Medal of Honor Airborne Review (XB360)

Medal of Honor, Electronic Arts' World War II franchise, returns for another tour of duty in the Xbox 360 video game, Airborne. Like all WWII games, you play as a tough soldier (in this case, Boyd Travers, Private First Class of the 82nd Airborne Division) eager to destroy the Nazi war machine. Except in this case, you don't follow a specific path to victory. Thrilling parachute jumps let you choose where and how you land. From there, you can tackle missions in a variety of ways.

Each mission begins with you leaping from an airplane and guiding Travers across an enormous and detailed battlefield that is so impressive looking, you'll spy Nazis running around, even from hundreds of feet in the air. Limited controls give the opportunity to somewhat control where you end up, and the game contains three landing types: Flared (a normal, safe landing), Botched (you hit the ground hard and take several moments to recover) and Greased (you hit the ground running).

If you're a bad ass, you can crash the Nazi party and just start shooting. Alternatively, if you prefer to keep your health bars intact, you can land atop a roof or behind a building in order to get your bearings. The latter proves more intelligent, since the artificial intelligence can drop you in a few seconds. Seasoned vets may breeze through the game, thanks to extensive combat training with previous first person shooters, but don't be fooled, these Nazis are extremely vicious, and you should expect to restart multiple times.

We love the parachuting, the ability to upgrade our weapons after extensive use, the punishing AI and the non-linear fighting. The concept of having to think before doing anything blew our minds. At the same time, we dislike the super Nazis, the guys that just won't die, despite repeated shots to the body and sometimes even the head. More than once, we thought we killed someone, only to see him pop back up and bury a few rounds in us and that pissed us off.

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