With the Medal of Honor series spanning nearly as long as the war it depicts, it’s safe to say that MoH has been around a while. The series even has a mobile phone game to its name too. Usually when a mobile game releases with the same name, that’s an indicator that the series has had its day. However, this series hasn’t got all self-conscious and feeling sorry for itself yet, so EA have decided to release another one, Medal of Honor: Airborne (it pains me to spell those two words the American way).
This time round, we are stepping into the spit-polished boots of Boyd Travers, who is a proud Private First Class of the 82nd Airborne Division. Seeing as though you’re in an airborne division, shouldn’t this mean that you get to parachute a lot? Indeed it does you curious gamer.
In fact, that very feature is one of the most innovative ideas of this new incarnation. According to EA we will have full control over the parachute “drop”, which means that we will be able to choose where to start the mission. This in itself would effectively change the mission each time you play it: do you decide to land on the roof and snipe the moustachioed Nazis (There’s something very wrong with that image-Ed), or do you land slap bang in the middle of the crossfire and start, well, firing away? The possibilities are endless, and if this is realised to it’s full potential it could really change the way we’ve played MOH for the better.
EA are also adding in RPG features this time around (aren’t all games now?), which allow you to upgrade yourself and your guns too. However, don’t expect any Deux Ex-style biomodifications, this will be stuff like the ability to carry more ammo as you get more ammo pockets, more bags and the like. The ability to upgrade your weapons is equally based in the real world, and according to EA they have a research team on it. Whether paying another dozen or so staff to do a job that any of us could do if we were given 10 minutes alone with Google will actually make this feature better is anyone’s guess at the moment, as EA are being uncharacteristically tight-lipped.
The series is also set to take it’s first foray into online console gaming with this next game too, although details surrounding game modes and amounts of player are still sketchy at the moment.
At this point, it’s too early to tell whether MOH: Airborne is going to be a winner or a loser. The latest MOH wasn’t too bad, and we saw glimpses of something promising in there. It’s clear that EA are trying to reinvent the series, and for the first time in a long time this looks set to be a different style of Medal Of Honor.
MOH: Airborne has been penned in for a late 2006 release