Energy and intensity in abundance
The energy, intensity and tension of war have been captured accurately in MOH: Airborne. The AI consistently provide a robust challenge, throwing grenades at your feet with uncanny accuracy, running out the way and diving for cover when you lob a grenade in their direction; and intelligently fighting as a unit, closing in on you from all angles or backing off just when you thought you had them pinned down. This means that it’s fairly difficult to run-and-gun through the game – they'll shoot you down effortlessly - instead you have to pick off enemies and then move forward systematically to the next battle, or rethink your tactics and maybe head for a rooftop or switch to a flanking maneuver. The balance between needing to think tactically (difficulty) and the accessibility of the gameplay (the fun factor) is spot-on. In fact, unlike many shooters, on very few occasions did I get frustrated with the gameplay.Despite the odd suicide run, your own team also reacts intelligently to the action around them, pushing forward once they've cleared a line, even at times appearing to back you up just when you thought you were stranded. Let's get something straight though, MOH: Airborne isn't as tactically challenging as the likes of GRAW, it's a different type of game, a far more accessible, simple, pick up and play World War II shooter that takes an arcade-style approach to the action rather than focusing too hard on a totally realistic war experience.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageThe new health regeneration system in the game effectively pushes you think tactically. It's split into four bars and every time you're hit one or part of the bar vanishes. A bar can be replaced with a health kit, picked up in random locations or from soldiers you kill, but if you've only lost part of the bar it will refill over time. I played MOH: Airborne on Normal mode and it was very challenging. At times I had to play out the same objective half a dozen times to complete it successfully, but later on in the game (embarrassingly, when I realized that a partially empty health bar does refill over time), I realized I could progress successfully through a mission without getting killed if I held back at times, found cover or looked for positions where I could gain a clear advantage on the enemy.