceral and exciting it was. So grab your grenades and ready your parachutes, because you won't have long to wait; Medal of Honor: Airborne ships in less than two weeks.

The game begins with a brief introduction to the mechanics of parachuting--and it's a good thing, because it's not as easy as it sounds. Steering to the proper destination takes a good deal of precision, and you need to be conscious of your speed and facing. You can flare your parachute to slow you down, but gravity is inevitable. Actually making the landing also seems tougher than you'd expect, but if you manage not to botch it in the Xbox 360 version, you'll have a shiny new achievement to show for it. When parachuting, you're looking for the green clouds of smoke, where you'll find relative safety and a number of friendly troops to provide covering fire.

Making a flared landing is tougher than it sounds.

The first level, Infinite Mischief, is the very definition of trial by fire. As 82nd Division paratrooper Boyd Travers, your task is to destroy four antiaircraft turrets in the Sicilian city of Adanti. You will choose your loadout before the mission even begins, though it's worth noting that you can exchange your current weapon with those you find on the battlefield later. Faced with a few options, we armed ourselves with an M1928 Thompson submachine gun, an M1 Garand rifle, and a trusty Colt .45 handgun. Once the mission loaded, we had little time to react, and after a brief cutscene, we descended nervously toward the looming city.

It didn't take long for us to notice that this isn't your typical linear shooter. We could land essentially anywhere we wanted to, and in our first attempt, it happened to be smack-dab in the middle of a throng of enemy soldiers who were quick to fill us with lead. It was immediately clear just how important our parachuting skills would become, because the better you steer, the better your chances are of staying alive for the mission. We improved in our second attempt, landing safely on a rooftop and surveying the situation below.

The iron-sights view gives you plenty of room to maneuver.

But things looked pretty bleak, considering the battlefield teeming with enemies. The recoil on our tommy gun made it tough to fire with accuracy, so we decided to play with the iron sights. When you switch to this view, you're no longer able to move, and the movement controls become leaning controls. This gave us a lot more freedom of movement than we were used to when leaning in other shooters, so we were able to pick off multiple targets without moving from our position.

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189 Comments

  • mike_baks

    Posted Sep 4, 2007 12:31 pm PT

    I'm gonna repeat myself, because so few people (including Gamespot) seem to notice that this game has horrible particle effects, truly horrible crap! Just shoot at a wall and look at those horrible grey blobs that pop up, look at a grenade blow up and see how crappy and fake it looks, the green smoke you see when you drop down, doesn't look like smoke at all, just some weird looking textures rising up.

    Again, better check out Relic's "Company of Heroes" and the upcomming add-on "Opposing Forces" on how it should be done, particle effects by talented folk that know what they are doing!!!

  • Snake0406

    Posted Sep 4, 2007 7:35 am PT

    I played the demo with everything set to high, it made my dual core 3.4ghz run at 100% but it played very smoothly in the hours playing it. This game is not just the best looking game i have encountered but also the gameplay and uses unique and easy controls for PC.I rate this game 10/10!!!!

  • evolutionex

    Posted Sep 4, 2007 12:44 am PT

    Only one more day to go

  • vs_world

    Posted Sep 3, 2007 11:13 pm PT

    Graphic look nice

  • Cruzadr

    Posted Sep 3, 2007 11:12 pm PT

    Forget Halo 3, I'm gonna be getting this one for sure. Not much for hyped up fanboy games so this'll suit me perfectly, played the DEMO and was sad when it ended. This is what battle is like, moments of sheer terror and noise and confusion, followed by bloated lulls, deathly silence and hurry up and wait. Awesome.

  • easykill_astari

    Posted Sep 3, 2007 4:03 pm PT

    looks nice

  • capitancahonas

    Posted Sep 3, 2007 10:38 am PT

    batuo, you could have been playing the 360 version, by what you say I had a similar exp with the live demo. The A.I (as usual-sigh-) was cack. I know that we were only facing minimally ranked enemies -according to one of the menu's- but the ease of mowing them down did get pretty boring pretty quickly. Really though, what do we expect from EA? COD is a better arcade experience, and BIA feels much more authentic though not as fun. Regardless, the MOH brand will probably sell well and this is def' looking the best in the series...

  • RonLau

    Posted Sep 2, 2007 6:39 am PT

    Oh and one more thing, I'm pretty sure that nearly all or at the very least the majority of 360 gamers will be getting Halo 3 for sure, so when you compare the VALUE of getting Halo 3 over Airborne...it just all ticks in place. That's just my opinion I suppose...

  • RonLau

    Posted Sep 2, 2007 6:35 am PT

    I have to say that Airborne has breathed life back into the MOH franchise. It's exhilirating even before you begin your jump; a man two troopers ahead gets nailed by AA fire - that could have been you! Moments later you are plunged into dark sky, your only companion, the flashes of AA fire, marking your objectives. From your bird's eyeview, you know it ain't gonna be easy.

    That I suppose nails what the demo delivered from the start! The game iooks pretty decent, but not absolutely amazing from what I've played. However, which leads me to question whether I should get the game over other military shooters coming out soon after...eg. BIA: Hell's Highway, unless someone can convince me otherwise...

  • starsky303

    Posted Sep 1, 2007 2:20 pm PT

    Played the demo. Gotta say, I'm pretty impressed! The view-bob coupled with motion blur adds more action to an already action packed level! Someone said earlier about not feeling like they were immersed in battle... that's b*llocks. This game's gonna rock!

  • claireed

    Posted Sep 1, 2007 12:48 pm PT

    Has anybody heard what the system requirments are for the PC version.

  • m_stifler

    Posted Sep 1, 2007 12:29 pm PT

    batuo--u must have been playing a diff demo than everybody else *rolls eyes*

  • firo999

    Posted Sep 1, 2007 8:52 am PT

    haven't played the demo yet but it looks like it's going to be great i mean directing a parachute to land wherever u want is really nice i only saw that in just cause however lets hope EA fixes some of the rag doll after dead problems and the prone problem and most importantly to have destructible environments

  • termadoyle

    Posted Sep 1, 2007 2:05 am PT

    I can't understand just how a little parachuting gimmick can change the tedious onslaught of WWII shooters.
    and since this is from EA, then only two words spring to my mind: Rip Off.

  • batuo

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 10:00 pm PT

    I played the PC demo of Airborne, and I was pretty disappointed. First of all, the game turned into a run-and-gun after playing it twice, mostly because of the crappy AI. Even on the highest difficulty, I found I could just spring+jump straight at the enemy and gun them down. And if I ever lost any health, I could just run and find one of the boundless number medpacks scattered throughout the map. The AI never use any flanking tactics or anything like that and don't seem to be able to aim. I've seen, more than a few times, two AI's standing right in front of each other and not being able to hit anything. Sometimes, when I sprint past the enemy , I've seen Italians spawn right in front of me.

    In addition, I really hated the smoke and debris effects. The green smoke did not look like or act like real smoke at all. The dirt kicked up by grenade explosions looked ridiculous. There seemed to be no bullet impact effects included at all and no bullet whizzing effects; I just did not feel immersed in battle.

  • r2d2_cun

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 10:27 am PT

    blue_ice212121

    You should get CoD, you'll find good things in that game too. Don't stick only to one franchise.

  • LahiruD

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 6:32 am PT

    I played the Demo. Game is pretty cool but I think CoD4 will be better. Anyway I will play Both games

  • DoWGamer

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 5:36 am PT

    I think we all know that CoD is better then MoH.
    Exspecially with CoD4 coming out this winter.

  • the_joker90

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 4:04 am PT

    CoD 3 may have been linear but u dnt get the stupid feeling of being one man fighting the war by himself. In CoD 3 you were lots of people fighting in companys in small battles, while in MoH your 1 soldier who runs and guns his way through an army of enemys on some stupid mission.

  • pogswarts

    Posted Aug 31, 2007 2:54 am PT

    try getting the AI patch blue ice, that has made the game for me seem a ton better

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