Medal Of Honor: Airborne

MOH: Airborne Personal review

Publisher : EA games

Release date : september 2007

Developper : EA Los Angeles

Minimum reiquirements for XP:

• Pentium IV or Athlon  2800+    

• 512 Mb

• 
  
  500Mb HDD
  
  
  
  
• 
  
  Gforce 6600 ati x1300 or higher
  
  
  
  
  
  

Test: Made on average skill using the default setting on my computer [ AMD64 3400+ - 2Gb Ram - GEforce 6 128 Mb] some really small slowdown but without really impacting render of effect and graphics .


Cost: it can now easily be find for less than 10 $/€ in some second hand store or for a little bit more as classic retail version in megastores .but I would highly recommand you to buy the 10th anniversary box that put all together every offical opus actually release


Storyline
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Take to the skies in Medal of Honor Airborne, where you’ll drop into grueling ground attacks in a bid to turn the tide of WWII. Begin each mission in the air above Axis controlled battlefields, then make your mark in the largest airborne operations in history.

Starting with your jump from a C-47 transport plane, every choice you make can seal your fate. In the air, control your parachute to select a landing spot that brings you the greatest strategic advantage. Follow the green smoke to recommended landing areas where Allied forces will be waiting, or go it alone by landing on rooftops or balconies. But craft your strategy carefully: every move you make, from your choice of landing spot to the enemies you engage on the ground, will determine your success in the mission, and whether or not you are truly one of the Airborne elite.
In Medal Of Honor: Airborne, you'll step into the boots of Boyd Travers, Private First Class of the 82nd Airborne Division. Engage in battles throughout Europe, from rocky beginnings in Sicily to war-winning triumphs in Germany. Each mission begins behind enemy lines, with an intense and fully interactive airdrop. Your ability to determine your own starting point dramatically changes the way each mission plays out. View the entire operation from the air, and then control your parachute to choose your landing spot. On the ground, gather your senses and assess the terrain. A wide variety of authentic, customizable weapons are at your disposal, each with distinct characteristics. Choose your path in this free roaming FPS environment. Medal of Honor Airborne will also feature exceptionally photo-realistic characters, adding to the intensity of the cinematic, story-driven game.


Design
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Through 6 big missions , this new opus in the WW2 gaming experience will try to recreate the histrory from one of the more implicated squadron : Airborne. Electronic Aerts try to create with a casting comparable to the blockbuster movies (see end of the game credits), a perfect opus to the prequal in the MOH series with also an eyes trying to beat the one who push them ou from the first place: Call of Duty.
Visually the game does't really disappoint us,  and after a pass to the briefing room witch will put in advance the objectives you will directly be push into the action sitting in you plane before the drop. Till then everything seems right and enjoyable and the first vision of the dropping zone (picture here below on the left) is really impressive.
Weapons, environment, grenade effects most of the visual are really enjoyable and from great quality; atttention to detail (planes, realism of the environment ) are also well done but it's from the same quality of COD 4 and 5. Cutscenes are a little to sparse present and history parallelism doesn't really shine through mission to even add this unprobable tower bunker in the center of a town.
The mission even if a little oriented as a squad experience, just after the drop, really felt short regarding the fact that your friends will fastly disapear (die) The AI is not always acting in the best way trough rushes they sometimes collapse or lost, experience was disapointing by the fact you team mate just went into your line of fire

The location of all mission were not that interesting for me it's also perhaps because you always start by dropping from you plane to access an not open area for a first step that makes the feeling to have always the same playing routine. Mission have also a limited environment feeling day and night without no special weather experience (no hot sun no snow).
You part of airborne so no use of tanks  no sneaking mission nothing really changing through the 6 missions you will want to survive (at least you will survive a little bit more than your team mate). The explosion are really sparse and doesn't really destroit building so that your progression is always oriented in a quite static and repetittive way without surprise... except enemies.

Gameplay
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There is a lot to says here and even if there was some good features like:

• the upgrade of weapon to make them more powerfull
• the quite important amount of objectif to achieve
• the special dropping zone that you can find and after try to drop on it to earn wings
• the way you can recieve medals if you are able to be an outstanding player
• statistics sheet after each mission

The general feelling let me much more disapointed through it than satisfied. Why:

the mission were for me to repetitive and the first orientation you can give before starting the game by choosing autosave or customsave really let me dispaointed by the first choice. The autosave will each time you die remake a drop from your plane with as good objectif (but sometime unbeatable) to get those identied dropping zone to get the wings (5 per missions) but another quite furstating objectif is to pass trough zone where german are back... this also gave me a feeling of mutliplayer gameplay restarting after you die in a well identified zone were enemies just wait for you and I really hate this...The way to get were you want with you parachute is not really evident before everymission you have also to choose you weapons some are great but other not and one objectif is to fully upgrate all of then in my case I let some of them unused because they were not efficiant at all. The special objectif (destroying things) where mostly statics and when you had some movable one it was more like a stupied turn over the place experience that something realistic.

In conclusion:
I had not a so good time playing this game the huge amount of time I died and needed to drop off for another time really let me a frustrating moment that let me a dispointed feeling...there was no really improvment in gaming experience through you progression except the fact that enemies became more and more challenging to fight against...the challenge is present everyware but execpt the dropping stategy there was no reall thinking and the fact that you can have some rewards to succeed in mission objectives certainly add values but will this compense the frustration I add to restart this experience, I doubt of it.

Like for Man of Valour and even if Medal of Honor was the first to came in with FPS war experience this one didn't make a turnover in the community choice sothat there was never a great community to grow up nor to build maps. No if you buy the bundle or can get it bellow 5 €/$ it's a good deal but don't think that you will have that much gaming pleasure with this one



Playtime: 9 hours

Rating:

Men of Valor

Men of Valor Personal review

Publisher : vivendi universal
Developper : 2015

Minimum reiquirements:

• Pentium IV
• 256 Mb RAM
• 500Mb HDD
• 64Mb 3d card
  

Test: Made on average skill using the default setting on my computer [ AMD64 - 2Gb Ram - GEforce 6 128 Mb] no slow down and perfect render of effect and graphics .


Cost: it can now easily be find for less than 5 $/€ in some second hand store or for a little bit more as classic retail version in megastores .

Storyline
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The game puts the player in the role of Dean Shepard, a black Marine stationed in Vietnam in 1965. With this scenario come many references to the problems of racial segregation and this is enhanced by the letter conversation between father and soon about the small descent to hell of is his young brother. This letter conversation and the change of objective during the mission (not only saving your life but also the one of your brother) add certainly a parallel immersing storyline to the classic and simple rush trough missions.


Design
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Through 12 missions (53 maps), 2015 will try to immerse you into the Vietnam war with some interesting touch like the cutscenes performed with a movie 16/9 size (screen here below), the story behind at every loading mission and even some real movie archive. They try really to put you into the adventure. The mission design is what I expected from the creator of Medal of Honor : Allied assault with well put together environment with all what was put already in advance before through the Vietcong serie (sadly for 2015 they came after this first visit of Vietnam through FPS that was really a success for me) they visited the same type of environment with some really good highlight like the tick grass where search for enemies isn’t that evident and the impressive explosion and fire effects. But those stuff felt a bit light and didn’t clean away my taught of replaying just another Vietcong addon with some better texture.












The location of all mission where quite interesting and not to devoted to jungle or underground experiences with a good twist between day and night sun and rain I would have expected some more vehicle mission that was mostly limited to the boat one. The squad experience is always present and even if they don’t really act as good as in COD, squad mission is certainly pushing you to give the best that you can. Also what was a good point was that the mission were well organized as a ‘run to escape’ war and not a run for glory this taking in account that this war was a real down turn for the United States of America.

The AI except there sometimes erratic behaviour, are well designed and have really a realistic layout not as much as the weapons but still enjoyable, but one more this doesn’t really add a positive value to what was done before.

Gameplay
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Like for the Vietcong series to find some munitions or feature you will need to search bodies but this time they will quite fast disappear, the collaboration between you and your squad isn’t always that efficient and this especially when you receive order to follow ‘Mr Brown’ but the game doesn’t feature the soldier name as in COD series…also the objective to achieve through the direction you need to follow (compass) can make you turn around for a certain time because you missed something without knowing what to do, the cherry on the cake is certainly the fact that you cannot save but need to pass a certain point to have an autosave… this can make some experience really frustrating to the lack of some autosaving (you will see what I mean trough the ambush mission (7th) where on the way back to the camp you will never encounter an autosave…it took me around 10 time to finish this one… the bandage system was in comparison a good additional feature where you can hide yourself recover the wound and restart the fight. The challenge was well present and adds some epic combats that will be appreciated when finished, but one more time there wasn’t enough destroying objective mission (putting bombs) or timed mission like in COD or Vietcong where you need to hold a position with a counter decreasing.











In conclusion: I had a good time but felt really disappointed at the end of this game through is frustrating saving system is missing originality the game just felt off with no real replay value like previous release certainly have…For a game that came out in 2004 there was never an interested community that grow up with the game, no planetMenofValor, no real covering website (or the one that was died quite fast) and I think that there was no custom single player mission ever done.
The only good point is now that you can easily find this game for a quite interesting prize and give it a try but be aware that Men of Valor will never be as good as it’s predecessor (MOH, COD and Vietcong).



Playtime: 13 hours


Rating: