From 2002 to be exact. The many sequels varied from above average (Pacific Assault, European Assault), over decent (Heroes) to plain disaster (Rising Sun, Vanguard). With Medal of Honor: Airborne EA tries to renimate its comatose patient by adding something new again since a long time.

That new thing is of course the parachute jumps that have been marked as truly revolutionary by the EA marketing machine. Ok, without a doubt it gives a kick to jump from a seedy C-47 while all around you air defense grenades are exploding, but the promised total freedom is nowhere to be found. If you don't land near one of the "safe zones" (or one of the five secret "skill drops") you can restart about half a minute later because your drop zone is filled with Krauts.

Also the level design is somewhat semi-linear. You can choose in which order you finish the first couple of objectives (destroy tanks, crush radios, blow up ammo depots; you know the drill) but to get to the next - scripted - part of your mission you first have to complete all your missions succesfully.

Also new is that you can upgrade all the weapons (all golden oldies like the Garand, Thompson, MP-40 or BAR) as you use them more often. By scoring headshots or taking down three enemies quickly after each other your experience will rise faster. It's fun that these upgrades actually do have an impact on the behaviour of the weapon. A handle will give less recoil to the Thompson and Magnum bullets will turn your Colt into a feared murder armament. Each weapon (including grenades and bazookas) can be improved three times. I caught myself even replaying certain levels only to free the next unlock so that I would be better armed for the next mission. Only too bad that your arms all have an enormous recoil, even in such a way that it becomes ridiculous.

The levels aren't truly original (a pittoresque village, an industry complex, a radio antenna, Greek temple ruins) but they're decently designed. The only location that really managed to bring a "wow" to my lips was the Flaktürm (Flack tower), the sixth and last level.

The makers did their best to make everything as intense as possible. The fights are fairly dynamic; the Germans come towards your position in groups, you constantly get reinforcements that lliterally fall out of the sky and you'll regularly see a tank or halftrack passing by to make your life miserable. The intensity of the simply great Call of Duty 4 (where you really get the feeling of being in a total war) is never equalled.

It's a shame that the experience regularly gets dampened by some AI flaws. Your buddies will often sit around waiting for a location while you're fighting alone only a few steps further down the road. Also the spawn-behaviour of the Germans can be called simply aggravating. Sometimes you'll be attacked from the back, from an area you just completely cleared. Other small annoyances are the collision detection and the flat-said scandalous checkpoint system. Your progress only gets saved when you've reached an objective. Die and you'll have lost all weapons experience that you've gained since the last objective (or even worse: since the first paradrop). That that is a shameful way to prolong gameplay time speaks for itself but even then you can finish this one in only five hours which is in fact criminally short, even for current measures.

To squeeze some additional fun out of Airborne you can replay earlier missions to collect all weapons upgrades or dedicate yourself to the multiplayer mode. Here the paradrops are better as you do get the total freedom to land where you want. Unfortunately there are only six maps with three being based on the single player levels (Husky, Neptune and Avalanche) while the other three will look familiar to veterans of the series (like myself) as they come from Allied Assault like the classic Remagen. The multiplayer plays smoothly with little to no lag but I do again have to say that the level from Call of Duty 4 (with its innovating "perks"-system) never gets achieved.

Visually Airborne won't win any prizes. Models and textures aren't as beautiful and detailed as for instance in Bioshock or Uncharted. Also the explosions and special effects aren't as spectacular as we can expect from a next-gen shooter. Beware though: Airborne isn't an ugly game, but we expect more from graphics these days. Also the game suffers from framerate drops, especially when jumping out of your Dakota or when a lot of action needs to be rendered on screen the game clearly suffers.

As always, the strongest point in this Medal of Honor is the sound. The voices, explosions, environment and weapons sounds are of top level, and the soundtrack (a mix of known MoH-themes and new material) is also classy.