If you've ever played a World War II-themed shooter in your life, then you already have a basic idea of what to expect from the multiplayer action in Medal of Honor: Airborne. Playing as either an Allied or Axis soldier, you'll skulk through war-torn cities and villages, battling the other team through streets and the ruins of shelled houses for kills and/or control points.
It looks awesome and plays great, but there's not a lot here you haven't seen already - just keep your head down, shoot
We've been invited to check out Medal of Honor: Airborne time and time again. This latest visit, though, put us in touch with a brand new level that really showcased what separates the game from its competition. Based on an actual German construction, the Flaktürme, or Flak Tower - a massive gun-emplaced tower designed to defend against air strikes on key cities.
Where does this leave you? Parachuting down, of course, past a massive concrete tower that's crawling with Nazi soldiers (of
The parachuting only lasts a few seconds. The impact lasts the entire game.
Don't get us wrong - those fleeting moments of freefall are pure exhilaration. Surging forward in a crowd of equally frightened soldiers, you hardly have time to register the wide open hatch in front of you - the black starry precipice - before you've been pushed over the edge and into the nothingness. As the chute jerks back and your legs dangle in front of you, the entire mission is revealed on the ground
At first it's familiar territory; the clumsy clang of your M1 Garand rifle, somber trumpet music wafting gently over low-key menus and men in tin hats bellowing at each other over the sound of cracking gunfire. But then you play it and realize that, finally, Medal of Honor has evolved and is now better than Call of Duty. Duty's problem is that it's too stiff. You feel yourself shuttling through a defined, predictable path, which is the complete opposite of what war actually is - an
We got the opportunity to journey down to Los Angeles to see how EA is shaping Medal of Honor: Airborne into a lethal killing machine, and we loved what we saw. After laboring on the title for over a year, developers at EA Los Angeles have completely re-envisioned the series for the next generation of gaming technology.
Of course, there is the near-obsessive level of authenticity - when you've got a company the size of EA, you can afford to "go big" on the details even if it means flying a
