Medal of Honor: Airborne [X360]

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Finally the Medal of Honor series shows some signs of life! After years of churning out rote scripted corridor shooters with all the vitality and kick of some old geezer at the VFW, Medal of Honor takes off with Airborne, and then drops into the overdone battlefields of WWII from an entirely new angle. Medal of Honor: European Assault showed promise trying to shoehorn open level design onto last-gen systems, but now Airborne lives up to that promise on the 360 and PCs.

Instead of going from point A to point B, you start a level by parachuting down into the spaces between your objectives. Tackle them in whichever order you like. When you die, you're usually respawned in mid-air, giving you a chance to start from someplace new. The parachuting is at its most inspired when you find a nice little spot, such as a shortcut to some objective high up in the sniper-infested catwalks of a German industrial facility, or onto the roof of a building that lets you thin out some enemies hunkered down in trenches. Be sure not to miss the church steeple in Nijmegen. After running and gunning through the ruined streets, it's a wonderful bird's eye view of the fighting, particularly if you've had the foresight to bring along the Springfield sniper rifle.

The gunfights are dramatic and satisfying. By helping your own men advance, or sometimes falling back if too many of them are killed, Airborne presents the ebb and flow of capturing territory a little bit at a time. The iron sights and the use of cover are really well done, letting you easily lean around, cower behind, and shoot over obstacles. It's no Rainbow Six: Vegas, but it might be the next best thing.

The AI does a great job of making the firefights challenging. Enemy soldiers use cover and grenades, and they're more than willing to respond to flanking or incoming grenades by moving to a new spot. This is a game of maneuvering as much as it's a game of shooting.

On anything but the easiest difficulty level, Airborne can be punishing, particularly if you don't take the time to let allied soldiers keep pace with you. Raising the difficulty level seems to make ammunition scarce, and then compounds the problem by giving bad guys extra hit points. The game is saved at every objective, but when you die, you can lose a lot of progress, which includes the upgrade to your weapons. It's awfully disheartening to patiently level up your sniper rifle (there's a weird "squeeze" dynamic to steady your view, which ironically makes it harder to adjust your aim), only to loose it all to yet another of the enemy's brutally efficient grenade tosses. However, one of the best things about the weapon upgrade system is that it makes it easier to replay the missions on harder difficulty levels once you've finished the campaign. Airborne is nothing if not replayable.