Medal of Honor: Airborne

Overview

Medal Of Honor: Airborne is the 11th installment of the long running Medal Of Honor series. It is a World War II First Person Shooter and is developed by EA Los Angeles. MOH: Airborne was released world wide during the first week of September 2007 for the 360 and PC. A PS3 version was released on November 21, 2007. The game makes use of the Unreal Engine 3. Airborne lets players play in a non-linear fashion. This is the first time that a game in the MOH series has employed non-linear gameplay.

Setting and Gameplay

In the single player campaign the player takes the role of Private First Class Boyd Travers, a paratrooper in the US Airborne Division. There are a total of six missions, each with multiple objectives. Several badges and other bonus achievements can be unlocked on the successful completion of each primary and secondary objectives. The missions take place in various parts of Italy, Netherlands, Germany and France.

Parachuting

One innovative feature in Airborne is parachuting. Before any mission starts, the player will jump out of an airplane several hundred feet above the ground. From there, they are free to land wherever they want on the battlefield, allowing the player to tackle the objectives in any order they like. The safe landing zones are denoted by a green smoke, and it is always recommended to land in such areas. These areas also have boxes of health, ammo, and explosives to stock up on, but they can only be used once. Land anywhere else and the player will likely be greeted by a horde of Nazi soldiers. The player can also strategically land on roofs in enemy territory to easily pick off enemy soldiers in the area.

Weapons & Upgrades

A large number of weapons are available in Airborne. The player starts out with a small selection of these weapons, and more can be unlocked by picking them up during missions. Before every mission the player is able to select the weapons they start with. This includes two primary weapons, a sidearm, and grenades, which the player can hold up to 21 of. There is also a performance stat system, that will keep track of all the kills, accuracy and other combat related statistics. When the player kills a set number of enemies with a weapon, they will be awarded a badge that signifies an upgrade for said weapon.

Each weapon, including grenades, have three badges to be awarded. The upgrades include reduced weapon recoil, higher zoom, faster reloading, higher ammo capacity and more. Furthermore, most upgrades will alter the weapons appearance. For example, when the Thompson receives the ammo capacity upgrade, the regular straight magazine is replaced with the iconic drum magazine. The single player campaign is overall 10-14 hrs long. Airborne's replay value is much higher than previous MOH games due to the ability to start levels almost anywhere on the map, and the ability to upgrade every weapon in the game.

• Mission 1 - Operation Torch : This is just a training mission, where the player will be introduced to the combat techniques in Airborne. It takes place in Tunisia.
• Mission 2 - Operation Husky : After training, the player is then sent to Sicily, where Travers is forced into a village Adanti. This mission takes place in the year 1943.
• Mission 3 - Operation Avalanche : This mission injects Travers into Paestum, Italy and it is up to Travers to free Paestum from the Nazis, who is providing a strong resistance to the Allies advancing from Salerno.
• Mission 4 - Operation Neptune : Here Travers in air dropped into France and it is up to Travers and CO to take and hold the Ste. Mere Eglise, before the Normandy beach invasion. This mission takes place in 1944.
• Mission 5 - Operation Market Garden : In this mission Travers is dropped into Netherlands, where Travers and co will have to secure a bridge over Waal Rivers for the allies.
• Mission 6 - Operation Vasity : This is the game's final mission and here Travers will be parachuting down along side thousands of soldiers into Flak Tower, Germany.

Multiplayer

Unlike the single player campaign, the multiplayer lets players play as both Allies as well as Axis. Airborne offers 6 different multi-player maps and a maximum of 12 players can battle it out. Airborne provides three multiplayer modes:

• Team Deathmatch : This is the basic TD mode, where the team that has the highest points at the end of the time limit or the team that reaches the max score limit first wins.
• Airborne Team Deathmatch : This is similar to the TD, only difference is that, in this case the Allies are air-dropped and Axis start off from ground.
• Objective Based : Here the players will have to capture and hold 3 flags in the map. The team to capture all 3 flags or control the most number of flags the longest wins.

Patches: Three patches have been released so far :

• Version 1.1 : Released on October 5, 2007. Fixed many of the gameplay and multiplayer features. Version details here.
• Version 1.2 : Released on December 13, 2007. As a result of this patch Airborne now supports 24 player online feature and it also provided two new maps. Version details here.
• Version 1.3: Released on March 7, 2008. Adds a couple of new maps and new features. Version details here.

System Requirements

• • OS: Windows XP or Vista (32-bit) (64-Bit versions of Windows not supported)
  • Processor: Intel 2.8 GHz or faster (3.0 Ghz or faster for Vista) or AMD Athlon 2800 for Windows XP / AMD Athlon 3800 for Windows Vista
  • Memory: 1 GB or more
  • Graphics: Video card with 128 MB or more memory, Pixel Shader 3.0 support, and one of these chipsets is required: ATI Radeon X1300 Pro or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or greater. NOTE: NVIDIA 6800XT/LE, 7100GS, 7200GS/LE, 7300 GS/GT are not supported. NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire modes are not supported.
  • DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c compatible
  • Hard Drive: 9.0 GB or more free space
  • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible (For Creative Sound Blaster Audigy cards running under Windows Vista, expect lower performance)
  • Special Requirements: 2-12 players and 24 with dedicated server; Cable, DSL, or faster connection