I was late to video games. My dad didn’t care for them and thought that it made us kids fight instead of share. To be honest, he was likely right. However, I managed to convince him that if it was my Playstation I didn’t have to share and we wouldn’t fight. One of my earliest games was Medal of Honor: Underground, and that started a love of Medal of Honor games that latest until the last WW2 console game Medal of Honor: Airborne.
This game holds a special place in my heart. I played the hell out of it as a teenager and like most of my favorite games, the guns were great. Not only that, but it had one of my favorite pre-mission features in games, the ability to choose your loadout prior to the mission start.
Medal of Honor: Airborne Gunplay
At the beginning of each mission, you pick your guns. You can bring two long guns and one handgun. After the ‘briefing’ you load up into your plane and jump. From the jump, you can pick and choose where you land. The game has very open levels that allow you to pick where you land and what objectives you take first. Clearing certain objectives sooner rather than later can aid in making the mission easier.
There are also tactical considerations to where you jump. Jumping into the fray might not be a smart idea as German gun you down. However, landing in a tower or on a building with a rifle can give you the advantage of the high ground. Also, certain spots have hidden weapons that are worth seeking out to amp up your loadout.
Admittedly I’ve lost a step or two in the last 15 years since I first played the game. I forgot that it’s a fairly difficult game with some odd control choices. You can aim down sights, which I enjoy, but when aiming down your sights you can’t move. Instead, you can lean and you’ll need to stick to cover to survive.
In the beginning the guns kind of suck. Their lower levels of accuracy make it difficult to land hits. Even though you’ll have your sights dead on an enemy you’ll miss and it can be frustrating. The game really wants you to be somewhat slow, use cover, and be methodical. Sometimes you need to find a way around the mounted machine gun instead of through it, especially on harder difficulty levels.
The Classics
Oh boy, you get all the awesome WW2 options. Some are odd, and even rare, but still end up in your armory. You start with the typical M1911A1 Thomspon gun, and M1 Garand. Quickly you acquire a combination of common American and German firearms like the KAR 98, the BAR, the MP40, and weapons that were a little less common like the STG 44 and Gewehr 43.
Predictably, my favorite is the Winchester Model 12, which I used extensively as soon as I unlocked it.
Each weapon utilizes accurate iron sights and the occasional optic. Most of the weapons are represented well, especially for a video game produced in 2007. The weapons handle somewhat realistically. The BAR, Thompson, and MP40 work best in short bursts. The Thompson realistically has a higher rate of fire than the MP 40, and little things like that are well represented here.
Although, the game has a few flaws, like reloading the 1903 sniper rifle with stripper clips. The scope is clearly in the way of the stripper clips, but your character figures it out. Other little things are a little sillier. Like the Thomspon is faster to reload than the MP40, but with the Thompson magazine guide, it can actually be a bit slower.
Clearly, the game needs to be balanced and obviously doesn’t need to be that realistic. All in all, I think Medal of Honor: Airborne does a great job of including a variety of guns and making them both fun and realistic.
Upgrading the Weapons
Medal of Honor: Airborne uses a neat little upgrade system that requires you to use the weapons to upgrade. The more Nazis you kill, the faster you’ll upgrade your guns. It forces you to ‘get good’ with the weapons to earn the upgrades.
Upgrades vary between weapons and range from silly to “Yeah, that makes sense.” On the silly side, you get 20 round mags for the Gewehr 43 which weren’t available til after the war. The Model 12 shotgun gets buckshot as an upgrade which makes me assume I’m using birdshot until then.
The M119A1 upgrades are all sorts of weird. You get a match trigger that increases the rate of fire, a quick draw holster, and ‘Magnum’ rounds. You can upgrade the MP 40 with an experimental magazine that holds 64 rounds but was never produced extensively.
On the normal side Medal of Honor: Airborne provides upgrades like a bayonet for your shotgun, rifle grenade launchers, the ability to jungle tape magazines together, and even optics on guns like the STG 44.
Lots of little things make it fun to try and gain all the upgrades for every weapon. My favorite combination was split between the Thompson and M1 Grand and the BAR and Winchester Model 12. Depending on the mission I’d choose between the two setups, but alter replayed missions to upgrade guns and try new combos.
Jump, Jump, Jump
Medal of Honor: Airborne has a lot of replayability. The ability to replay missions with different guns and try different jump areas makes it fairly fun to rerun missions. Plus, upgrading guns and trying to max them all out gives you a versatile experience. The weapons change your tactics and how the game is played, so you are constantly figuring it out on your quest to max out your firearms.
Medal of Honor: Airborne still holds up as far as I’m concerned. I thoroughly enjoyed the game’s single-player campaign and will likely fire it up once my interest in Elden Ring wanes. Also, EA, bring back Medal of Honor, experiment with different wars, but take some of the open-world design and gun upgrading capability from Medal of Honor: Airborne when you do.
