A question for you: are you tired of those trumpets yet? Medal Of Honor: Airborne won’t do anything to change your feelings on them, opening immediately with that sting of overly familiar, post-Saving Private Ryan music we’ve become so used to since Allied Assault and Frontline on the PC and PS2 respectively. Don’t let it fool you into believing this is just another generic romp through familiar WWII playgrounds, however, because it isn’t. Sure, the locations you’ll jump into have been visited in countless WWII games, but Electronic Arts has done something genuinely commendable here: it’s changed everything we know about the franchise.

And it’s all because of a simple air jump. Set over five historical operations that we’ve visited in WWII games numerous times (Operation Husky, Avalanche, Neptune, Market Garden and Varsity) – each stage begins in the same way: sitting in a tin can with walls as thin as tin foil, desperately trying to hold it together just seconds before leaping into war-ravaged battlefields, giant AA guns aimed up at your plane, while everyone is descending from it. Airborne isn’t trying to tell a story, nor does it need to – and yet, while you can criticise such things as the dialogue and forced attempts at brotherhood during these sequences, it all vanishes when you actually step to that doorway and get your first glimpse of what’s happening outside. The battlefields are massive – Market Garden is one of the most visually stunning things you’ll see in a WWII game – and there is very little linear within them.

Typically, you’ll hit the ground wherever you can – essentially being put in control of your descent as soon as you leap – and several objectives will present themselves by way of gold arrows on your compass. Complete these in whatever order you want, usually before another section of the stage opens and leads you into the final, epic set piece. That’s where the game is at its most linear; sealing the final set piece away from the rest of the stage so it can surprise you one final time. You’ll notice the reference to stages rather than levels. Airborne is not the strict, linear nose-ring design of old – where all you could do was essentially follow a strict path. You aren’t being pulled through these environments as you were previously, with little area for exploring or downtime. Airborne enables you to go anywhere you want within the confines of the stage, making your own downtime in the process. It affects the game so much compared to its predecessors.

That isn’t the only thing that’s changed either: combat has received a massive overhaul, making it some of the most engaging and exciting in an FPS, let alone the Medal Of Honor franchise. Part of that is down to the smarter AI of your enemies (though some of them do have a propensity to just run straight at you), but it’s largely due to the weapons. You can upgrade them through three stages by pulling off certain special kills that raise a blue bar. When it peaks, you hit the next upgrade level and enable such things as an extended clip size, faster reload and reduced recoil for accuracy. And they do affect the combat, adding another layer to it than mere running and gunning.

Where the game loses points, more than anywhere else, is in its distinct lack of polish. This is something that plagued the 360 version, too – so it’s not that EA has only turned out an unpolished PS3 game. And the problems with the 360 version are exactly the same here. As such, the exact same game, with an extra three months or so of quality assurance, and you could add at least three or four points to the score. However, massive frame rate issues, jerky as hell cut-scenes (the bomb run at the end of the second stage is painful), inconsistent physics and more really holds Airborne down. It’s also worth mentioning the difficulty, too. It spikes around the fourth stage rather dramatically as soon as uber-Nazis show up. No, really – these guys walk around in black suits with gas masks on, looking like they’ve just stepped out of Return To Castle Wolfenstein.

That goes a long way to describing the kind of game this is, mind you. The franchise may have established itself as a po-faced shooter, priding itself on its high-realism factor. But Medal Of Honor: Airborne takes a page out of European Assault’s sillier, more arcade game-like atmosphere. Airborne is nowhere near as drastic a change as Call Of Duty 4, obviously. But where that game – as brilliant as it is – works more off its modern setting than any new gameplay additions, EA has ensured that Medal Of Honor: Airborne is another WWII game, but one that feels completely different to any that have come before it. As the fist step towards redefining the franchise, Airborne is a great success. Next time, just a wee bit more polish, please.

Craig Gilmore