This game is worth the money, even being near full-price. Each Medal of Honor (hereafter "MOH") game until the recent "modern" releases have all pretty much had their own unique feel and unique gameplay features, from the original PS1 game to this one. It's one of the main reasons I have loved the series.
MOH: Airborne is an excitingly-unique game in that you do indeed get to choose where to land in the level, and then at that the entire level (for the most part) is unlocked from the start, so you may choose the order in which you do things with the initial mission objectives.
The levels vary from small town levels to a large industrial level, and are all fairly long. Overall they felt like sort of a cumulative total of all of the previous MOH games. I personally was terrible at parachuting - I found it difficult to get down, so that is something I will try to work on. It matters in the sense of if you land on a rooftop, you can snipe a large amount of Nazis before having to more directly engage.
The Nazis are fairly even in their difficulty. It is a game that allows different types of methodology in passing the levels much of the time. I tend to take a run-and-gun aggressive approach for the most part, but I found there were levels where a much slower, gradual approach with a sniper rifle was better.
One aspect you can do that I enjoyed and will lead to a good replayability factor was being able to upgrade your weapons. I felt they did this well in this game. For the most part it did not take too long to be able to do so, and what each upgrade did for the weapons was cool. Like other games I have played like Bulletstorm, if you do have a preferred way of playing FPS, the upgrade method allows you to quickly equip yourself for missions with your favorite style of weapon. I also felt like they introduced the different types of weapons and grenades at appropriate times.
I noticed some of the music (maybe all of it?) was a throwback to the original music in the PS1 game(s), which I thought was very cool. Simple, atmospheric, and nostalgic for me to those earlier PS1 games.
Main con: the CONTROLS are definitely first and foremost the big negative here. I frankly don't blame other reviewers at all for giving this game lousy reviews just because of that, though I personally got used to them. I assume this was Medal of Honor's attempt at saying, "Here we are, on the Playstation 3, look at us, we're DIFFERENT still from other FPS!"
Basically while you can change SOME of the buttons and what they are assigned to do (which was frankly the ONLY way I was able to play this game - otherwise I would've returned it and given it a 1 Star on here), your main aiming and your main firing buttons are L2 and R2, respectively. That ended up being something I found I WAS generally able to adapt to decently enough that it worked, but throughout the game there WERE occasional times I would go back to... well ANY other standard FPS controls these days and try the L1/R1 buttons when I was in a harrying situation and then would die.
I THINK video game companies have this well-figured out now: you don't MESS with the STANDARD CONTROLS for games!!! You at least have the "standard" as an OPTION, always, even if it is not the default. So this takes getting used to - AFTER you figure out a button layout for the rest of the basics you can work with. BUT you DO get used to it enough such that you CAN play the entire game and it is still worth the money. These controls did have me shaking my head a few times.
A minor, personal con: No offline multiplayer option, from what I could see. That means with the entire Medal of Honor World War 2 series (PS1 to this game), only this game and MOH: Frontline do not have it. That is disappointing to me, since it is SO fun to have a friend sitting NEXT to you and being able to either blast away at each other or play co-op against the computer.
Bottom-line: The controls are surprisingly-bad and take getting used to, but I think most people will be able to. Other then that though, for me this game is another in a long line of fun, engaging, unique WW2 Medal of Honor games. Sniping or run-and-gun, storyline, length, unique atmospheric feel, it all equals a fun game worth the price. If you enjoy World War 2 games you should enjoy this.
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