Medal of Honor: Airborne
Preview
We are in for something special
by Sergio Brinkhuis
previewed on PC
A lost throne
I still have very vivid memories of my first encounter with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The Normandy Beach mission that starts you off in the game was a perfect 'digitization' of the Normandy Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, a movie that was a big inspiration to the developers. I think I had to redo the part that leads from the boat to the bunker at least five times before succeeding. Every time the shock of the brutal chaos around me put my adrenaline levels sky-high and, although it subsided later on, had me shaking in my chair. The ripped off limbs, dazed soldiers walking around wondering where they were and a continuous stream of bullets impacting all around me during the entire time were hard to ignore. That brutal chaos left an impression, relegating the movie experience to second place. The rest of the game was nothing to sneeze at either and it was no wonder that the game grew out into a major franchise for Electronic Arts and sparked a host of 'me-too' titles, many of which were brilliant in their own right.
Yet Medal of Honor would wear its crown of ?best World War II shooter? for only a short period. Most of you will agree with me that the Call of Duty series has been wearing that for a long time now and its throne is not showing any signs of cracking up. Getting rid of this 'usurper' has been a major headache for Electronic Arts and they must have realized that the only way to do so was to try a different approach entirely. This approach will arrive somewhere next year in the form of Medal of Honor: Airborne.
Open levels
Activision's Call of Duty 2, while being a fantastic game, already showed that it is hard to innovate in the World War II shooter genre. Brothers in Arms fared a little better in that sense but, in general, things have not improved or changed all that much in the last couple of years. Medal of Honor: Airborne promises to bring that much needed change, primarily by changing the way levels are designed. Many of the limiting factors that we all have so grudgingly gotten used to (bushes that you can't walk through because they happen to be the edge of the level, doors of houses that do not open etc.) will be removed or changed in such a way that they do not feel limiting. The reason for doing this comes as a direct result from the 'Airborne' part in the game.
You see, you really -do- play a soldier in the Airborne division, right up to the point where you get dropped out of a plane. It is completely up to you when you will jump out of the C-47 airplane that takes you on your missions, usually far behind enemy lines. Once you have opened your parachute -you- determine exactly where you will land. In the old-fashioned levels, steering your parachute to wherever you felt like landing, most likely meant that you would get stuck more often than not. To facilitate the airdrops, level design needed to be... reinvented, and that's just what the developers are working very hard on doing.
