Gaaawd. Is it just me or has the Medal of Honor franchise went seriously downhill as of late? I was pretty excited about Airborne because, unlike a lot of other people, I still haven’t bored of the WWII FPS genre (in fact, I can’t quite get enough of it!). Plus there seemed that nice little twist. The title says it all really; starting each level by jumping out of a plane with the freedom to land anywhere you want.

After one (and a half) playthrough of Medal of Honor I’ve decided it’s going back to the shop. In other words, I’m trading it in for something else. Something better. Because seriously, there’s so many aspects of this game that are pissing me off, and really, I don’t want to swear at my telly no more. Let me enlighten you…

Rubber Bullets

Before embarking on any of the missions you can choose two guns to take with you, as well as always having your handy pistol tucked away in case of emergencies. Regardless of which gun you choose your bullets still seem to only do their job now and again. Last I checked bullets were deadly, right? But not in Airborne. You can practically unload a whole clip into an enemy only for him to come running right at you, unharmed, then beat you to death with the butt of his rifle within seconds. And no, my aiming isn’t that off.

Teleporting Enemies

When enemies don’t have eyes on the back of their head (and trust me, in Airborne most of them do) you can sometimes sneak up on them from behind and center their head on your crosshair for a nice, hassle-free headshot. Pull the trigger though and not only will the targeted enemy most likely survive, suddenly he’ll be 5 feet from where he was initially standing.

Sixth Sense

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, you won’t get much of a chance to surprise attack an enemy due to their invisible eyeballs on the back of their head. Despite having their back to you, as well as the noise of bullets flying from their weapon which they are firing in the opposite direction to you, they somehow know you’re behind them, ready to attack. Meaning, in most cases, there’s no chance of taking out an enemy from behind because as soon as you spot them they suddenly swing right round, rifle pointing at directly you.

Teeny Weeny Explosions

I’ve always considered myself pretty good with frags. My aiming always seems to be spot on, and in the good old days of Rainbow Six: Vegas I had no problem getting triple kills with one grenade. Unfortunately I have a much tougher time of it in Medal of Honor due to the grenade explosions resembling that of a small fart let out by, I dunno, something very small. A mouse, maybe.

But The Multiplayer Is Good, right?

I’d love to say Medal of Honor’s redeeming factor is when you take the game online and play some Multiplayer rounds, but, er, I can’t even join any games. Whether this is because everyone is on Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first EA title where I’ve had a problem joining games, though.

So, as you can see from my rant I don’t have too many nice things to say about this game, which is unfortunate as it could have been really good. My one time favourite Xbox 360 magazine, X360, generally have pretty good, honest reviews and gave this game an 8/10. With all these flaws though it doesn’t feel like it deserves such a high score. It’s very mediocre. If you do really want this game then I’d say Swapgame, or some other rental service, is your best bet.

Tags: EA, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Multiplayer, Rant

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.