What is it that makes WWII such a popular scenario for video games?  Is it the fact that it is recent, yet long enough ago to allow it to be used by popular media?  Is it that it was as morally unambiguous a war as there has been?  Is it the combination of weaponry and squad-level tactics?  Or is it just the 'ding' noise from the M1 Garand as the clip is ejected?

Whatever it is, WWII games have fallen out of favour in the last year or two.  With the exception of the magnificent Company of Heroes, there's a sense among many gamers that we've “seen it all before”.  There is possibly a seed of truth in this: WWII games have often borrowed heavily from film and television depictions of the second World War.  Think of the Omaha beach landing in MOH:AA, and Saving private Ryan; or maybe Carentan in Call of Duty, and Band of Brothers.  Perhaps this game-ifying of the silver screen's set-pieces, music and art has dulled our senses to something new and exciting from that era.

Certainly, EA have made much noise about how Medal of Honor Airborne (MOHA) differs from the WWII shooters that have gone before.  The USP of this title is your deployment: at the start of every mission you actually drop from a plane with your fellow paratroopers.  Where you land decides your approach to the objectives, how much resistance you will meet on the way there, and (to some extent) how you will fight.  It's a fairly novel concept, and one that is enhanced by the polish given to the game.  The pre-mission briefing is given 'in-engine', with you sat in the briefing room watching slides of army intel on a projector screen.  You then progress to the drop proper, each one different and preceded by 30 seconds with your fellow soldiers in the plane.  These little asides really serve to set the mood for the mission.  Even the loading screen pre-drop delivers a little snippet of pilot's chatter to give things a little more background.

And then you drop.  For the most part, this system works excellently.  You have about 30 seconds hanging from your deployed parachute to pick a landing spot.  Within reason (you are limited by your proximity to the ground), you can land anywhere you want.  'Safe Zones' marked by green smoke indicate areas where you are supposed to drop, so landing there will a guarantee the support of your fellow troopers.  If you land elsewhere, you are often on your own, especially straight after the drop.  This really gives a sense of danger and tension as you realise you have just dropped on top of a roof adjacent to a lot of angry German soldiers, who all know you are there!  This logical variation in difficulty is excellent and allows you to set the pace of fighting.  If you find one drop zone too hard, try a bit closer to your comrades, or aim for the high ground.  On the harder difficulty levels (for there are 3), a botched drop will see you dead as you struggle to free yourself from the chute and bring your weapon to bear.

Once you are on the ground and deployed, the fighting is fast and furious.  The enemy is numerous and often entrenched.  The AI of enemy soldiers is also pretty good: they almost all use cover to their advantage, using 'blind-fire' over the top if pinned, and attempt to outflank your position.  Different ranks of soldiers make up the Nazi forces, from lowly Italian Blackshirts to elite German soldiers wielding MG42's.  The AI of each troop type is different, but the main differentiator is weapon carried and the number of bullets they can take before dropping.  This displays one of MOHA's weak points – it cheats.  I've yet to meet the man that can take 2 or 3 sniper rounds to the head, yet the best German soldiers can do just that.  Other unfairness comes in the form of soldiers that spawn out of thin air, enemy soldiers that preferentially shoot you instead of your comrades and rifle butts that carry more stopping power than a rifle round!  The spawning is particularly galling.  In a similar way to COD2, enemies will keep spawning until you overrun their position, then stop.  This means that a slow, cautious approach will deplete your ammo reserves so much that you have to resort to firing your (largely ineffective) sidearm.  The respawning waves are not as potent as those in COD2, but this is offset by the stinginess of enemy soldiers – most of them keep hold of their weapons after death!  This wouldn't be so bad if your fellow soldiers were a little bit more aggressive, but they tend to let you take point, meaning that you are often forced into foolhardy charges against overwhelming numbers to try and take a key position before your ammo runs dry.  More often than not, this pays off, and you successfully emerge from the bunker/ foxhole/trench/ house wounded but victorious (and feeling like a bally hero!).  But, when it doesn't, you bite the dust all too easily without supporting fire, and there are even more annoying ramifications (more on those in a second).

To counter the super-human enemy soldiers, your abilities are equally extraordinary: the health system is a great hybrid between COD2's 'sit and regenerate', and a more traditional health bar.  Your vitality is split into 4 'beads' which regenerate when the damage is not continual.  This system works fairly well, forcing you to use cover but allowing a swift medkit to turn the fight to your favour.  Better still, each kill with your weapon gains you experience.  When this reaches a certain amount, you get an upgrade to that weapon, be it a bigger clip, faster reload or better sights.  This system is fun, and means that a well timed upgrade can turn an under-performing gun into a death machine.  It's not especially realistic, but it fits with the 'Boys Own' gung-ho atmosphere well.  There is one big problem with this though: if you die, you lose all the experience gained with that weapon since the last checkpoint.  There's no quicksave (which would be a god-send on the harder difficulty levels), which means half an hours gruelling fighting with a crappy pop-gun just to make it into something remotely useful in a fire-fight can be lost, and must be repeated.  In fact, dying is particularly confusing as you parachute back into the fight after the event of the last checkpoint, as if your death had never happened, but the stuff got blown up anyway!

The biggest dud of the lot is the length of the SP campaign though.  There's only six (count 'em!) levels.  Each one varies from 30 minutes to 2 hours in length, the amount of time that it will take you depending on your frequency of deaths, how far behind enemy lines you drop, and the difficulty level you choose.  If you're a particularly skilled, experienced fps'er you could whip through the game in a paltry 3 hours.  EA have tried to up the longevity by putting in Skill Drops to find (landing through doorways and other small targets), and giving medals for various things, but these are paper thin incentives.  It's a real shame because each map is fantastically well designed and distinct in terms of flow and weapon requirements.  This coupled with the freedom you have in tackling the objectives means there's plenty of replayability, but you will get bored eventually.

It's like the development team knew there wasn't a lot to go on, so they have polished it up to a real shine.  The graphics are excellent throughout, and occasionally stunning.  Everything from the aerial view to the street furniture is detailed and believable, with great textures, good animation (apart from the odd physics freak-out) and lush lighting effects.  The only visual hiccup is the shimmer on metallic surfaces which looks like it's reflecting the light of a thousand supernovas no matter what the light source!  The sound effects are equally professional.  The oh-so-crucial weapon sounds are visceral and meaty, the reverberating gun fire from distant streets has just the right amount of echo and distortion and the positional audio is excellent, especially in mutiplayer.

The PC version of MOHA is well coded, however on our forums we have noticed comments about "stuttering" on specific systems, and it is certainly true that to max out all settings at a high resolution you will need one hell of a powerful system. The Xbox 360 version runs well with very few dips in framerate and has a relatively high level of image quality, however when compared to a high end PC with a 8800 graphics card the differences in texture quality and frame rate are apparent. The PC wins this fight, if (and its a big "if"!) you have the necessary CPU and GFX horsepower.

We mentioned multiplayer earlier and this may be MOHA's saving grace.  There's normal team deathmatch, along with an airborne version where the allied forces drop from a plane at each spawn.  This changes the flow of TDM significantly, the Axis forces must be organised or get surrounded, as the airborne placement allows for some particularly evil sniping opportunities!  There's also an Objective mode, most reminiscent of DoD.  However, even this has been marred by some poor choices.  There's no LAN mode for starters.  Hello?  EA?  People with PCs love to go to LAN parties and this is a serious omission.  Secondly, you have to use an EA account to play, for reasons that are not entirely explained, and then they have included a 'matchmaking' service a la Xbox Live which doesn't seem to work nearly as well. 

It's like this instalment of the franchise was designed by a focus group.  Somewhere, a man in a suit flipped a wall-chart and said “OK, what do we want in a WWII game?” and other people in the meeting reeled off everything they like about games that had gone before.  They came up with a mixed bag of RPG elements, free-roaming gameplay, balls-to-the-wall battles and objective-based MP modes.  Somewhere else, people in t-shirts turned that list into a game, but ran out of time.  Next time, give us the same polish, but a whole lot more game please!

Gameplay 89/100 Adrenaline-fuelled mayhem, that's slightly spoilt by design cheapness. Graphics 93/100 Jaw-dropping vistas from the sky, realistic lighting and scenery on the ground.  A gritty feast for the eyes. Sound 91/100 Meaty gunfire, powerful explosions, and a vital role in MP. Value 70/100 A paltry selection of 6 missions, only saved by the great design of each level and replayability. Multiplayer 85/100 Not a huge range of game modes, but the weapons are deadly, and the enemy could be anywhere, at any time... Overall (not an average) 82/100 A polished, exciting shooter that tries to hang too much on it's one idea.  SP is a blast while it lasts, MP is good, sound fun.