Medal of Honor has a new installment called Airborne and it continues in the same fashion of its older brothers. You are still battling Germans and dodging Nazis like always but there are some new gameplay elements to keep this title fresh and exciting. You parachute out of planes right into combat, which allows you to land in different spots of the maps making each level non-linear, big plus for the genre.

Presentation and Graphics: Graphically this installment of Medal of Honor looks pretty amazing and rivals my first experience with Call of Duty 2 on my Xbox 360. Explosions are crisp and environments look good, I did have to brighten the screen a bit to see better as the game tends to be on the dark side. Jumping out of the planes looks great and really gives you a sense for falling into the battles. 3.75 out of 5

Sound and Music: The dramatic music and explosive sounds really add to the feel of the game, not to mention the German soldiers yelling at you. Explosions in surround sound and gunfire sound realistic. When a grenade or explosion goes off close to you, you will actually hear a ringing in your ears and have blurred vision. Ringing in your ears is pretty cool. 3.75 out of 5

Gameplay: Parachuting into the battlefield adds a nice element to the game other than just running and gunning into a level. There are also some added things like spots to find and parachute into and different types of landings you can make. The best part of the parachuting is that it will allow you to drop into different portions of the map and let you tackle areas as you wish. I would like to ignore the green smoke marker, which is the designated safe zone to drop into and land on the nearby roofs to take out enemies from up top.

Aiming is a big bitch in this game and machine guns kick like mules and shooting Germans can be a pain in the ass. This takes away form the game a lot, machine guns have so much kick back that if you hold the button down you will end up shooting the sky. The hit detection is not the bes tin the world either as shooting a German will only immobilize them with a head shot, everything else requires you to empty a clip inn them just to get one guy down. The difficulty in killing enemies makes portions of the game very frustrating, there is one level where you need to take control of a bridge and the enemies all have rocket launchers, impossibly not fun.

You now can upgrade your weapns after you have scored enough kills with them. Each weapon can be upgraded three times and will give you better accuracy or more bullets per clip. Upgradeable guns are cool and are supposed to make your weapons more proficient but the upgrades only help marginally. There is also a feature that allows you to kick grenades, which is both useful and lots of fun. 3.5 out of 5

Online: Solid online play for up to 12 players. Ranked and unranked matches available to play on quite a few maps and you can parachute into battle online as well if you’re an Ally. Parachuting into battle is good and bad online, since you cant fire while parachuting into a battle you are pretty much a floating target, but it does give you the opportunity ot land behind your enemies and get the drop on them. 4 out of 5

Lasting Appeal: The game isn’t terribly long, but does offer different difficulties as well as online play. Parachuting into the levels also gives you some replay as you can land in certain areas or spots to get bonuses. If World War II games are not your cup of tea then this game will get old quick, but if the genre draws you in then Airborne will give you a quick fix. 3 out of 5

Final Word: If you are a big WWII FPS fan than this is the game for you, if you don’t like the genre at all then steer clear, if you are somewhere in between it is worth checking out at least as a rental. The game has some unique points, which make it fun but also some quirks that detract from it. All in all a fun game that will keep you entertained and shooting Nazis.

Overall: 3.5 out of 5

1 = Not worth the bandwidth.

2= Demo is enough, not worth your money.

3= Game is good, depending on the price, seriously consider picking it up.

4= Worth your money. Should provide some good times for quite awhile.

5= Buy the game. Lock your door. Pick up a case of beer. This could take all night.