Medal of Honor Airborne Xbox 360 SinglePlayer Review

Liked:

1. Generally entertaining WW2 FPS gameplay.

2. Upgradeable weapons. Not so much for the upgrades themselves, but it gives you a reason to run around the levels using every weapon in the game, rather than just one or two.

3. Graphics are generally good, but not exceptional.

Disliked:

1. Hit detection or accuracy sometimes feels “wonky”.

2. Overly cliche.  Tries to be “Band of Brothers” without the story. The music wants to be emotionally evocative, despite not having any characters to be emotionally attached to. Every mission except one begins the same way, your C-47 takes a shitload of flak damage and everyone rushes to get out of the plane.

3. Some of the enemy soldiers are insanely gay.  And I don’t mean homo.  The Nazi elite soldiers later in the game are what I’m talking about.  The panzerschreck guys are the worst.  I literally got blasted in the face at point blank range with a panzerschreck, and I died, yet the German guy took the blast like nothing happened. Also the elite soldiers take an insane amount of hits to kill, despite not wearing body armor.  They’re very unrealistic, and seem to be there just because EA felt like the game should have some kind of “Nazi Super Soldier” in it.

4. Some historical inaccuracies stick out. The one that stuck in my mind the most was in the very last scene of the game, after you finish the last mission, you see P-40s flying over Germany in their “Flying Tigers” shark mouth paint scheme.   By 1945, all of the squadrons in the European theatre who had been flying P-40s had switched to P-47s or P-51s.  Which means there’s no way P-40s would be flying over Germany at that point in the game.  And they most definitely would not have been painted with the shark mouths.

Final BS Rating: -1Not So Good

Closing Statement:

MOH Airborne is a decent WW2 FPS. I enjoyed playing through the game except during a few very frustrating parts of certain levels.  I picked it up at a pawn shop for about $20, and for $20 bucks it was worth the money.  I never bothered trying the multiplayer, because honestly after playing Bad Company and COD4, it didn’t really feel like a game I would enjoy online.

If you’re bored and want some easy achievements, and you find this in a bargain bin, by all means buy it and play through it a couple of times. Just don’t expect greatness.   Airborne seems to be pretty representative of the kinds of games EA has been publishing over the last 10 years or so.  They make functional, mostly competent games, which never quite achieve the fantastic.