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> Results: Medal of Honor Airborne
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The ESRB Says
Blood: GamerDad noticed blood coming from our enemies as we dispatched them - spray, not pools or visible wounds. Mild Language: Fom the very start liberal use of words like 'hell' and 'damn' sprinkled in the dialogue. Violence: It's like mom always said, if you can't beat 'em, blow 'em up with a Gammon grenade. If you look to a game that really set off the recent wave of World War II shooters, it would have to be Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC. Oh, sure, there had been previous Medal of Honor games and previous World War II shooters - including the entire Castle Wolfenstein series spanning over twenty years - but the realism and in-your-face shooter feeling of that game really brought the genre to the fore. Medal of Honor has since been superceded by the Call of Duty series as being the 'poster child' of WWII first person shooters, but attempts to recover some past glory by taking to the skies in Medal of Honor Airborne. Unfortunately, while this is the best Medal of Honor game since Allied Asaault, it doesn't do anything that will erase the memory of the superior Call of Duty games, as it gets bogged down with a bunch of silly arcade-style features and is just entirely too short to be a reasonable value. The 'Airborne' part of the title refers not to flying around in airplanes but jumping out of them. From there on out you land in solid first person shooter territory, and as always with the Medal of Honor games it is pretty much you against the world. You will constantly hear your name - 'good shot, Travers', 'Travers got the sniper', 'destroy that tank Travers', 'Travers took a bullet' and so on - but don't let that fool you into thinking you are doing anything really squad-based. The basic gameplay is traditional WWII shooter - move from objective to objective, shoot everything in sight, and so on. The shooter mechanics feel a bit 'loose' compared to other shooters, but is reasonably fun and well paced. The game has a huge amount of awards that break into three categories - medals for completing the game in certain ways, commendations for making certain 'skill jumps', and field awards for marksmanship with certain weapons. These all feel like excuses for XBOX360 Achievements, which is acceptable with the major medals and even the jump awards (this IS a game about Airborne after all). However, the field upgrades are just nutty - let me get this right, I shot enough enemies so I get a double-sized clip, in the middle of battle?!? It is completely immersion breaking and ridiculous, and makes the game feel like an arcade shooter as part of your strategy is to position yourself to get as many kills as quickly as possible. Medal of Honor Airborne isn't a bad game, and is one of the better WWII shooters I've played, but there are glaring flaws, issues that make both console and PC users should 'lousy port' and some random silliness that drags the game down to just average ... and the very low 'play time to cost' ratio doesn't help.  
The content in Medal of Honor Airborne pretty much the same as every other World War II game of the past five or so years. As with those games, this is an extremely intense and violent first-person shooter that uses scripting and a new graphics engine very effectively to make you feel immersed in World War II. You are in constant peril, and the enemy onslaughts are frenetic and will have you scrambling for survival. The blood is minimal, but the indicators on screen as you become more injured cause much more emotional reaction than watching your health bar approach zero. All of the cities throughout Europe are shown as ruins, but there are no civilians or bodies to make it gruesome. Still, this is definitely a game for older teens and adults.
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